Welcome to Moonlit Falls
Please give a warm welcome to author Z Xanxar. She’s going to tell us how a bunch of debut authors came together to create Moonlit Falls.
Last summer, Silver Springs Library (organized by Mia Harlan and Eva Delaney) held a competition to become the 13th Jewel. Their first season in Silver Springs was Jewels Cafe, where FMCs with names of Jewels would be hit with a mate spell and find their fated mates.
To enter the competition, you had to be a newbie author, who had never published anything under any pen name. You had to make a story line, submit character descriptions and make a story sample. A reader panel made out of authors and readers went through all the samples and gave them scores. They ended up with roughly 25 participants.
Some had made a chat and was talking about doing this. What they were feeling, how they interpritated this or that. And the anxiety in actually doing this. It was an awesome community, yes, I was a part of it and I did submit my sample.
Silver Springs had a hard time deciding on who should win. They ended up picking 2 winners and not just one. The first book is actually releasing in their second season, Spell Library. Lotus, written by Nikki Jacks is releasing later this month.
A LOT! of the ladies from the chat was committed to keep writing and had several ideas flying all over the place. Some were moving rather fast – faster than was practical. I tried to get them to calm down a bit and together with Serafina Luna Brodie and Dolly Kalasin, we took up the torch. We asked if the rest of them would be ok with us taking lead and they were.
I then reached out to Mia Harlan to ask her if she would be willing to share a few pointers on how to lead a group of authors in such a shared universe.
The outcome of that simple question had me on an adrenaline high for hours that evening! Within 3 sentenses, Mia had throw up the idea to make a franchise of Jewels Cafe. Set in a completely new town with her and Eva writing the first book where their FMC would open up a new cafe with the help of Julian, Amber andothers from Eva’s and Mia’s Jewels Cafe books.
This was a start of Moon Dust Library and the town of Moonlit Falls. Dolly, Luna and I are the organizers behind the whole series. We put up, not a contest, but something similar to the 13th Jewel contest Silver Springs had made. Close to the same criterias.
1. Never published before
2. Story outline
3. Character descriptions
4. Your first chapter
5. A funny sample
We had 20 submissions. and needed 8 or 9 authors. December, going through all the samples and picking out the best ones, was rough. I’m not even going to go into detail on the final hours before we hade to message the ones we ended up picking – it was chaotic to say the least! But we have ended up wit an amazing bunch of ladies, who are writing cool RH rom-com books for this very first season.
Mia and Eva have been our support crew through all of this. Taking us through so many things and helping us above and beyond! They are truly amazing!
Mia and Eva are co-writing Moonlit Nephrite (their first co-write ever) and kicking off the series with that. Then we follow with 12 debut authors each doing their own book. To see how the ladies have come together. How they work together and how they make the most of everything, has been an awesome experience for all of us. I am looking so much forward to reading the rest of the books. Most are done or very close to it. There are a tonne of cameos between the books and most have even worked in characters they plan to use in future seasons.
Being one of the organizers, I can tell, it takes A LOT of time to make things like these shared universes come together. I had an idea it was much and even thought I was realistic about my expectations, but nope. It takes SO much more LOL
I am happy I am releasing last in the series, because it gives me a bit more time to keep things on track while the others finish up.
I am sure each of the ladies will have their own versions of how they ended up in Moon Dust Library, but in the big picture, the above is really the way Moon Dust Library was born. – I am SO happy I found my courage and asked Mia Harlan a few nervous questions 😀
Helle Gade 