Artemis Hunt: My guest blog at Saffina Desforges!

Saffina Desforges Blog

And speaking yesterday of fabulously named writers, here’s another one I wish I’d been christened/thought of. Please take your bow, Artemis Hunt!

‘Psychotic’ was the first horror story I ever wrote. You can see it here at:
Amazon
I wrote it back in 2005. There’s a funny story attached to it. As a freelance journalist, I was interviewing a bestselling author (who subsequently became a friend) who wrote a book about her adventures as an airline stewardess. In a moment of clarity, I figured “If she can do it, I can do it too.” And so I set out to write a story.
I had this idea running in my head about a woman in a city stalked by a serial killer, only I didn’t want it to be like any other serial killer story I’ve ever read. Once I put down the first word on my computer, the story kind of took hold of me and wouldn’t let go. I finished it within a day and looked at it in satisfaction. Especially at the twist in the end. People still come up to me today and tell me they just didn’t see that twist coming!
“Needs more stories to go with it,” my friend, a newspaper editor, said. “Then you can make an anthology out of it.”
And you know what? I did. I just got a new job, and my horror short stories grew out of the new people I went to work with I titled the book ‘Dark City’, went out to seek an agent, who got me a publisher within a day, and the book was released. It shot up the bestseller lists to as high as No. 2 in the major bookstores. (Those were the times we didn’t have Kindle.) I got rave reviews (89% on my personal Tomatometer One of my stories was even serialized in a newspaper.
Flash forward to 2011. E-publishing was all the rage with success stories like Joe Konrath, Amanda Hocking, Saffina Desforges… I kept reading them and reading them till my eyes blurred over. So what was I waiting for? I took the plunge. I started releasing a few of those horror shorts one by one, and put one up with Saffina Desforges Presents (to be out in Nov)
The one that is doing the best so far, maybe because it was the first being released is ‘Psychotic’. It shot up to No. 23 on the Horror charts in Amazon UK and has 2 5-star reviews to date. I’m proudest of it, because it was the first story I ever wrote. Strangely, since ‘Dark City’, I never wrote horror again.
Since 2007, I began to branch into Young Adult books and tried to get an American agent (as I am not American). Lots of requests from very huge houses, but no takers. You can see some of the books I wrote here at my blog:
http://artemishunt.blogspot.com/
And to be honest, the manuscripts of some of these books are at agents even as I write, because I’m one of those who want to straddle both worlds. My long time beta reader just got a 100K deal at a Big Six within one week of being on submission (and with a book I helped beta), so I’m convinced it CAN be done
So far, I’ve been exactly 2 months into indie publishing, and I’m enjoying every moment of it. I tried my hand at different genres – so far I’ve got my YA fantasy (THE HUNT FOR THE CATALYST), my paranormal chick lit (THE BODY SNATCHER WEARS LIPSTICK), my YA sci-fi/romance (SNOW WHITE AND THE ALIEN), all who have received great reviews so far. Am I doing well? Not Saffina Desforges well, certainly! I haven’t had a home run with anything I wrote yet – and what I mean by a home run is a book that gets into the Amazon Top 500! But I’ve seen my sales grow like this:
Aug (1 week): 14 (1 book)
Sept: 44 (released 2 more books and 2 short stories at the end of the month)
Oct: 584 (as of Oct 26th) – started writing short stories in another genre and pen name ……erotica!!
Yes, I’ve branched out to write erotica as well, and found that they do quite well despite me being a new author to the field, and I can even charge $2.99 per story.
So far, this whole thing is an adventure for me, and I can keep you posted as to how things pan out.
Back to horror. Will I ever write another horror story again? (grins) Why not?
Artemis Hunt (who writes as A.R. Hunt under the ‘horror’ genre). I’m too embarrassed to tell you what my erotica handle is.