Café Monday: S.A. Hunter

This week in Café Monday we meet the fabulous author of the even more fabulous Scary Mary.

S.A. Hunter, windvein to some, has carved a comfortable niche in the web fiction world and for those of you who know her work, or those yet to discover it, here’s an introduction to the author herself.

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EF: Why do you write?

SAH: I write to get stuff out of my head. I daydream far too much to be healthy. I’ve loved storytelling since being introduced to it in fifth grade around age 10. The first story I ever tried to write featured me and some friends finding magical swords in a land with talking animals. We were reading C.S. Lewis in class.

EF: How do you feel about your audience — how do you interact? How much of your writing is for an audience, and how much is your voice and what you want to say?

SAH: I enjoy all the comments I receive on my stories. It’s so great to read how excited someone is by a story. Giving someone a thrill is amazing. I try to reply to any question posted to me. All of my writing is potentially for an audience. I want to be read. I enjoy knowing so many people have read Scary Mary. Putting my work out there makes it real for me. I couldn’t write something without any plans of sharing it. If I wasn’t going to share it, then why write it out?

EF: Do you feel there is a difference difference between the audiences of print and digital fiction?

SAH: I don’t think there is any real difference between the audiences but what’s possible between the audience and a digital work as opposed to the print work is quite different. Being able to leave a comment on the actual work for the author is quite incredible. Imagine if there were a website where your favorite book was posted, and you could go leave feedback or just say hello. That ease and immediacy in communication is something I don’t think is possible with print work. You have to hunt down contact info or Google the author’s website. That ease and immediacy is lost. The Nook and especially the iPad are freeing digital works from the computer desk. Being able to curl up with a good book and it not mattering whether it’s paper or digital is great.

EF: Why did you choose this genre? Are there horror fantasy authors you love and who have inspired you?

SAH: See, I don’t know yet what genre I’d call home. I’m still dabbling in them. I have a sci-fi story brewing in my head, an urban fantasy, and of course Scary Mary. I don’t think I write horror. I try to be creepy, but it’s always cut with snark.

EF: Your characters — do you know them? Did you when you started, or did you get to know them along with your readers?

SAH: Some of my characters I know right off. Mr. Squibbles, Mary, Tavik — I knew them from page one. It’s the ‘throwaway’ characters that I plan to quickly dump but somehow creep into the main plot that I have trouble with. Yula from Unicorn Bait is one of these. I realized halfway through writing that story that: 1. It wasn’t going where I had planned; and 2. This lady isn’t going anywhere. She didn’t highjack the plot, but she became necessary for where the plot was going, and I’m still figuring out her mannerisms and way of being even with the story completed.

EF: Ongoing story threads — useful? You have written Scary Mary and its sequel, Stalking Shadows. Describe the differences between writing with familiar characters, and writing Unicorn Bait, where you could create a whole new world.

SAH: Writing with familiar characters makes things easier and more troublesome. In a sequel, all the characters are set; there’s no wiggle room with how they act. When writing a story from scratch there’s no such thing as OOC, but with sequels, there definitely is and figuring out how to get things done with these characters was difficult at times.

EF: You found a dedicated audience with Scary Mary. What have your fans told you that would encourage a new reader to look at your work?

SAH: ‘It’s got funny bits and it’s short’ seems to be the consensus :) And it’s free. Can’t go wrong with free.

EF: How structured/disciplined is your writing process?

SAH: I’m terribly undisciplined. My biggest problem is I keep signing up for college courses while working full-time. Right now, I’m taking a music course and a painting course. The music course is actually work-related, but taking 2 courses does not leave me with much spare time. I’ve been sacrificing sleep a lot.

EF: Why did you choose to go indie?

SAH: I basically felt that if I wanted to be read at all this decade, I had to put the work out myself. I know I’m not Stephen King, and I still have a lot of developing to do, but the only way that’s going to happen is if I write stories and share them.

EF: Where is your work going in the future? Do you have specific plans now, and are you working on a particular project? Do you have a dream you still want to fulfil?

SAH: I’m working on a Smashwords edition of Unicorn Bait which will be more polished and with a few plot corrections. It won’t be drastically different from the current online edition, but the jagged edges will be smoothed. As to new things, I’m writing several different things off and on. There’s been a high demand for another Scary Mary story and so I want to work on that, but it is in the very early stages right now.

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S.A. Hunter is an online writer who has several completed works available. Her favorite authors are Tanith Lee, Neil Gaiman, and Diana Wynne Jones. The fact that all of those authors are English is unintentional, though she would like to visit London one day. She lives in Virginia, works in a library, and wishes she could write for a living, but is happy to live to write. You can visit her at http://www.sahunter.net.