Blurb:
It’s
August in Alaska, and geology professor Jack Oswald prepares for the new school
year. But when hundreds of huge holes mysteriously appear overnight in the
frozen tundra north of the Arctic Circle, Jack receives an unexpected phone
call. An oil company exec hires Jack to investigate, and he picks his
climatologist wife and two of their graduate students as his team. Uncharacteristically,
Jack also lets Aileen O’Shannon, a bewitchingly beautiful young
photojournalist, talk him into coming along as their photographer. When they
arrive in the remote oil town of Deadhorse, the exec and a biologist to protect
them from wild animals join the team. Their task: to assess the risk of more
holes opening under the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and the wells and pipelines that
feed it. But they discover a far worse danger lurks below. When it emerges, it
threatens to shatter Jack’s unshakable faith in science. And destroy us all…
Excerpt:
My
phone rang. Angie paused so that I could take the call. It was from Kevin
Kowalski, an ExxonMobil manager for whom I’d occasionally worked as a
consultant.
“Dr.
Oswald,” he said when I answered. “Thank God, I got you. We have a big problem,
and I need you up here right away.”
“What
kind of a problem?” I asked, putting him on speakerphone so the others could
hear. “Classes are about to start and I need to…”
“Forget
the classes,” Kowalski interrupted. “We have a disaster in the making up here.
You know those huge holes that opened last year in northern Siberia?”
“Sure,”
I replied. “They’re probably just big sinkholes caused by the melting of
subsurface ice or the melting of very large pingos.”
“Huh?
What’s a pingo?” Kowalski asked. To Kowalski, surface features were merely
something that made life difficult when drilling wells and piping oil.
“Pingos,”
I replied, “are large conical hills of ice covered with a relatively thin layer
of dirt. Anyway, what about the sinkholes? Are you telling me we’ve got one up
on the North Slope?”
“Damned
straight,” Kowalski answered angrily. “In the last twenty-four hours, we’ve
spotted over two dozen, and several have opened up near our oil wells. There’s
one close to the Trans-Alaska Pipeline down near Pump Station 2, and I don’t
have to tell you the hell there’ll be to pay if another one opens up under the
pipeline. We’re facing a financial and environmental disaster, and I need you
up in Deadhorse ASAP. How soon can you put a team together? We need to know
what’s causing them and how likely it is that one will open under our
facilities.”
Author Bio
and Links:
A
computer geek by day, at night and on weekends Donald Firesmith writes modern
paranormal fantasy, apocalyptic science fiction, action and adventure novels
and relaxes by handcrafting magic wands from magical woods and mystical
gemstones.
A
computer geek by day, Donald Firesmith works as a system and software engineer
helping the US Government acquire large, complex software-intensive systems. In
this guise, he has authored seven technical books, written numerous software-
and system-related articles and papers, and spoken at more conferences than he
can possibly remember. He is also proud to have been named a Distinguished
Engineer by the Association of Computing Machinery, although his pride is
tempered somewhat worrying whether the term “distinguished” makes him sound
more like a graybeard academic rather than an active engineer whose beard is
still more red than gray.
By
night and on weekends, his alter ego writes modern paranormal fantasy,
apocalyptic science fiction, action and adventure novels and relaxes by
handcrafting magic wands from various magical woods and mystical gemstones. His
first foray into fiction is the book Magical Wands: A Cornucopia of Wand Lore
written under the pen name Wolfrick Ignatius Feuerschmied. He lives in Crafton,
Pennsylvania with his wife Becky, his son Dane, and varying numbers of dogs,
cats, and birds.
Buy
Links: The book is free
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Praise
Quotes
“I
enjoyed my time in Firesmith’s world. I did not want to leave. I really got a
kick out of it, and would happily come back for more. Recommended.”
MJ
Kobernus, author of The Guardian: Blood in the Sand
“This
book rocks.”
Barton
Paul Levenson, author of Dark Gods of Alter Telluria
“a
quick, enjoyable read. Full of action and fraught with danger”
Dave
Robertson, author of Strange Hunting, Strange Hunting II, and The Brave and The
Dead
“The
book is an easy and quick read and an action-filled one that you’ll imagine as
a TV series or a movie with no difficulty.”
Olga
Núñez Miret, author of Escaping Psychiatry
Thanks for hosting!
ReplyDeleteAWESOME excerpt, I can't wait to read it :) Thanks for the contest :)
ReplyDelete