Verity Rose
What was your journey like getting published? What surprised you most throughout this journey?
My journey to publication was a bit of a side-door situation. I had a polished draft (or what I thought was polished at the time) and I was gearing up to put the feelers out with literary agents, when Anomaly was selected for the Varuna and Affirm Press Mentorship Award in 2020. I undertook the residency at Varuna in 2021, received developmental feedback from editors at Affirm, then went away and redrafted based upon that feedback. I sent them a revised manuscript in late 2021 and it was acquired by Affirm a couple of months later. So for me, a competition was the route to publication.
It was a (pleasant) surprise to discover how drastically a manuscript can change and improve between edits. My structural edit was substantial and quite intense, but hugely productive. It also taught me not to bother tinkering on a sentence level when the tectonic plates of a story are still shifting – hopefully I will remember that next time!
You mentioned how the Covid-19 pandemic was occurring while you were writing ‘Anomaly’; did those events change how you viewed your story? Were you nervous about writing a story on this topic while the events were happening?
I was several drafts in by the time Covid hit, but I was redrafting when we were going through lockdowns. Some days there was an uncanny overlap between fiction and reality. I remember leaving my desk one day after revising a supermarket scene in the book, grabbing my mask, sanitiser, and shopping bags, and heading to the actual supermarket. I stood there, mask on, in a socially-distanced queue of people waiting to access the store – and realised I was basically living the start of the exact scene I’d been working on.
I wasn’t nervous about writing the story, as getting published still felt like a distant possibility at that point. I do remember questioning whether anyone would want to publish or read a book involving a pandemic ever again, given we were living through the grim reality of one. But I ploughed on because I wanted to see the story through.
Do you think post-apocalyptic stories have changed due to the pandemic?
I don’t know that the stories have changed that much. I do think there is a heightened interest in them from a reader/viewer perspective – maybe because we skirted so close to the edge.
What made you want to write a dystopian fiction set in Australia?
Growing up, I loved dystopian and post-apocalyptic stories – but they were almost always set in the United States. The big exception to that rule was Tomorrow, When the War Began. As teenagers growing up in an Aussie country town, reading that series was the first time my friends and I felt seen in an epic fictional context – and I guess that hit me at a formative time.
That said, I didn’t fix firmly on an Australian setting until I moved back from the United States in 2019. Up until that point I’d kept it quite vague as to where the story played out. Then I did a manuscript assessment with editor Nicola Santilli through the CYA Conference, and they encouraged me to make the setting concrete. So I planted it in the landscapes of my childhood, and something clicked. It just felt right.
What was the research process like for your book, especially when creating the virus?
The research was interesting, albeit grim at times. I did a deep dive into the history of pandemics – specifically the Black Death, as it was one of the most catastrophic in terms of both fatalities and social upheaval. I investigated things like case fatality rates, transmission rates – the things everyone ended up becoming familiar with when Covid hit.
My fictional virus isn’t based upon any real virus (and its transmission remains a mystery at this point in the story), but I did end up changing some of the symptoms once the real pandemic hit. Some were quite similar to Covid symptoms, and thus a little too close to home.
What books, movies, and/or songs inspired you throughout your writing process for this story?
Music is a big part of my writing process. If I hit a mental wall at my desk, I’ll go for a walk and listen to music that reflects the mood and pace of the scene I’m working on to try and reset. For Anomaly, that was mostly tense or fast-paced instrumental tracks – lots of Hans Zimmer, Ramin Djawdi, Murray Gold and Joseph Trapanese. I also listened to ABBA, Alanis Morissette and Annie Lennox/Eurythmics – their tracks feature in the book and helped me get into my main character’s head.
I’ve always been drawn to post-apocalyptic stories, but I steered clear of reading any while I was drafting – I was worried I’d subconsciously absorb an idea and mistakenly think it was mine. My editor did recommend I read Claire Zorn’s The Sky So Heavy and When We Are Invisible, so I did and absolutely loved them.
I have a handful of movies I tend to return to whenever I need a creative boost, or I’m stuck on a story problem: the original Star Wars trilogy, The Matrix, and Alien. It’s turned into a running joke between my husband and I – he knows that if I want to watch one of these films, I’m trying to dig myself out of a creative slump. But it does usually help, and I suspect it’s because each is a prime example of tight, strong storytelling with excellent structure. Also… badass sci-fi just generally makes me feel better.
What drew you to the Varuna and Affirm Press Mentorship Award?
A friend sent me a link to the competition info and submission guidelines. The call out was bang-on in terms of where I saw Anomaly sitting in terms of genre and readership (they were looking for YA fantasy/sci-fi). I’d done the manuscript assessment, but I hadn’t submitted to any competitions yet and I didn’t know if I had a shot – but I figured it would be good practice. So I pulled together a synopsis, gave the first few chapters one last polish, and sent it in with my fingers crossed.
How did your residence in Varuna influence your work?
The Varuna residency gave me a unique opportunity to meet/get to know two editors from Affirm Press and get their feedback on my story, as well as a sense of their vision for it. I’d sat with the manuscript for so long by then that it was immensely helpful to get a fresh perspective, and I was able to go away with a clear plan for revisions.
Do you plan on releasing any future works? Do you plan on exploring other genres and/or target audiences?
I plan to keep writing. Hopefully that will result in future releases, but we’ll see. I suspect I’ll always feel a pull towards speculative fiction, but I wouldn’t rule out other genres. The most important thing for me is that the story I’m writing hooks me in and keeps me in my seat.
Did you always see yourself becoming a writer?
I did – from a very early age. But it wasn’t until my mid-thirties that I had the discipline and financial resources to pursue it at length. That coincided with becoming a parent, too, so I also had to become very time efficient!
Verity Rose (she/they) is a Meanjin-based screenwriter and novelist working on the Semester 2 2024 Research Team at ScratchThat Magazine. She has been writing stories her whole life and has studied screenwriting at universities since she was sixteen. Verity consistently incorporates the new experiences and ideas that she’s gotten from living and travelling around the world—from North America to outback Australia—into her writing.
Edited by: Georgia Formby