Author Interview with Nora B. Peevy
1. When did you start writing?
I’ve been writing since I learned how to in kindergarten. I used to make my own stories out of looseleaf paper I stapled together and illustrated. I’d give them to my parents to read.
2. What was your journey towards becoming an author like?
I got a Bachelor of Arts in English with a Concentration in Creative Writing. That’s when I really started taking myself seriously. I started out in grad school as a modern poet, transferred to library science, but just didn’t feel either degree was worth the money. I stopped playing the paper game in the late 90s and got a temp job and started writing at my desk during my lunch break and at night when I got home from my work. In 2008 was when I really started picking up traction, but then I had a decade of bad health and didn’t start publishing again until 2018. I’ve been writing ever since nonstop.
3. What can you tell me about your latest book? (Feel free to include an excerpt.)
My latest book is a folk horror/splatterpunk/erotica novelette called: For the Sake of Brigid. Two feuding neighbors take their feud to new heights, one murdering one’s horses, the other setting the lady’s beehives on fire. The Goddess Brigid is enraged. She’s an earth goddess and has dominion over all living creatures. The two women have no idea the wrath they’ve unleashed, but they’re going to find out.
Here's an excerpt from the book before Brigid starts punishing her victims for murdering her consorts:
“Skål! Skål! Skål!” her bee queen raised her golden chalice in her sacred dreamtime messages to her honied smeared lips, her naked body dripping in sweet honey, sacred golden
honey, irresistible to the tastebuds, her areolas aroused, the goddess a captivating maiden, fertile and ripe for consummation, a soft downy tuft on her pubis matted and slathered in honey matching the golden waves of her tangled forest tresses coated with the bees’ nectar, her skin
glistening by the life-giving fire and her animals and the dark forest reflected in her oak-ringed irises.
But the god of death appeared with his grey smoldering cloak, Annwn, riding a dark grey horse through The Otherworld for he was the formidable god of war, revenge, terror, and hunting. With his magical pigs and three loyal Hounds he was one of the Tuath De Danann like Brigid, but she was life where he was of the dead in The Otherworld. The legend was if the people in the villages heard the howl of his dog they would wander into his world. Night Mallt,
Mallt-y-Nos, or Maltida of the Night, her names, followed Annwn and herded lost souls to him on The Wild Hunt. She loved hunting so much she refused to go to heaven and her cries were nefarious. Annwn ruled over autumn and winter -- The Land of the Dead souls trapped in a gloomy liminal realm where all dwelled for eternity, never to go to one of the three happy places–Tir no nOg, Mag Mell, or Tir no mBan.
4. What sort of methods do you use for book promotion?
I’ve been making my own videos to share on social media. I’ve mainly used social media and relied on word of mouth and book reviews.
5. Where do you get your ideas for stories?
Good question. Life, books I read, conversations I overhear, subs I find inspiring but missed the deadline for, sometimes just ideas and situations that amuse me.
6. What are you working on right now?
Currently I’m working on two new projects. One is a short story collection, Sapphic Divinity, which is about different goddesses. I’m three stories in. I’m also working on a short story collection inspired by famous pieces of art with animals in them. The animals are the subject of the stories. They tell stories.
I’ll soon be editing Cannibal Turtles, which will probably have a different title before it’s finished and I want to start on a sequel about ghost bees, which are alluded to in the book. I also have other characters in an urban story anthology that I want to expand into a collection at some point. And I’d like to write a horror script just for fun. I’ve never written a script and I like to challenge myself.
7. Any advice for other authors?
Don’t compare yourself to others. You don’t have to have a set schedule. Write a certain number of words per week, set a goal, but you don’t have to sit down at the same time every day, unless that’s the only time you have to write. Enjoy other things outside writing and be a person too because this will make your writing better. Eavesdrop on conversations everywhere. Trust me. They are gold sometimes. I do it all the time. Hehehehe. Take walks to recharge your batteries or find another creative art that will stimulate another part of your brain and let you rest your writer’s brain. That’s when the best ideas come. Read, read, read. Stay away from the television. It’s a waste of time. Take care of your health and get enough sleep because you need that to write successfully. Back up, back up, back up ALL of your writing. If you can, keep a back up of your back up. You don’t need a fancy office to be a writer. You just need a laptop and a table to work. If you’re lucky enough to have an office, don’t use it for anything besides writing. Train your brain that you go in there and it's writing time. If you are stuck and things don’t feel right in there, move your desk so you have a different view. Sometimes that’s all you need. Figure out if you are a person who needs it to be quiet or you can write with noise around you. Some people can write in a coffee shop. Others can’t. You don’t have to write in a coffee shop just because person X,Y, and Z do. What works for someone else might not work for you.
ABOUT NORA:
Nora B. Peevy is a cat trapped in a human’s body. Please send help or tuna. She is an Olympic champion sleeper and toils away for JournalStone/Trepidatio Publishing as a submission reader, a reviewer for Hellnotes, the co-founder and co-editor of Tiny Tales of Terror Quarterly and is reading scripts for The H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival for the second year. Ms. Peevy recently took on a position for The Weird Wide Web writing nonfiction articles. Her quirky work is published in Eighth Tower Press, Weird Fiction Quarterly, The Wicked Library Podcast, Sudden Fictions Podcast, and other places. Her first novelette, For the Sake of Brigid just came out in May of 2024 and her first novel will debut later this year. As an avid photographer, Nora can also be found on Getty Images. Holding a Bachelor of Arts in English with a Concentration in Creative Writing, you can find her on Facebook (as Onyx Brightwing) begging to escape her human body or get tuna. She naps in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.