The Tao of Eldafto

AKA Who? What? Where? When? Why? A user's guide.

In the spirit of trying to do more with this place, I present The Tao of Eldafto. Out there in the Fleshiverse, the meat suit answers to the name Gavin White. Like the planet he lives on he's “mostly harmless”, but probably best avoided until fully caffeinated.

I'm the creator of the ongoing experimental flash fiction fantasy serial Twixt the Warp and the Weft, which started life as a writing exercise to entertain a friend and just kept growing. It's still growing now, even as I write this, sat in a dodgy cafe waiting for a hot beef sandwich. No, that isn't a euphemism, I really am. I'm under no illusions, it's not great writing. I have no aspirations to be a great writer. But to tell a good story? Now that's something I can hope to achieve. You can find out more here.

Last year I wrote Nourishment, a short story about internet grooming, which was published in the anthology Quickies by the #Flashtag collective in Manchester. You can obtain a copy of that anthology here.

I am intermittently writing a novel. It may contain vampires. It has the working title “Choices”. I wouldn't hold your breath.

I've decided to spruce this place up a touch, use it for more than ill-concieved ranting and occasional bits of nonesense. Or maybe that's exactly what I'll use it for. I haven't decided yet. If you choose to come back, expect fragments and snippets, nonesense and experiments. Anything that'll help me stay sane.

So that's the “who” and the “what”, the “where”, and the “when” comes with as “as and...” pre-installed.

Which brings me to the “why”.

To try and stay sane, that's the long and the short of it. Here's the sob story (or at least the abridged, slightly romanticised version of it). At the dog end of last year my grandmother had a fall and was taken into hospital. Visiting her, two things became instantly clear. The first was that we had to get her out of there as quickly as possible, or she wouldn't be coming out at all. The second, that she couldn't continue to live alone.

I returned home and started putting my life into boxes. The important boxes I put in my car, the less important ones into a spare room. I made arrangements with a good friend to take care of the house, put the freak in her basket and returned to the house of my youth (#thehousethattimeforgot), in the town I grew up hating*.

(The freak, incidently, cried the most pitiful, heart wrenching moans you could possibly imagine for every single inch of the one hundred and twenty two mile journey. She took a long time to forgive me, and only really started to see the positives in her situation when she caught sight of a squirrel. I'm currently waiting for her to bring me one.)

So the question is, why am I telling you all of this? And the answer is, I'm not. Not really. Sometimes a situation only becomes real when you've said it out loud. So I'm using a public forum to talk to myself, to try and understand how I came to be where I am. To remind myself (and maybe draw a little attention to) some of the things I'm doing. I spend twenty hours a day in the company of a white box, waiting for it to bark, to tell me my gran needs something. Believe me when I tell you I need to find ways to stay sane.

My name's Eldafto. Good evening.

(*I've been back three months and I'm just starting to realise that I still hate it.)