Opens 4 September
Three books, no authors
Entries open 4 September 2026 and close 31 January 2027. Winners announced 27 March 2027.
Ghost Signal arrives in the first quarter of 2027. Three more books exist in outline behind it. Characters, premises, the shape of what happens. Nobody has written them yet.
Pick one and write its opening chapter. The strongest opening for each book gets written in full, published under the author's name, and the author takes half of what it earns.
The books
Publishing Q1 2027
Ghost Signal
The daughter of one of Fryya's most powerful corporate leaders has been taken by rebels, and Koryn is sent to bring her back before it becomes an uprising. Ghost Signal is not open for entry. The three below are.
Rivals
Every pack in the realm sends its best to The Run, and this year both champions are eighteen and fighting for the first time. Bram takes the Chase. Rune takes the Hold. By the time everything comes down to the last trial, neither of them is still certain that what is driving them is rivalry.
The Stone Kin
Kael's kin were turned to stone for breaking the realm's oldest laws, and the judgment stands until the debt behind it is repaid in full. So he goes after four crystal relics, each held by a Keeper who surrenders it only to the worthy. What nobody tells him is that worthiness is not something you are ever informed you have.
Voice Beneath the Tide
Storms drive Tendrul into a quiet cove, where a deer comes down to the shoreline each evening and has no idea she is being watched from under the water. Moros shares those waters, enforces the old law that keeps the sea and the land apart, and is certain that ending the friendship is a kindness. He is not being cruel. That is what makes him hard to argue with.
What you are writing
An opening chapter. Between three and six thousand words, which is enough to establish a voice and not enough to hide behind a plot.
Read the book's page first, then the pages of the characters in it, then the archive behind those. Everything you need is already written down. What we are looking for is not a retelling of the premise but a first chapter that makes somebody need the second one.
What chapter one has to do
Each book needs a different opening. Read the brief for the one you are writing before you start.
For all three.
- Write from inside the world. Everything you need is on the book's page, on the character pages, and in the archive.
- Adult fiction. Every character written in a sexual context is an adult.
- We read for voice first. Polish is what editing is for.
- Do not resolve the book in chapter one. You are writing the reason somebody turns the page.
Rivals
- Point of view: Bram, close third person, past tense.
- Open on the day he is named champion, or on the road to The Run. Not on a trial.
- Establish that he is eighteen, that he has trained for this since he was a child, and that a whole village is standing behind him. Darkhound is the name the arena gave him, not the name he answers to at home.
- End on the first sight of Rune. The birthmark over one eye. Nothing more than a look.
- Do not run a trial to its finish and do not name a winner.
- The trap is explaining the rules of The Run. A reader will learn the three trials from how the characters behave around them.
The Stone Kin
- Point of view: Kael, close third person, past tense.
- Open on the road, not on the judgment. His kin have been stone for centuries. That is where the book starts from, not what it starts with.
- Establish what he is going after, what it is for, and that he believes worthiness is something he will be told he has.
- End on an ordinary encounter with a stranger, and a kindness offered or withheld. The reader should feel it might matter. Kael should not.
- Do not open with Veyrun.
- Do not reveal anyone Kael meets as more than they appear. That is the spine of the book, not the first chapter.
Voice Beneath the Tide
- Point of view: Tendrul, close third person, past tense.
- Open on the storms. He is not exploring. He is sheltering.
- Establish his size, and that being alone made him gentle rather than hard. Establish the cove, the deer's routine, and the fact that she does not know he is there.
- End on the moment before the first word, or on the first word itself.
- Do not bring Moros into the chapter, and do not resolve the first conversation.
- The hard part is that watching from the water has to read as longing and not as menace. That is the test this book sets, and it is the reason it is the hardest of the three.
What the winner gets
A contract to write the book, and half of what it earns for as long as it earns.
Your name on the cover and in the archive. A Lunara's Realm gift set. A standing invitation to everything we run for writers from that point on.
The rules, short version
Eighteen or over. Your own writing, with no part of it generated by AI. One entry per book, and you may enter more than one book. Entries stay yours if you do not win.
Read the full terms