Hello. It is I, the author. My thanks to everyone who read and commented on this story. I'm very pleased and proud to have had it presented as an Escape Pod Original, especially since it was inspired by Steve's comments in
Episode 147: "Pressure". I literally went from my car to my computer at work and started writing this story that very day. Don't tell my old boss that, though.
Like Elle, I was a scuba diver as a kid. It was something I could do with my dad on the weekends, and we dove together almost every Saturday for more than four years. A lot of the backstory on Elle becoming a diver is based upon those scenes. Also, like Elle's grandfather, my grandfather owned a boat (although we never did get around to diving off it, and I certainly never stole it). I hadn't dove in a while when I wrote this, though, so I went to my local dive shop and met with a Dive Master (also one of my county's coroners -- go figure) to workshop all the diving scenes.
This was the first genre story I attempted to sell professionally. I wrote the first draft in 2008 (about 12,000 words) and aimed really, really high, sending it to Asimov's. The editor rejected it, but gave me a full-page critique, which I really appreciated, along with an invitation to revise and re-submit. So I did, and got
another full-page critique with my second rejection. From there, the story went through several metamorphoses; the version you heard (or read) is about the fifth draft, and is almost 5000 words shorter than the original. Several scenes were cut, including one where Elle breaks into Barry's house, and the finale on the other side of the portal was added.
Yes. You heard that right. In the first draft, I never actually revealed what happened to Elle -- because when I wrote the story,
I didn't know. To me, that's one of the most fun kinds of stories to write: the kind where I don't actually know what's going to happen. That way, I can surprise myself along the way and I keep writing because I want to know what's coming next. Fortunately, the critiques I got put the kibosh on that right out of the gate.
So, thanks again to Mur and company for purchasing, producing, and publishing this piece. I'm glad to see that so many people enjoyed it.
Some posters have asked questions that I can't answer because I don't
know the answers:
* What did the letter say?
* Why did she only have a short amount of time on the other side of the portal?
Who says "I'll never dive again" in the final scene? Elle.
How can you have a sunken wreck without some tentacle gods? At the time, my exposure to Cthulhu was woefully limited, and honestly that subgenre isn't really my favorite one.
Why did the storms happen? I believe I answered this in the text -- the energy from the transition through the portal has to go somewhere, and storms over water are generally safer than risking explosions and such over land.
Why was the stuff on the other side of the portal written in past-tense? Mostly because I'm a slave to format -- since that part technically didn't occur in the present (it happened a couple hundred years in the future), I didn't write it in present-tense. I'm surprisingly picky about stuff like that -- in a multi-POV novel I'm writing, I get weirded out when I reuse a character's POV in the same chapter because, in general, I don't do that through the rest of the book.
Will there be a sequel? Doubtful. I am rather curious what Elle is going to do with her life now that her great quest is over. Maybe she'll show up as a minor character in something else I write. I have a habit of reusing characters out of narrative convenience and some weird desire to make everything connect to everything else.
