by Donald Firesmith
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GENRE: Science Fiction (Apocalyptic)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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.
Links:
http://donaldfiresmith.com/
https://www.facebook.com/FiresmithAuthorFanPage
https://twitter.com/DonFiresmith
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1290902.Donald_G_Firesmith
Trailer
Book Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/amXuTAlKoX0
Buy Links: The book is free
http://www.amazon.com/Hell-Holes-What-Lurks-Below/dp/1515068072/
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/hell-holes-what-lurks-below/id1076804292
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hell-holes-donald-george-firesmith/1122443723
https://www.createspace.com/5617034
https://www.instafreebie.com/free/8uvDD
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/608355
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
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