The Lunate Interview - Nicholas Royle

Interview by Cath Barton

Nicholas Royle is a bibliophile, writer and currently Reader in Creative Writing at the prestigious Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University. In addition to his many other writing activities, he is the author of four volumes of short fiction and has edited twenty anthologies. We talked about his enduring fascination with the short story, especially that at the ‘subtler end of horror fiction’, and in particular about his imprint Nightjar Press, probably unique in its longevity in publishing print copies of single short stories in signed, limited edition chapbooks.

You’re a busy person – teaching, writing, editing. How do you fit Nightjar Press in?
It’s really difficult to fit everything in. I’m not very good at multi-tasking, and if a university deadline and another writing deadline coincide I have to prioritise the university work. A few years ago I thought maybe I should give up Nightjar Press but then I thought: what am I talking about? I can’t possibly give it up, I love it too much. And this Spring I’ve got three pairs of Nightjar titles coming out.

What made you decide to publish in print?
It doesn’t make a lot of sense in terms of the money involved. I do it because I love it. In the early 1990s I published three books under an imprint called Egerton Press. A decade or so later I found I was missing that. I decided to start another small press, but I wanted to do something a bit different. I decided to publish my chapbooks in pairs. It’s very important to me that they be print; I love having things on shelves. The short story is my favourite form and I think it’s so special it deserves to have a cover and art on the cover. In time it developed that, as well as doing them in pairs, I was making sure the two stories really worked together, that there were resonances between them, and I decided that it was important to reflect that in the cover art as well.

I get a lot of satisfaction from publishing new work and from supporting writers, whether it’s launching writers or publishing work by writers who have fallen out of favour or who people haven’t heard of because they haven’t done anything for a long time.

Since you started Nightjar Press in 2009 you’ve published over fifty stories, by over forty different writers. It’s an impressive roll-call of contemporary British writing. Have you seen any changes in short story writing over the past decade?
I should say that the reason I publish British writers is not because of any bias on my part, it’s just practical because all the copies are signed by the authors and it would be very difficult if they were overseas.

Have there been any changes? Personally, I’ve become more interested in and more open to experimental writing. Whether people are writing more of it I don’t know. I think it may be cyclical; a couple of the writers I have in mind when I think of experimental short stories, BS Johnson and Giles Gordon, were working in the 60s and 70s. Giles is one of my favourite authors and in his work there’s a crossover between dark strange stuff and an experimental approach. I really like that and I’m interested in the possibility that there might be something inherently uncanny – or potentially so – in being experimental.

Are you getting more submissions of experimental fiction?
I suppose since I’ve indicated that I’m open to it, yes. For instance, two of the new titles, The Elevator by Imogen Reid and Two Degrees of Freedom by Simon Okotie, are pretty extreme. When I started Nightjar I probably wouldn’t have taken anything like that. I don’t know if short story writing has changed, but I’ve certainly changed, and what I want to publish has not so much changed as developed – I’m looking to push at the boundaries as well as continue to publish more conventional stories. These two are not the first experimental stories I’ve published in Nightjar – Roberta Dewa’s Hide came out last year – but they’re more out there and I’m very curious to see what people will make of them.

Of course I still get submissions that are completely inappropriate and bear no relation whatsoever to anything that Nightjar has ever published. I always write back nicely.

Let’s go back to the pairings. For example, in your forthcoming pairing, Tower Block Ghost Story by TSJ Harling and The Keeper by David Rudkin, one is about the haunted, the other the haunting. How do you achieve this – is it serendipitous or do you go looking for ones that match?
A bit of both. In the case of those two I had The Keeper first. I often have up to ten or more stories waiting. When TSJ Harling sent me her story I knew as soon as I read it that it would work with The Keeper. They’re both ghost stories, but from different perspectives, and they’re both set in tall buildings. Those two were an easy pairing to make.

Now look at the pair I published in March – Cocky Watchman by Ailsa Cox and This Must Be Earth by Melissa Wan. Both feature women sitting in the back of taxis. Perfect. They’re very different stories in lots of ways, but they have that one point where they touch.

When I take a story I always warn the writer that it could be awaiting publication for a long time. Sometimes I do actively go looking for a story to fit with another and that’s obviously tricky. I might invite submissions. When I’m doing that kind of thing I tend to approach writers I know, and who I have a good relationship with. It’s always on the understanding that if it’s not right I won’t take it.

I notice that you take many of the cover photographs for Nightjar titles.
I do a lot of photography, have done for years. People who say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover are talking nonsense. Of course you should. The cover is hugely important and its one of the things I enjoy most about Nightjar, doing the covers. It gives me an opportunity to be creative in a slightly different way, playing with my toys.

No-one will know that the photographs on the covers of Cocky Watchman and This Must Be Earth were taken on the routes described in the stories, but I’ll know and the author will know (and readers of this interview, too) and that’s good enough for me. I love those stories enough to want to go to those places to take photos and make the photos work with the stories. It’s a really important part of the whole process for me.

Could we talk about birds? I’ve heard that you really like stories about birds – what is it about them that draws you?
I’ve always loved birds, always been a birdwatcher. It’s partly the fact that they’re so beautiful, so delicate, so alien to us and yet so close to us much of the time. And yet we can’t get too close to them because they won’t let us. They’re very familiar to us and yet they’re completely different and that mixture of familiarity and unfamiliarity makes them uncanny. Probably a disproportionate number of the Nightjar stories have been about birds. But I won’t choose a bird story over another story, because it’s always just about the story.

What about your own writing? London Gothic was published by Confingo last December, with further volumes set in Manchester and Paris forthcoming
Most of the Manchester stories are done, but I need to write a lot more for the Paris volume. I’ve not been able to go there because of the pandemic and I really need to be in the place I’m writing about if I’m to get fresh ideas.

I’ve just finished another book. It’s called White Spines and it’s about my book collection, specifically my Picador collection. I wrote most of it in the last six weeks; I really got on a roll with it. It’ll be published by Salt in June.

I’m thinking about a new novel, and I’ve been quite excited by my experience of writing White Spines in such a short time. I’m also going to allow myself the freedom to write a shorter work. If that makes it harder to find a publisher so be it.

Finally, the Desert Island Discs question – you have the Bible and Shakespeare. Which other book would you take?
One book!

You can have an omnibus — the complete works of someone if you like.
My favourite writer of all time is Derek Marlowe, who was an English novelist who flitted around from genre to genre and never really settled in one. I think as a result of this he never became a household name. He wrote beautiful prose.