WRITING INTERESTS

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J.P. Priestley has a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) degree in Creative Writing conferred by Aberystwyth University in Wales. He will embark on his Master of Arts postgraduate studies in Creative Writing in September 2024.

His main fiction genre interests include folklore, fantasy, speculative fiction, haunting texts, and horror (especially folk horror).

James has 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. James is also a staunch fan of Shirley Jackson, Susan Hill, Angela Carter, Neil Gaiman, and Sir Terry Pratchett.

James has a therapy background in Ericksonian Clinical Hypnosis, Cognitive Psychotherapy and Neuro-Linguistic Programming. He is also an experienced freelance copyeditor and proofreader.

MY METHOD

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"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 entirely certain what you’ll get when you delve into the box!"