Query: H.L. Durkin/LOST IN EXPECTATIONS 

(Adult Fiction – 55 Chapters, 73,000 words)

Samuel Potsdam had high expectations for his two sons, they should become archaeologists like himself. Jeffrey was already a professor at the University of Chicago. Donald was only a year away from his PhD at Harvard when he did the unthinkable, he traded in a boring future examining old bones and deciphering hieroglyphs to be the science fiction writer Arnold Fassbinder. Still, he welcomed the opportunity to be host of the popular TV show, Ancient Civilization Mysteries. Rich, famous and living large in California, he found himself depressed and lost in expectations. He was a writer who was not writing, an archaeologist who was not digging and worse, a scientist talking like an ancient alien theorist.

Seeking personal redemption, Donald organized an expedition to find the lost City of Jade in the Guatemalan rain forest. Armed men stumbled into their base camp and started shooting. Five of his men were dead and Arnold ran for his life pursued by guerillas. He lived to write about his escape and turned it into a successful novel. He got his name into the history books for discovering the lost city. And he plotted his revenge against those responsible for the deaths of his companions.