About Me

It took moving to Cardiff for university to realise what I'd left behind. By thirty-two, I'd come full circle back to the family farm, and discovered that Mid-Wales holds more stories than I'd ever suspected. Not the famous ones from the Mabinogion or the Arthurian legends, though I'm working my way toward those, but the smaller tales passed down through kitchens and across pub tables, the ones told over farmhouse kitchen tables until there's nobody left who remembers the detail.

Much of what I write is fiction, but the communities are real in all the ways that matter. Home and hearth, the way people talk about their grandparents, the stories (and gossip) that come up every gathering. Those are real. So are a handful of the characters, though I've learned not to admit which ones while their relatives are still living.

Living in Cardiff made me understand that growing up with those stories wasn't normal everywhere. I remember there was someone who said, when the internet first came to Mid-Wales, that it would have a major challenge keeping up with the speed at which good gossip would spread in the hills of the Builth Wells area.
Llanafan, a local parish that often cropped up with the juiciest stories, will almost certainly feature as this saga reaches its climax in 1283.

I've always been someone more comfortable planning a decade ahead than remembering what my patient wife and I have scheduled for next week. But this hair-brained quest of becoming a full-time author has pushed even me out of my comfort zone. I've always enjoyed creative writing, but I'm a complete novice at actually finishing things and letting people read them.

I've got twenty years of stories mapped out, which seems optimistic given I'm still learning how to finish one. If you want to watch someone tread across the ice with all the grace of a ten-year-old ox who's recently broken into the ale supply, I'd be grateful to have you along for the ride.

The work ahead centers on The Book of the Western Veil, and it's difficult to explain without sounding like I've lost the plot. This saga attempts to reconcile Greek-Roman, Norse, and Welsh mythology from the Mabinogion (the famous book of legend that inspired both Arthurian legends and Tolkien) with the Old Testament, all through the troubled mind of Brother Wyn at tenth-century Caermynach (which translates to 'Monks Fort').
I believe the Mabinogion was smoothed around the edges to appease bishops and fit Christian tongues, because raw pagan stories would have contradicted church doctrine directly. So I asked: what if a monk stayed connected to the old ways, with a soft spot for the pagan gods? He wouldn't denounce Christianity, but seek wisdom and truth beneath the surface. A millennium later, from the same rock and spring, I'm setting down his words so the world can know of Arawn, Annwn and the Western Veil.

I live at the top end of Maesmynis as a creature of solitude now, though I am not farming the same land my family's worked for generations. That is wisely left to my relatives, who are the professionals.

The spring that feeds our meadow, the one that I am looking at whilst awkwardly writing this page, does indeed run from the ground colder than it should, and the temperature does not change regardless of the season. The meadow itself has not seen a plough throughout my father's lifetime and was mentioned by those who are sadly no longer with us, that Caermynach Meadow is the best natural meadow of its type between Builth Wells and Llandovery. It is these bold claims, off-hand sayings, and community stories that form the heart (calon) of what I intend to share.

I will be writing regular chronicles, fragments and fireside tales on this website and via all major podcast services, and when I am ready, probably late 2026, I will aim to publish my first novel, Second Dawn.

Diolch am ddarllen.

Elwyn

Contact

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