By Andrea Bartz
When I first met Nicole Mabry, author of the award-winning dystopian novel Past This Point, we commiserated over how annoying it is to date in New York City: Even in a city of 8 million people, it’s easy to feel lonely—and even easier to get fed-up and withdraw of your own accord. So I immediately fell in love with her novel pitch: A young woman who’s given up on her social life gets lucky when her lack of human contact makes her one of very few survivors of an untreatable virus. Holed up in her apartment with her dog, she must figure out how to survive—and how to trust a fellow survivor in her eventual quest to reach the quarantine border. Past This Point is a sweeping, meticulously wrought novel that, for me, was all the more chilling for its plausibility. Nicole was kind enough to answer my questions about her inspiration for the novel, creating a complex female lead, and why the world needs more dystopian fiction with kick-ass female leads.
Huge congrats on the release of your debut novel! Can you tell us a little about the book?
Thanks! Past This Point is an apocalyptic women’s fiction novel about a deadly outbreak that hits the eastern half of the country. Early on in NYC, where the virus originates, the mayor quarantines residents to their apartments to help stop the spread. My story is two-fold, it’s about one woman and her dog trying to survive for months, alone in her apartment building. But it’s also about the emotional and mental journey she takes in the process, coming out on the other side a stronger woman, both mentally and physically.
It’s such a cool spin on dystopian fiction, with a badass female protagonist. What was your inspiration?
My inspiration for the plot came from a wild dream I had one night where exactly that happened, the mayor quarantined us New Yorkers to our apartments. Then I kept expanding on that one idea. I wanted to explore what it would be like to live through an apocalyptic event in a deserted New York City. Living here, you are constantly surrounded by people and noise, which is one of the reasons I love it. However, I have gone through periods where I needed much more time alone from the chaos. Like my main character, I became a bit of a hermit and would give myself a hard time about it. I’d try to force myself to go out and socialize even though I really didn’t want to. When I had the idea for this plot, I thought it would be really interesting to mine that period of my life and create a situation where doing something you probably shouldn’t do, like isolating yourself, actually ended up saving your life in a weird twist of fate. The inspiration for my badass female protagonist came directly from horror movies. I’m a horror junkie, as you know, and when I was writing Karis, I really wanted her to evolve into this badass character. So I binged horror movies that had a strong female lead and they would pump me up to write some awesome badassery for Karis. There were two movies that I watched countless times when I was writing this book: Hush and Tiger House. Both movies have strong female characters who outsmart the threat in really ingenious ways. I drew a lot of inspiration from those characters.
The novel features characters that feel especially real and imperfect—Karis survives in part because of her antisocial tendencies, and I found the relationship with the neighbor girls especially touching. How did you go about creating these rich, complex characters?
For Karis, a good portion of her imperfections are based on myself. And yes, that was a little scary to do, throw my flaws onto the page and let everyone judge me. But at the same time, most of her imperfections come from being disheartened by the dating scene in NYC. She’s bitter and depressed and allows herself to wallow. I’ve heard these same feelings and stories from countless single friends. So Karis’ imperfections really became a hodgepodge of issues I’d felt myself and my friends who have similar struggles. Making Karis vulnerable in her flaws was really important to me, especially when she contemplates her loneliness. Most people have periods of feeling lonely, whether that’s self imposed or not, and I really wanted that to come across so others could see themselves on the page. When the girls first made their appearance while writing Past This Point, I had no intention of keeping them around. Originally I’d added them as a device to deepen Karis’ loneliness. But a friend who was reading it chapter by chapter told me to absolutely keep the girls in for as long as I could. I re-thought their role in the book and realized they were a great opportunity for me in many ways. They are based on my two nieces who I’m really close with, and at times, have felt more of a parental connection to. In creating the relationship between Karis and the girls, I wanted to recreate that feeling of maternal care and obligation to children who aren’t technically yours. It helped in forming a strong bond between the three of them and I’m so glad I listened to my friend because they’ve become very dear characters to me.
PTP features a near-future New York City that’s both familiar and alien, with tons of moving parts—you had to invent a system for getting people out of the city, an emergency alert system, a way for the government to distribute aid, etc. What was it like to invent all these large-scale logistics?
It was really fun but also extremely intimidating. For every system I created, there were about 3-4 failed versions. Luckily I had several really good beta readers who are analytical and logical by nature. I remember one such reader suggested the body scanners at airports instead of some other device I’d come up with to test people at the airport. And I almost smacked myself on the forehead because, why didn’t I think of that! It was a much simpler solution and I’d gone and made a much more complicated one. What I was really trying to do was come up with systems that made sense to our current technology so it would be believable to present day, and then make up whatever I needed that seemed believable in the near future. There were so many moving parts in how all the steps would work together for a successful evacuation, and when I’d change one, it would change others down the line. We were adjusting parts of that process even during line edits.
Can you tell us about your journey to publication?
My journey was long and arduous, as most are, but I learned so much in the process. I queried almost 250 agents, looking for the needle in the haystack. The responses were mostly a version of, ‘I love the concept, but have no idea how to sell it.’ Which, after figuring out the limitations in the genre I was writing in, I understood. I realized it was going to take a special agent that really loved my book and was willing to take it on knowing it may not sell. Lisa Grubka was that agent. She went through countless edits with me before we pitched, and then another edit after we received notes back from editors. She worked tirelessly to find a home for Past This Point. Unfortunately, we were not successful. It was devastating, but after a few days I just kept thinking, I need to get this story published. So I decided to start submitting it to smaller presses. I’d only submitted it to three when Red Adept offered me a contract. And what really lured me in to the publisher was their excitement and eagerness to expand the genre. They were willing to take a chance which is what I was hoping to find.
PTP is part of an underrepresented genre. Can you talk a little about that? Why do you think this genre isn’t expansive yet, and how do you hope to change that?
Honestly, I’m just as perplexed as the next person as to why adult females are lacking from this genre. When I started writing Past This Point, I didn’t even realize there was this gap in the market. I read a ton in this genre and when I started querying, I kept getting the comment that women don’t care about the apocalypse. I was confused so I went looking for those books and low and behold, there were very, very few. It was discouraging to say the least, but ultimately it pushed me even more to try and expand the genre. I knew for a fact that women did care about the apocalypse, and perhaps the reason for that outdated opinion was simply because the publishing industry hadn’t produced enough good books for these women in this genre. It certainly created an uphill battle in my journey to publication, but ultimately, I got lucky and found the agent and publisher who were excited about the opportunity Past This Point created. My hope is that my book will change opinions in the industry of what women want to read, and that it will pave the way, at least a little, for other authors writing adult women in this genre.
Any other books in this genre you’d recommend? Or any other books you’ve loved in any genre?
In this genre, I’d definitely suggest The Dog Stars by Peter Heller and Into the Forest by Jean Hegland. The Dog Stars is very similar to Past This Point in that it’s virus-caused and it’s about the emotional journey of one man and his dog. It was the first book that I’d read in the genre that tackled dystopian in this way, and it really hit home for me. Into the Forest is just a great dystopian novel following two sisters trying to survive alone in the middle of nowhere. Books that I’d loved lately kind of run the gamut in genre. In my favorite genre, thrillers, I loved your book, The Lost Night and Megan Collins’ The Winter Sister. Both super gripping, edge of your seat whodunits, which are my jam. I’m not super into Science Fiction but I recently read Dark Matter by Blake Crouch and thought it was just fabulous. And lastly, I can’t say enough about Marco Rafala’s How Fires End. It’s such an epic, engrossing family saga that pulled me in from page one.
What’s next for you?
My writing partner, Stephanie, and I had been looking for a concept to co-write together for a long time. We were both working on other projects. I was knee deep into writing another thriller, this one about a female serial killer, when an idea struck. I sent Steph a text outlining the idea and she was 100% in. Within an hour, she and I had charted out a plot. We understood from the beginning that it was a trendy topic and we needed to get the concept to the market as soon as possible. So we both put our works in progress aside and knocked out a first draft in about six weeks. It’s also about a serial killer and draws from the current true crime trends. We are hoping to start sending it out in a few weeks. After that, I’ll be going back to my female serial killer and hopefully finishing that up. I have another in progress, about a kidnapping, and would love to go back to that one as well. My head is full of undeveloped plots, and they are all itching to get out. I don’t see myself stopping anytime soon.
Andrea Bartz is a Brooklyn-based journalist and the author of The Lost Night, which People Magazine called “an impressive debut with a nerve-racking finish” and Mila Kunis is developing as a limited series. Her second thriller, The Herd, comes out March 24 and has been named a most-anticipated book of 2020 by Newsweek, The Boston Globe, Marie Claire, and other outlets. Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Marie Claire, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and many other publications, and she’s held editorial positions at Glamour, Psychology Today, and Self, among other titles. To learn more about The Lost Night and The Herd, please click on the covers below.
