About James Paxton Priestley
I'm an alumnus of Aberystwyth University in Ceredigion, Wales, where I was conferred with a BA (Hons) degree in Creative Writing. I embarked on a part-time MA in Creative Writing, completing the first year of this, with a PGCert in Creative Writing pending. I hold a Diploma in Ericksonian Clinical Hypnosis, Cognitive Psychotherapy and Neurolinguistic Programming.
My primary genre interests include weird and 'New Weird' fiction, haunting texts, folklore, horror (especially folk horror), and Gothic fiction.
I have a particular interest in the works of the Welsh author and mystic Arthur Machen (1863-1947), best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy, and horror fiction; Irish writer Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873), a creator of Gothic tales, mystery novels, and horror fiction; and English writer Algernon Henry Blackwood (1869-1951), a broadcasting narrator, journalist, novelist and short story writer, considered by many to have been among the most prolific ghost story writers in the genre’s history. I am also a fan of the works of Angela Carter, Shirley Jackson, and Sir Terry Pratchett.
My writing method
One might also state this as 'how I write.' I have no magic formula or panegyric to offer. My approach is rather simple—I write what I like, when I like! Although I steer towards the interests I’ve stated above, this approach is never exclusive. In the same way that reading eclectically is beneficial to broadening and deepening one’s mind, so is eclectic writing—or so I believe. This disclosure will explain why I might write about Jim Henson’s Muppets in one story, and a piece of dark horror or speculative fiction in the next. Like a box of Maynards Bassetts Liquorice Allsorts, you cannot be altogether certain what you’ll get when you delve into the box!
My current writing projects
- A noir magic realism novel centred on Aberystwyth involving an antiquarian bookseller, a demigoddess of probable Slavic origin who wants their memoirs written by the former, and a religious hit squad intent on hunting down and exterminating the latter... and doubtless also the former! If this sounds reminiscent of the noir detective novels of the British author Malcolm Pryce, then that's not my intention... though being a fan of Pryce’s alternate version of Aberystwyth, I’ll take it.
- Welsh Wyrd. An anthology of contemporary weird and uncanny tales based on Welsh folklore.