Beginning of the End

The prologue to an aborted Tusker sequel

Note: Before I started writing Sweetwater, my second Julian Tusker adventure novel, I had gotten a good start on an entirely different sequel. As you might know if you’ve read my two books by now, the “formula” I’ve followed for plots has involved the discovery of, or search for, a lost wreck. With Depth Charge, it was HMAS Vampire, the lost Australian destroyer. For my followup, I was going to base a plot around the search for Ernest Shackleton’s lost ship, Endurance, in Antarctica. I had gotten several chapters in when, as we all know by now, Endurance was discovered. Tremendous news, but it also put an end to my own fictional hunt for the ship deep under Antarctic ice. While I might still use some snippets from that manuscript in a future Tusker adventure, I thought I’d share the prologue I had written for the book that I gave the provisional title, Icebound. I hope you enjoy it.