Meet the author of Anomaly: Emma Lord
Emma loves all things sci-fi, fantasy and horror, but has a particular soft spot for reading and writing YA. Her debut YA novel Anomaly was published by Affirm Press in 2024 after an early draft was selected for the Varuna and Affirm Press Mentorship Award. This year it won the Victorial Premier’s Literary Award for Young Adults.
Judges’ comments: Anomaly is a strikingly original debut that expertly pushes the genre boundaries of horror, fantasy and sci-fi. Through skillful employment of first and third person perspectives, disparate temporalities are seamlessly woven together. The moral dilemmas evoked through distinct characterisation add narrative complexity and momentum. Protagonist Piper Manning is at once sharp and considered, allaying discussions on mental health issues with a self-deprecating humour. Lord’s polished, dynamic expression is playfully irreverent, blunt and poetic. In a story where the end of the world offers new beginnings, Anomaly tends to grief with crafted nuance. An elevated, energetic novel of high distinction.
Emma Lord is interviewed by Lucille Rose, who reviewed Anomaly for STORYLINKS
In your novel, we see Piper having a lot of visceral responses to loss, that of her father and aunt in particular. However, we don’t actually see them a lot in the book. How did you go about provoking such an emotional reaction in the reader to the death of characters we hadn’t even met?
I tried to paint a picture of them through little things that remain, because it’s often little things that stop you in your tracks when you’re grieving someone. It’s walking past a person who’s wearing the same perfume they wore, or it’s finding an old shopping list scrawled in their handwriting. When that happens, it’s like you’ve stumbled across a tiny piece of them, and it makes you feel the bigger absence more keenly. So, I added as many of those pieces as I could for Piper, not just to highlight her grief, but to hint at how important these people were and how they helped shape the best parts of her.
Anomaly’s ‘magic system’ was very intricate. Piper and Seth’s powers, the Reapers, the multiverse all contained unique concepts. How did you come up with such an interesting universe?
A lot of those concepts came in layers as I drafted and redrafted. I was lucky in that I had time to explore possibilities on the page and experiment to see what worked/what made things overly complicated. The multiverse element was slightly bizarre in that it fell out of a single line of dialogue in the scene where Piper finds the Shell in the café. I knew the Shell was going to say cryptic things that Piper wouldn’t understand until later, but her first words, ‘Close the door’, came out of nowhere. I knew it was a creepy thing for the Shell to say, but I didn’t know why she’d say it –other than for pure scare factor. That led me to explore what a different implication might be. I love it when a tiny detail leads to something bigger – it feels like magic.
Your book took a fresh take on the post-apocalyptic landscape by setting it in rural New South Wales. What inspired you to make this choice?
There were lots of contributing factors, but the main one was emotional connection. Early in the drafting process, I was living overseas and miserably homesick. I’d explored various settings for the story at that point, but nothing really gelled until we moved back, and I saw home with new eyes. That inspired me to set the story where I grew up – rural Australia – and try to bring to life just how unique and beautiful it is.
But also…what better place for a post-apocalyptic monster invasion than Australia? We get all the scariest creatures!
It’s mentioned in your bio that horror is one of your favourite genres. It is also a popular theme in Anomaly, showcased especially when the terrifying Reapers come into play. Was it your love of horror that sparked the idea for such petrifying monsters?
It definitely contributed. I grew up with much older siblings, and as a result I ended up watching and reading things like Poltergeist, Alien, Doctor Who, It, and The Shining quite early. For me, the scariest and most thrilling of those books and films were the ones where the reveal of the monster was just as frightening as the anticipation; the tension didn’t dissolve just because you finally saw them in the flesh. For that reason, I was determined to make the Reapers just as scary up close as they were a lurking threat. One redraft of Anomaly was just a ‘Reaper sweep’: me freaking myself out by making them as horrible as possible.
The Reapers are harrowing creatures and extremely terrifying to read about, especially when we get a look into their minds. What was your thought process when creating them and their perspectives, and how did you know this combination of traits would create such a scary creature?
Writing the Reapers was a challenge, but also the most fun I think I’ve ever had on the page (I’m not sure what that says about me!). The main idea that drove their voice was that they aren’t creatures that communicate primarily through language; they have this bizarre, collective mental livestream instead, which is largely visual. So when they do dip into language, they’re not very good at it— and they lack the humanity required to understand its nuance and appropriate context. On top of that… they’re completely psychopathic and see us as nothing more than flesh vessels. So their voice had to be cold, inhuman and off-kilter – with just a touch of superiority complex. I didn’t know for sure it would work – I just wrote those sections until I found them unsettling.
Piper was a very relatable character, one that teen audiences really connected with. How did you go about creating a character that was so well received by YA readers?
I focused heavily on developing her voice and her unique perspective on the world – which is largely shaped by loss – and tried to give her a good balance of strengths and weaknesses. It struck me early on that the world really ends much earlier for her (the day her dad dies), so by the time the apocalypse rolls around, she’s almost an old hand at living with the unthinkable.
How did you go about making Piper and Seth’s relationship? Did you originally set out for them to be love interests, or did their romance develop as the novel did?
I had romantic plans for them right from the start. Partly because it felt right to sprinkle some light among all the darkness and highlight a human experience that makes the universe worth fighting for…but also, I’m just a sucker for a love story. That said, their relationship early in the drafting process was a bit bleurgh, and I wondered if they weren’t better off platonic friends. It wasn’t until they shared their (somewhat opposed) views in the supermarket scene that I finally caught a flicker of chemistry between them. It was like I needed them to connect on a philosophical/intellectual level to realise, ah—that’s how you two begin.
How do you feel about the level of success you’ve reached on Anomaly, considering it’s your debut YA novel? Did you know this book was a winner to begin with, or was the positive reception it received a surprise?
By the time publication day rolled around I’d kind of lost all perspective. All I knew for sure was that I loved writing it, and I was hopeful readers would connect with the characters and their stories. The response since has been so much more than I dared hope for – both tremendously exciting and gratifying.
Do you have any advice for young writers looking to publish their own works one day?
Write the story that’s going to keep you in your seat, even if it’s not the one others think you ‘should’ be writing. Think of a first draft as scaffolding; it might be ugly, but it’s necessary in order to construct something stronger in subsequent drafts. And finally – don’t be afraid to walk away from the page when the words won’t come. For me, that’s invariably a sign I need to do something else and let my brain unclench.
Thank you so much Emma, for talking to StoryLinks. We really apreciate your giving us a glimpse into your writing , and we all look forward to reading your next novel.
