Peter Beckenham - whipsmart, gun-shy, and the News Editor of NPL, the world's largest internet company - has had enough. When an unfortunate Twitter update costs him his job after fourteen years of deskbound, newswire publishing, he uses it as a chance to pursue what he sees as a less mundane existence. Despite a burgeoning office relationship and with exactly no experience of war reporting, he sets himself up as a foreign correspondent in Afghanistan, and soon finds his life has taken on more significance than he would have hoped. In his debut novel Water Runs Slow Through Flat Land, Cliff Jones tells a fast-paced story about love, violence, friendship, humanity, and deadlines in a comedy drama set in the digital media industry during the war on terror. Drawing on real-world events over the summer of 2010, what begins as one man's ambition to make his mark on the world of journalism quickly becomes a struggle for survival in the long shadow of dark forces.