Author David Kettle was born and raised, one of a pair of conjoined twins (separated at birth), near the banks of the River Severn in Western England, UK, within sight of the Welsh mountains. He consequently started his youth as a Welsh coal miner but soon tired of the sooty occupation and moved into a career as influence peddler, under the pseudonym McAllister son of McAllister of McAllister (or Emineminem as he became semi-affectionately known) in the Scottish parliament. After he was ousted for being underage, he fled to the Ukraine thinking this was a British colony because of the abbreviation UK in the encyclopedia. He found no work there but many Ukrainians. Disillusioned, he returned to the real UK, settling for 3 years in Manchester, England. Following a period of intense introspection, an increasingly dissociated sojourn during which he remained resolutely unaware of the existence in the same town of the musical beat group The Fall, he relocated to Finsbury Park, North London. Here the text of Elephant Gnosis came to him in a dream. Eventually leaving the UK in disgrace, a short train ride brought him to his present home in Western Australia, a town whose name no-one can pronounce, Ngbhlumbfumbgh. Here Mr. Kettle soaks himself in denatured papoose juice and sticks his fingers in the typewriter keys. "The excruciating pain drives him to write." He has several new ideas every day, is married to his art and is good at pretending to be a good listener. Eschewing the temptations of anything resembling a normal career path however, he rarely ventures out, except to drive at speed in borrowed utes on the endlessly accommodating Western Australian highways. Mr. Kettle gained his first ever driving license on the 15th October 2004. No-one knows the whereabouts of the absent twin, although there have been oblique sightings in Finsbury Park, North London.