Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’m Nathaniel A. Giles, and I’ve just released my first book.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My book is called Unpleasantness: Ghost Stories for the Depressed. It was inspired by a lot of things. My obsession with ghost stories, and my desire to write some ghost stories of my own, but also some ambitions. For instance, I felt like one of the conventions of traditional ghost stories is that they are rooted in a relatively remote past, and I thought it would be interesting to subvert that convention and write some ghost stories that are rooted in the present or the very recent past. I also thought it would be interesting to write ghost stories about people whose lives are already pretty scary. Montague Rhodes James, who was an excellent writer of ghost stories, famously said that the scariest ghosts were the ones that intruded on our everyday lives. I thought it would be interesting to see what happened if I wrote some ghost stories in which ghosts intruded into people’s lives at crisis points, where they were at their weakest. I guessed that they would be even scarier, or that they would be almost superfluous. Some of my characters’ lives are scarier than the ghosts they encounter.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Yes, I prefer to write at night, however, from time to time I have spent an entire day writing nonstop. I’m not sure if it’s true, but it feels like the more writing you do at once, the more unified and coherent that story will be. So, it seems like a good idea to do that when life doesn’t prevent you. If I can get into a groove, I will write for as long as possible.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
In no particular order, my three favorite authors in general are Thomas Hardy, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and David Foster Wallace. I try to take as much influence as I can from Vonnegut, not just in terms of humanity and humor, but the simplicity of his writing. I try to take as little influence as I can from Wallace. Imitating his brand of acrobatics or contortions is not a good idea. It will leave you with nonsense that is not brilliant even though it felt brilliant while you were writing it. It’s best to just admire him, and then move on. What I share with Hardy is a disposition, or an outlook on life. I feel like he doesn’t influence me so much as he commiserates with me. After he wrote Jude the Obscure, he was accused of being cruel to his characters. I guess I am cruel to mine, too. It’s not done out of unkindness, though. It’s done because that’s just how I think things would go in real life. However, in terms of ghost stories, my main influences are Montague Rhodes James, and Joseph Sheridan LeFanu. I feel like they are the best classical practitioners of the form. Or like they were the best until 2019 when a brilliant writer named Leanne Shapton wrote a book of ghost stories called Guestbook. It’s better than virtually every other book of ghost stories, and it’s original, and innovative. It’s incredibly subtle, and careful. I recommend it to everyone I talk to about ghost stories.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on another book of ghost stories, or stories of the macabre. Joyce Carol Oates will sometimes write stories that are not quite ghost stories and not quite horror stories, but are somehow like them anyway. It’s like the atmosphere is the same as a ghost or horror story, but the scary thing in them isn’t supernatural, but belongs to this common reality. She calls them grotesques. So, I guess several of the stories in my next book are supernatural, but several of them are grotesques of the type that Oates writes.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I don’t know what site works best. This is my first book. But I’m keeping notes and will consult them before I start promoting my next one.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
I’m not good at advice or being inspirational. I guess I would say this: edit again and again, as many times as you have to in order to get it right. And here’s a useful exercise: if you’re trying to find what’s wrong with a paragraph, copy it out of the main file and then paste it into a new Word document. Now analyze it as a paragraph — what is it trying to accomplish? Does it accomplish that? But by the time you ask the second question, you should already see how to start fixing it. Then look at every sentence of that paragraph. Is each one coherent? Does each one add to that paragraph? Then look at every word in every sentence. Which ones can you do without?
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Don’t drive angry.
–Bill Murray
When someone asks you if you’re a god, you say “Yes!”
–Ernie Hudson
What are you reading now?
Right now I’m reading Phantasms of the Living, by Edmund Gurney, Frederic W. H. Myers, and Frank Podmore, who were key members of the Society for Psychical Research. But I just finished The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
What’s next for you as a writer?
After the book I’m currently writing, I’m either going to write a third book of stories so I can pretend they are a connected trilogy, or I’ll try my hand at the novel.
What is your favorite book of all time?
I don’t know. It changes. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Frankenstein. Infinite Jest. Vanity Fair. Slaughter-House Five. Europe Central. The Devils of Loudun. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Beloved. Lincoln in the Bardo. Middlemarch. Jane Eyre. It’s somewhere in there. Or not.
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