Seth Godwynn
Just why?
In the third quarter of the 20th Century, Seth (if that is his real name), the youngest of nine, was born to Malachi and Magdalen Godwynn in the misty hills of a remote Kentish village. His family uprooted shortly thereafter, seeking a new life in the muggy moors of Sidcup, a quaint community and a proud people, always eager to greet visitors, while wearing necklaces strung from human teeth. Seth, however, always set his sights higher than the thrills of muddy pig wrestling, gaudy animal costumes and the annual fire sacrifice to appease the harvest gods. His life’s journey would take him all the way to the very heart of Asia, Tokyo, where he ran out of money, and now calls his home.
The road to Japan was long and fraught with adversity, but the all-expenses-paid business-class flight was supremely luxurious. It was on that very flight that he developed a taste for champagne cocktails, something he would never again attempt to consume.
The journey didn’t end at his arrival. His first five years were an uphill struggle against depression and constant frustration with even the most mundane aspects of life in a country that didn’t always make obvious sense, and with friendships that could never last more than a few months at most, as people were eager to return to their real lives. It was akin to living in a story world that the writer regretted having created, and took his frustrations out regularly on the long suffering protagonist.
Then, after five years, something changed.
The writer decided to move on with things, selling the franchise to somebody who could better use it. It was at this time that Seth happened upon a curious epiphany that changed his life forever. He has yet to find a way to articulate that epiphany into a communicable series of concepts, but it brought a profound inner peace and knowledge that changed every aspect of his life, and as a bonus, allowed him to communicate with animals through the medium of olfactory signals.
For as long as Seth can remember, he has always had an inexplicable aversion to plastic eating-utensils, considering them a scourge upon humanity. As a grown-up, he has put together numerous makeshift mental defence mechanisms designed to ensure he rarely has to acknowledge they exist.
He was once shocked to discover a bright orange plastic spork in his kitchen cutlery drawer, which his wife had apparently put in there several years earlier. He had evidently been subconsciously convincing himself that it simply didn’t exist the entire time, and very successfully too.
Other than this, a tendency to abandon projects when completion is in sight, and a love/hate relationship with fairly strong booze, he’s almost perfectly well-adjusted in most respects.
Almost, but completely not too much so.
Seth has spent the better part of two decades working as a professional writer and editor, mostly uncredited, and uses his free time to write short-stories and work on collaborative projects with A.P. Atkinson, who is secretly blackmailing him.
He has a multilingual preschool age daughter, and a wife who likes to reassure said daughter that any ghosts she sees in the house at night will be of dead relatives checking to make sure she’s OK.