GREETINGS, BOOKWORMS! I’m Aisha Kandisha, Head Librarian at Kandisha Press. Join me in the dusty stacks of the library I will never leave again as I chat with some of my favorite Women in Horror. Today we feature author Nora B. Peevy! Nora’s story “Carla’s Curiosities” is featured in PRETEND YOU DON’T SEE HER: THE INVISIBLE WOMAN (Kandisha Press 2025 Women of Horror Anthology.)
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. Her quirky work is published in Eighth Tower Press, Weird Fiction Quarterly, The Wicked Library Podcast, Sudden Fictions Podcast, and other places. She has stories coming out in five collections this year, her first novel, and her first novelette. As an avid photographer, Nora is also 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.
Carla’s Curiosities is such a wickedly whimsical story. The setting of the toy shop, the magic mirror, and Carla herself is a wonderful mix of the Countess Bathory and Snow White’s Magic Mirror. How did you come up with the idea?
I wanted to create a supernatural character hiding in plain sight, but in a way that hadn’t been done before. I thought, what better character than a vampire? It made sense to me that a girl that didn’t want to be seen by normal customers might still want to be seen by herself. That’s how the magic mirror came into play. The setting of the toy shop was actually inspired by an old toy of my mother’s similar to the ones in the story. I love thrifting and it seemed like a good place for a vampire to disappear..
How can the ordinary, every day “invisible” woman relate to Carla’s struggles?
I think we all struggle working so hard to be seen for being beautiful. Everywhere we go we are bombarded by ads in our culture to preserve our beauty. Beauty is revered, whereas growing old is seen as the kiss of death to women.
What does your creative process look like when you’re writing? Do you have any special rituals or routines?
I’m a messy writer who uses multiple colored ink fountain pens and scribbles notes in notebooks that sometimes I can’t even read, but most of it just magically appears on the screen from my fingertips unplanned. I do always have my lucky crystals and a burning candle by me when I write. I feel naked without them.
What else are you working on? Any projects you’re especially excited about?
I am currently excited about the release of my short story collection, Cemetery Tacos on Wednesday and Other Delights, from JournalStone in November of 2025. And I’ve recently joined The Butchered Writers who put out anthologies quarterly. Our next one is about cannibals. I’m also working on a short story collection, Sapphic Divinity, which is self-explanatory, and planning on starting the prequel to Flesh-Eating Turtles! It will be about ghost bees. October 3-4, 2025 you will find me speaking at The Wisconsin Writers Association on their Horror Panel in Stevenspoint, Wisconsin. I’m also going to be hosting a biweekly The Butchered Writers Presents TikTok series to discuss our anthologies and introduce ourselves to the world. Mwahahaha.
KANDISHA PRESS 
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