Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’m a 27-year-old Vancouverite who works in HR for a health insurance company. I grew up in the suburbs of Albuquerque and spent nearly my whole life there until college. I like the desert but I wanted a change of scenery and to get out and explore more. Books were my main form of escape and I read a lot in my teen years, especially Gothic, horror, and mystery novels. I started writing short stories in high school and dreamed of writing my own book for years. I had a few attempts at writing one over the years in college and beyond, but kept scrapping them. It was my girlfriend (now fiancé) who pushed me to complete one a few years ago, and now I’m proud to have finally published my first novel Anathema this week!
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My first novel is a murder mystery/romantic thriller called Anathema. It’s inspired by my lifelong fascination with secret societies and my love of Gothic fiction, set at a fictional elite university in the Albertan Rockies. As a kid I loved reading up on groups like Skull and Bones and Bullingdon; they sounded so mysterious and interesting! There were no such clubs in my college town and I often wondered during university whether being in a secret society would’ve made my undergrad experience better. I found the clique culture at my school to be very toxic and tiring, and the destructive aftershocks of gossip and favoritism felt inescapable in the tight-knit community of my school. However, it later struck me that exploring how awful clique culture is would make a good backbone for a Gothic novel set at a university, and that a secret society could be in the center of it. Usually in these types of stories the secret society is pure evil and those opposed to it are portrayed as angels. I wanted to read a story a little more nuanced than that. What if the secret society in the book wasn’t all bad and those opposed to it weren’t all good? What if the socially awkward, lovebird protagonists were members of the secret society instead of crusading against it? What if they were actually very into it, almost fanatically devoted, and when someone who opposed their group got murdered, they ended up under suspicion? The more I thought about it, the more I realized this was a book I really wanted to write. The school in the novel and the titular secret society are amalgamations of different real universities and organizations that I came across in my research, mainly those in the Ivy League and the U.K. But there were a few I took inspiration from in Canada as well. Writing about university was much more exciting when I added cults and murder into the mix. My own undergrad experience was very tame by comparison!
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I’m a very early riser. I like to get up around 4am and start writing as soon as I’ve had my first cup of coffee. I just can’t seem to write in the evenings as well as the mornings, but I’ve got to get to work at a reasonable time, so I was only able to write for a couple hours every day, save for weekends where I would write from 4 to 10am while only pausing for breakfast. At that rate, it took me over half a year to get the first draft done and I spent another year revising the book with beta readers and a professional editor I hired.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca is one of my favorite novels, and the adaptation by Alfred Hitchcock had a profound effect on me (I saw it before reading the book). Both most certainly influenced Anathema and there are references to the story and characters placed throughout. One of the characters is even named Joan by her parents after Joan Fontaine and is partially inspired by her character in Rebecca. Other than du Maurier, I usually read an odd mix of literary fiction and airport thrillers. For every F. Scott Fitzgerald or Jonathan Safran Foer novel I read there’s a Dan Brown or a Stephen King. Despite the dark academia theme, I didn’t actually read Donna Tartt’s The Secret History until after I’d finished the first draft of Anathema, but I really, really loved it.
What are you working on now?
Honestly, I think I need to take a break from writing for a little bit after finally publishing Anathema. It’s been a long, grueling process to get it done but I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I’m still new to this, but so far Awesome Gang seems pretty good!
Do you have any advice for new authors?
The most helpful thing I think I could say is to just keep writing. Writing a book might seem like a mammoth task, but if you keep writing a few thousands words here and there (hey, even a few hundred words here and there!) they will start to add up. And eventually you will have a complete draft, which is one of the greatest feelings in the world. Revision is the same thing, just one draft and round of beta readers at a time. It might take years, but if you stick with it, you will get it done. It’s like that old saying: Slow and steady wins the race.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
A wise friend once told me: “Don’t ever let other people get you down.” When I was younger, I used to be guided a lot by a fear of what other people would think of me. They bullied me, tore me down, and spread rumors behind my back. I eventually realized this friend was right. The best way to live your life is to not worry to much about what other people are going to judge you for, and to just be yourself. It sounds cliché, but it’s so true. Be respectful of others even if they’re not respectful of you. Rise above them and don’t let them get to you, because that only gives them power.
What are you reading now?
A short story collection called the Darkling Halls of Ivy, edited by Lawrence Block. It’s a bunch of dark academia mystery stories written by major crime writers and I’m really loving it so far. Reading it has been a nice cool down from Anathema.
What’s next for you as a writer?
I do have ideas for another Gothic novel, possibly something either a modern Southern Gothic or Urban Gothic. And I wonder about maybe writing a sequel to Anathema years from now, picking up on the surviving characters and seeing what’s happened to them.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Oh, tough call. I’d probably say Rebecca, The Secret History, The Great Gatsby, and Bonfire of the Vanities. If you’re going to be stuck somewhere, you’d want books that you can enjoy re-reading again and again. I think any of those would make being stranded a bit more bearable.
Author Websites and Profiles
James Cosgrave Website
James Cosgrave’s Social Media Links
Goodreads Profile