Written by Sasha Zatz
S.A. Hunt, the award-winning author of the Outlaw King series returns this January with Burn the Dark. S. A. Hunt was kind enough to answer all my questions about Burn The Dark, writing, and more!
Hello! Could you tell us a little about yourself?
Hi there. I’m S. A. Hunt, and I tell stories for a living. You can call me Salem, or Sam.
I love coffee. I love dogs. I love the outdoors. I love the desert, and I love the woods. I’ve been to Alaska, I’ve been to California, I’ve been to Afghanistan, and I love the desert the most. Wide open spaces and dry weather, that’s my jam.
I’m non-binary—which means something different for many people, but for me it means that I consider myself both male and female. In a blog post I wrote about my journey, I liken myself to an “owlbear,” a Dungeons & Dragons creature that’s half owl, and half bear.
Speaking of Dungeons & Dragons, I love D&D. It’s my favorite hobby outside of biking and hiking. As an adult there’s no parallel when it comes to finding friends, staying social, and keeping your mind sharp. Math, arguing over pieces of plastic, and pretending to be a goblin—there’s just nothing like it.
For those who haven’t heard of it yet, what is Burn the Dark all about?
Recently a friend of mine on Twitter summed it up the best and most briefly I’ve ever seen it summarized: “A girl hunts witches on YouTube but its actually a revenge quest. LGBT/NB #ownvoices plus it’s amazing.”
Burn The Dark is a lot of things, began as a lot of things. In the planning stage it was a poetic lit-fic about tree-worshipping witches, when I started writing it became a horror-comedy, then it morphed into a Spielberg kids’ adventure, and ultimately into a story about responsibility. It started as a book cover, became a self-published novel, then evolved into three traditionally-published novels.
For me, it stands as a tribute to the kind of storytelling that I liked about the Mad Max movies. Even though the films are literally titled “Mad Max,” they’re not really about the titular character—they’re really about the people he encounters, the people that fall into his orbit: Pappagallo and his band of settlers, the survivor children of Planet Erf, Imperator Furiosa and the Five Wives. He is the catalyst for success in their stories, the intermediary force that sweeps into these terrible situations and acts as leverage for the supporting characters to improve their circumstances.
To be honest, I didn’t start the book that way, but looking back at it, that’s what it turned into—a story about this woman that blows into these people’s lives and provides the spark that sets in motion a series of events that will eventually bring them together and change them forever. A father’s responsibility to his son, a man’s responsibility to his brother, a soldier’s responsibility to his friend. A woman’s responsibility to her daughter, a man’s responsibility to stand up to fear, and a woman’s responsibility to truth and the ones she loves. And at the center of it all, a warrior’s responsibility to herself.
What came first when you originally started writing Burn the Dark: a character, a plot idea, or something else?
It began with the tree. A play on the word “coventry,” really, which became “coven tree,” and I had this image in my mind of a coven of witches all gathered around this one special tree. Why did they revere this tree so much? What did it mean to them? Who were they? I made artwork for a book cover, trying to figure out what the tree meant to me.
I knew from the beginning that the tree came from death. Grew from it. Someone had to have died for that tree to exist. The cover art I made had a tree growing out of a skull.
Who, then? Why? And who would come to avenge that person?
Burn the Dark was originally self-published! What can you tell us about your journey from self-publishing to signing with Tor Books, and how does it differ?
It started off hard. Lot of panic attacks back in those days, about marketing, and getting seen.
I wrote Malus Domestica (the original version of what would become Burn The Dark and I Come With Knives) to be more commercially attractive to agents, but after querying it for a few months I realized that the layman readers I’d showed the book to loved it, and it couldn’t wait for the glacial pace of a traditional pipeline. So I self-published it and threw all my marketing weight behind it with the plan that I’d build up sales numbers on Amazon and try querying it again later with a bit more street cred. And in the meantime, I’d continue to build the platform I’d started with the Outlaw King series.
I used to be very gung-ho about self-publishing—I thought it was the wave of the future in literature, and I championed the freedom of the writers’ proletariat to do what they want, but over time I discovered that all self-publishing did for anybody was take away that free in-house marketing whiz, that free in-house cover artist, that free developmental editor, free copyeditor, everything you’d get with a NYC publisher, and it saddled you with all of that. All of that overhead and responsibility. Self-publishing is basically starting your own business, and everything that that entails.
Not that I’m not still a proponent of self-publishing. But now that I’ve had time to stand back and get a bird’s-eye view of it all, I understand two things:
1. Self-publishing is not a last resort. It’s not what you do when you can’t get an agent or a small press to bite. It’s a separate and fully-fledged track all its own, and you have to spend money to make money. I learned that lesson with Whirlwind in The Thorn Tree.
2. I feel as though self-publishing your own book is best saved for after you develop a fanbase and a platform, with traditionally-published books, so you’re not fighting for every scrap of visibility. That will absolutely burn you out as a self-publisher.
Anyway, the year after I published Malus, I made enough money on the Outlaw books to pay for two Bookbub advertising campaigns and the book managed to break Amazon’s top 100 Horror three times.
Then, out of nowhere, I ended up finding my agent on Twitter through the #MSWL hashtag. He was looking for a fantasy-western novel to rep, and I had the first three volumes of the Outlaw King out by then. But ironically, the book he ended up selling was Malus, to Tor Books.
Tor let me keep Malus up on Amazon long enough for us to hash out the contract so I could keep making money on it until the last minute, and then they had me take the listing down and the editing began. Sales on Outlaw King books flatlined in the meantime, but that was okay, because by then I’d sold enough books to move to Michigan and start a dayjob that afforded me enough money to focus on editing.
That was a couple years ago, and we’ve been working on the three Malus books ever since.
Having a publisher in your corner is definitely better, and definitely less nerve-wracking. I don’t have to put up any money for cover art or editing, because Tor handles all that, and I don’t have to flex my feeble marketing skills trying to get the book in front of people. For a long time I did my own covers, and I’m not bad at it, but it’s nice having a professional do it. And every time I get to see a new cover, it’s like a mini-Christmas.
The moral of the story is, if you’re querying, don’t give up. Keep at it. Rejections are stepping stones, not failures. Yeah, maybe you’re doing a lot of stepping—but if you stay with it, eventually you’ll reach the other side.
If you were a witch hunter like Robin, what would be your weapon of choice?
The Kraken, without a doubt. Or maybe the Reaper. Perhaps the Reaver Cleaver.
Can you tell I love weapons?
Robin is a YouTuber, and shares videos of her witch-hunting adventures, though her followers believe they are mere fiction! If you were to run a YouTube channel yourself, what do you think you would post about?
I would like to do a vlog about having adventures—climbing mountains, seeing new countries, going to conventions out of state, learning new things, trying interesting new foods, investigating cryptids and ghosts. I subscribe to several YouTube channels from people that travel around the world, immersing into different cultures and trying their cuisines firsthand. I used to be a huge fan of Destination Earth, too.
Best Ever Food Review Show
The Food Ranger
Worth It!
Mark Wiens
Is there anything you’d particularly like to see in a screen adaptation of Burn the Dark?
Definitely terrifying monsters and creepy witches, but also a strong, scenery-chewing lead. Robin Martine has to have an actor that’s bright-eyed and loud, someone that will bring a bigger-than-life personality to the role. It also needs a killer soundtrack and a director that knows how to turn up the creep factor. Hopefully somebody like James Wan (Insidious, The Conjuring), Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House, Gerald’s Game), or Guillermo Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy).
I’ve been approached by two Hollywood guys already, so maybe we’ll get to see this happen some day!
There is unfortunately a sore gap in the publishing industry when it comes to books by non-binary writers. What can you tell us about your experience as a non-binary author?
Not much at this point, I’m afraid! I haven’t been on either track long—not the nonbinary life-change, or the traditional-publication journey. I will tell you, though, that there is an entire culture of queer people out there looking for stories about queer characters, regardless of what the agents or internet trolls will tell you. There is a hungry market.
And I’m looking forward to being a part of that market for years to come.
Do you have any advice for aspiring authors who hope to be published themselves one day?
Read as much as you can, good books and bad books, books that cater to your taste and books outside your wheelhouse. Read voraciously.
Write as much as you can. Set a schedule for writing, and stick to it. The more you write, the better you will get.
Finish what you start. Writer’s block is not real. It is fear. Write what you know.
What are three books you’ll always recommend to fellow readers?
The Heart of the World: A Tibetan Journey, by Ian Baker
The Dark Tower series by Stephen King
Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition Player’s Handbook
Burn the Dark releases on January 14th! Without spoilers, what are you most excited for readers to discover with its release?
A disabled character whose story is not all about his disability. A Black character whose story is not all about his Blackness. A queer character whose story is not all about their queerness. And a story about women that does not revolve around a man.
Have enjoyed both, l come with knives and the hellion, unfortunately l didnt read the first .
Thanks for the adventure, your got a great imagination.
Richard.