Noreen Lace - Interview

Q: Please introduce yourself.
A: Writer. Professor. Seeker of Joy. 😊

BIO: Noreen Lace received an MFA from CSU, where she now teaches. She believes in the beauty of language to express the darkness in life. The author of two novellas, West End and Life of Clouds, her shorter fiction and poetry have appeared worldwide, including The Chicago Tribune's Printers Row Journal, The Oleander Review, Vine Leaves, and others. "Memorial Day Death Watch," a memoir of her father's passing, placed as a finalist in Writer Advice while her poem, "All at Once," was a finalist for Medusa's Laugh. As a Poe enthusiast, she lectures and was interviewed on Dark Times Live. Eddy, a fictional account of Edgar Allan Poe’s overdose in 1848, will be out in January.  www.NoreenLace.com

Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m finishing Eddy. It’s the fictional account of Edgar Allan Poe’s 1848 near suicide. It’s an imagining of what he might have been experiencing while the laudanum/opium was coursing through his body. 

Q: Why did you decide to write your current work?
A: In one of my endless rants about Edgar Allan Poe, one of my friends suggested I write about him. So much has been written about Poe, there isn’t much which remains unknown. The only thing to add to the conversation is fiction. But how does one approach their hero in fiction? I had to be careful, had to take the facts as they are known and add suspected actions and reactions. 

Q: What genre do you usually write in? Do you typically write novels, short stories, poems, etc.?
A: I write poetry, fiction, novellas, and I have a novel waiting to be picked up. 

Q: What made you become a writer?
A: I feel I was born to it. I’ve been writing since I could hold a pen.  My first “novel”, I use that term loosely here, I wrote when I was ten or eleven years old. It was a complex story about a girl who witnessed a crime and was kidnapped. 

Q: Have you self-published, traditionally published, or both? If both, do you prefer one over the other? Do you have any advice for authors seeking your chosen method of publication?
A: I went with a small press that was just starting, ReadLips Press. It can be risky going with a new press, but it worked out for me.

Q: Do you have any advice for beginning authors? (Please answer even if you are a beginning author yourself.) For example:  How do overcome writer’s block? What marketing tactics have you found to be the most effective? Any advice at all.

A: Eliminate distractions and write, just write.

Here is Noreen's Eddy:

Blurb:
While half mad from an overdose of laudanum, Poe reimagines the death of each woman he loved even as their souls reach out from beyond the grave to save his life.

Teaser:
     Virginia’s eyes flutter open. “My dearest Eddy.”
     His soul surges to life. A tiny ruby dot appears on her chin, another on her cheek, a spot of fuchsia on the pillow next to her.
     “It’s nothing,” he says to himself as he leans closer and touches his fingertip to the marks. They fade to rust.
     She coughs florid splashes of death.
     He returns the cloth, dabs her mouth. He repeats, “it’s nothing,” but he knows he lies.
     Virginia chokes; long vines of red blood pour from her lips.
     He wrenches at the garnet ropes as they wrap themselves around her petite body. Virginia disappears into the carmine nebulous. He’s alone in the shadows once again.

Connect with Noreen via social media: www.noreenlace.com, www.facebook.com/noreenlace1/,
www.twitter.com/noreenlace, and www.instagram.com/noreenlace.

You can view and purchase her works here: https://www.amazon.com/Noreen-Lace/e/B01B2GBSH4/
and www.readlipspress.com.