Meet Valerie Nieman whose upcoming novel presents the Macbeth’s you’ve never known!

Valerie Nieman’s historical novel, Upon the Corner of the Moon, is now available for pre-order with the release set for March 2025. This is the story of the Macbeths you never knew, rightful rulers who united Scotland in the tumultuous 11th century. The second of the two ALBA books, The Last Highland King, will appear in 2027. In the Lonely Backwater, winner of the 2022 Sir Walter Raleigh Award, has been called “not only a page-turning thriller but also a complex psychological portrait of a young woman dealing with guilt, betrayal, and secrecy.” To the Bones, a horror/Appalachian/ ecojustice novel, was a finalist for the 2020 Manly Wade Wellman Award, and now has a sequel, Dead Hand. She is the author of three other novels, a short fiction collection, and three poetry books. A graduate of West Virginia University and Queens University of Charlotte, she has held state and NEA fellowships and is professor emerita of creative writing at NC A&T State University.

How do you come up with book titles? Not easily. I struggle with each and every one. In the Lonely Backwater had several iterations before we settled on Backwater, only to find that title was already in heavy circulation. Upon the Corner of the Moon comes from a song by Hecate within Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” a section that’s often cut in the name of runtime. My editor and publisher Jaynie Royal suggested it. I’d had numerous working titles over many years for this book and the second, now titled The Last Highland King. Both books about the historical Macbeths are part of Alba. (Poetry collections have been just as difficult. Only one title, Leopard Lady, came immediately to mind and never shifted.)
As someone who writes both poetry and prose, do you see a distinction between these two genres? When I began, I was sure that I would be a poet, and I did have some early success that might have pushed me entirely in that direction—except that, even then, I was lured by the delight of storytelling. Much of my early work was narrative, including a several-page poem called “The Naming of the Lost” bringing the Merlin story into contemporary Appalachia. That appeared in a couple of anthologies and remains available online. So I ventured first into short stories, and then plunged into a couple of failed novels before writing Neena Gathering. I’ve written both, at the same time, ever since. The difference for me lies in the compression of poetry, the distillation of image and emotion, while novels provide a broader canvas. Though I’ve never been a runner, I’d liken it to the difference between a sprint and a marathon.
Why do you write? It’s like having poison ivy—I just can’t scratch the itch that never goes away. I started writing in sixth grade and while there have been pauses necessitated by college and work, I was always reading, studying, jotting down notes that I would develop later. When I was working as a newspaper reporter, a demanding job that meant lots of hours at the keyboard, I would come home and have dinner and then sit down at my typewriter (yes, it was that long ago) to work on my first (published) novel, Neena Gathering. With the advance from that book, I bought my first computer.
As a result of publishing your book, what have you learned about yourself and/or the writing process? A great deal of patience. I’ve been working on the Alba books since the mid-’90s, off and on. Along the way, I wrote and published four novels and three books of poems and another of short fiction, but I never gave up hope that the story of the historical Macbeths would someday find a home. I would work on it, send it to agents and publishers, receive encouragement but no sales. Still, she persisted, as the line goes. Maybe it just took that long for me to be able to properly complete the book that was in my mind all along.
At what moment did you decide you were a writer? I was a writer from the moment I first picked up a book, knowing that I wanted to make that magic with words on a page. I did not know how to go about becoming one, however, as my people were farmers and factory workers. It took so many years, so many dead ends. I’ve honored this early attraction with Avig Press, the press name for my indie published novel Dead Hand. It comes from my stubborn childhood insistence that Avig, not Valerie, was my name. That name is inscribed in the few books I still have from my earliest years.
What genres do you work in? It would be easier to list those I don’t work in, namely, screenplays and stage plays. In poetry, I’ve written both narrative and lyric poetry. In fiction, I’ve written science fiction, fantasy, horror, mainstream realism, blue-collar realism, Southern, crime fiction, mystery, women’s fiction, coming of age, supernatural romance, young adult, historical fiction—generally in a blend of two or three “genres” within one book, and always with a literary bent. Flash and short fiction (not very much), and nonfiction, and novels. My friend and mentor Fred Chappell had a collection of short stories in all sorts of genres entitled More Shapes Than One. I think the title speaks to a certain kind of wide-ranging, restless mind. I recommend it highly.
Who is your favorite character from your book(s)? Maggie from In the Lonely Backwater remains my favorite. She draws heavily on my own experiences, both growing up as a woods-roaming tomboy and later as a sailor. I’m also very fond of Gruach, AKA Lady Macbeth, who was created “from whole cloth” as all we know of her is her name. With such wide latitude for creation, I determined to shape her as a girl reared in the waning traditions of the matriarchal peoples of far northern Scotland, the Picts and their predecessors. But truly, I love all the flowers in my garden, even the smallest.
Why should people want to read your books? Immersion in another world, whether that’s a failing marina on a North Carolina lake or the dramatic Neolithic landscapes of Orkney. I want to be fully plunged into another world when I read, and hope to do the same for people who come to my books. Close attention to character and language balance the forward movement of the plot, to both satisfy and tantalize!
Do you travel to research your book(s)? Oh, yes! Setting is so important to me, not just the broad outlines but the small details of cities and towns, the landscape, the wildlife, trees, insects. I don’t feel that I can depict a place that I haven’t spent time in, so as I was writing the Alba books, getting down the story, I was acutely aware that I didn’t know the place at all. In 2014 I did a solo hiking journey all around Scotland—the Great Glen Way, Moray Coast, Orkney, Tay Valley, Mull and Iona. I went back in 2023 to do more of the same, visiting Loch Leven, the Aberdeenshire coast, Black Isle, Royal Deeside, Glencoe, and Arran, though I spent much time in the National Library and National Museum to gather other material. I also used the month I spent in Ireland for the setting of Dead Hand, using places such as the Cavan Burren and Galway and Kildare, and the lovely village of Killeshandra located in a region of small hills and wide-spreading lakes.
Where would your dream book signing occur? In Scotland, at the Edinburgh Book Festival or the Braemar Literary Festival! To take my version of the Macbeths’ story to their homeland would be marvelous indeed.