Name of Author: S. A. Hunt
Title of Book: Malus Domestica
Favorite Authors: Stephen King, G.R.R. Martin, Joe Hill, Dan Simmons, Chris Ruz
Bio: S. A. Hunt is a U.S. veteran and speculative fiction author. He lives in Lyerly, GA, where he writes books, drinks way too much coffee, and kayaks down rivers. He is a Mentor of the National Creative Society and in 2014 he won Independent Novel of the Year Stabby Award from Reddit's Fantasy forum.
Malus Domestica
https://www.wattpad.com/story/45554579-malus-domestica
Can you explain what your book is all about?
For the last three years, a young woman has been traveling America filming a YouTube series. It's not a travelogue, at least not strictly—it's about her quest to kill every witch in the country. When she was a teenager, a coven of witches turned her mother into Malus domestica—a common apple tree. They're using the tree to suck the life force out of the town of Blackfield and turn it into apples. And today Robin came home to avenge Mom.
Who is your target audience - and why?
When I started writing the Outlaw King series, I thought the majority of my fans would be geeky men, especially ones already hooked on the Dark Tower. But to my surprise, most of my initial fans turned out to be young women. So that's my target audience now, and who I consider my "Constant Reader", as Stephen King calls his imaginary, singular target audience.
Why? To be honest, I'm not sure. It may have to do with females being the larger portion of the overall book demographic. There are a lot of women reading books. This somewhat affected my choice of protagonist for Malus Domestica, but largely that decision grew organically out of the story itself—the star of the book (and by extension, the series) was always a woman.
What is 'paranormal' about your story?
There are a great deal of paranormal elements in this book: witches, demons, out-of-body experiences, clairvoyance, magic, voodoo zombies, even ghosts. The main thread, though, or perhaps the two main threads, are witches and magic.
Now, these aren't the Harry Potter kind of witches, or the bubble-bubble-toil-and-trouble witches, but more like the "liche" - undead sorcerers that have been around for hundreds of years, looking for ways to prolong their lives through supernatural means. They use something called a "nag shi", also referred to as a "dryad", to siphon the life-force out of a town or city and convert it into youth-restoring fruit. This only affects their outward appearance, though—inside their unwrinkled skin they are still a walking corpse.
The kind of magic they do is different as well. The witches of Malus Domestica derive raw paranormal energy from a central point, the Mesopotamian goddess of death Ereshkigal. This energy is filtered into many discrete disciplines: clairvoyance, telekinesis, flight, pyromancy, transfiguration, and others. Some witches are better at certain disciplines than others. For instance, the witch Theresa LaQuices can change herself with the gift of Transfiguration, as she does at the end of the second act when she transforms into a giant hog-monster to attack Robin and her friend Wayne.
It's handled a little more realistically than your average magic, function-wise. Theresa's transformation is very visual and painful, and even after she changes, the tattoos on her body remain—even though they're stretched out. To channel and focus the energy as it emerges from them, the witches often have to perform specific alchemic rituals—for instance, a witch with the gift of Clairvoyance can see via the eyes of cats. In order to use this "gift", they must take a hallucinogen and experience something catlike during their trance (such as eating cat food) to trigger the mental transferrence.
