About Alex Giles
A writer drawn to the coast's quiet ghosts
Alex Giles writes Southern Gothic fiction set along Florida's forgotten Gulf Coast — places where history lingers just beneath the surface, and the line between the living and the lost grows thin. His debut novel, The Ghosts of Port St. Joe, blends historical tragedy, atmospheric mystery, and a love story that survives beyond time.
Alex Giles is a Family Nurse Practitioner, educator, and lifelong student of history whose passion for forgotten places and untold stories inspired The Ghosts of Port St. Joe. After spending decades caring for patients and teaching future nurses, Alex turned to fiction to explore the places where history, mystery, and the supernatural intersect.
In 2023, Alex relocated to the historic Gulf Coast town of Port St. Joe, Florida. Surrounded by centuries-old cemeteries, abandoned legends, and the remnants of the once-thriving city of St. Joseph, the area's rich history became the inspiration for this haunting series. Through extensive historical research and a love of Southern folklore, Alex blends documented events with compelling fiction to create stories where the past refuses to remain buried.
Some stories refuse to remain buried. — from The Ghosts of Port St. Joe
The Ghosts of Port St. Joe was published in 2026 by Alexander Giles (Draft2Digital). Alex is at work on more stories from the coast.
Why Port St. Joe?
Once a thriving 19th-century port city called St. Joseph, the real town was all but erased by yellow fever and the hurricane of 1841. That lost history — and the quiet stretch of Gulf Coast that remains — became the soul of the book.
In its brief heyday, St. Joseph was one of the Gulf's busiest ports and the site of Florida's first constitutional convention in 1838. Within a few short years, yellow fever and a catastrophic hurricane scattered its inhabitants and swallowed the city whole. The land lay largely empty until the 20th century, when the town that grew up nearby took the name Port St. Joe. The ghosts of that earlier place — and the people who never left — are the bedrock beneath the novel's mystery.