Hello from beneath the ocean,

No, that headline isn't fiction, but it's true in two different ways.

First, I am literally beneath the ocean as I write this. I'm in my car, and the laptop is perched against the steering wheel. My car is (thankfully, and obviously), stationary, inside a train, that is speeding along a tunnel that's been bored beneath the ocean floor.

Once you accept that I'm just driving to the continent from the United Kingdom, using the EuroTunnel as my means of transport, everything clicks into place and feels normal again. But it shouldn't.

The engineering miracle that is the EuroTunnel only feels normal because it's been done, and so we understand that it's possible. People imagined digging a tunnel under the English Channel as far back as Napoleonic times, when it was considered, briefly, as a crazy way to invade England. It's only recently that science replaced "crazy" with "challenging" and, over time, "challenging" with "expensive".

So much of what we live with today would have been considered miraculous by the standards of only a few decades ago. Sometimes, the science we imagine in fiction is barely beyond the science fact we already live with. The only difference is in the extent of our sense of wonder.

Thirty-five minutes to cross an ocean by going beneath it. It's insane when you think about it.

Second, I'm somewhat underwater in a metaphorical sense, as I struggle with moving my family from one country to another, changing jobs (and, to a large extent, careers). Everything is new again, and all the problems we'd spent years solving have to be solved from scratch, such as finding schools for the kids, a home for the family and routine and balance iun oiur lives. It's exciting, but challenging in a way that wears you out and grinds you down.

That there is my apology for the huge gap between this newsletter and the last. I've been in boxes and fighting a thousand logistical fires for the last month, and I let the newsletter lapse. I'm very sorry.

My free fiction of the month

I go through phases of writing short fiction, and phases of working on longer stories. A while ago I wrote a story called "Shadows", which I've introduced to this list in the past, and which I'm sharing again today. It's one of my favourite stories because it successfully encapsulated many of the points I was trying to make, which usually doesn't happen quite so cleanly.

You can download Shadows here:

Download "Shadows" for Free

That's it for this newsletter, as I gradually get myself back up and running after this unintentional break. I hope you're all well and will get in touch again in two weeks.

As always, stay in touch, send feedback, tell me what kind of car I should buy now that I need a new one...

All the best,

Nick.

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