Writing competition terms

Write the opening chapter of one of our books. If yours is chosen, you write the whole book, we publish it, your name is on it, and you get half of what it earns after costs. If yours is not chosen, you keep everything you wrote and we take no rights in it at all.

• You must be eighteen or over.
• You may enter from anywhere, unless the law where you live prohibits it.
• You may not enter if you are involved in running Lunara's Realm, or are an immediate family member of somebody who is.
• Entry is free and no purchase is required.

• One opening chapter, between 3,000 and 6,000 words, for one of the three books open for entry: Rivals, The Stone Kin, or Voice Beneath the Tide.
• DOCX, RTF or plain text. No PDFs.
• One entry per book. You may enter more than one book, but each entry must be a different chapter for a different book.
• Your name must not appear in the manuscript itself. Judging is done without it.
• Entries open 4 September 2026 and close 31 January 2027 at 11.59pm Hong Kong time. Late entries are not read.

• Be set in the world as it is written. The premise, the characters and the canon are fixed. What happens inside them is yours.
• Be adult fiction. This is an adult world and we are not asking for it to be sanitised.
• Every character depicted in a sexual context must be an adult, and must be written as one. This is absolute, it is the one rule with no discretion attached, and entries that break it are deleted and reported where the law requires.
• No real people, living or dead.
• No content that we would not be able to publish lawfully in Hong Kong, the United States, the United Kingdom or the European Union.

• The writing must be yours, written by you, for this competition.
• No part of it may be generated by AI. We may ask for drafts, revision history or a supervised writing sample before selecting a winner, and we will ask if something reads oddly.
• You may not have offered the same text elsewhere.
• If you have used a beta reader or an editor, that is fine, and you should say so.

• If you do not win, nothing. We read it to judge it. We do not publish it, quote it, or keep it beyond ninety days after the result is announced, and you are free to do what you like with it, subject only to the fact that it uses our characters and world, which we still own.
• If you do win, the licence you grant is set out in the publishing agreement, not here.
• We may name you as a shortlisted entrant if you agree to it. We will ask first.

• Entries are read by the Lunara's Realm team. We may bring in an outside reader, and if we do we will say so.
• We judge voice first, then whether the chapter makes somebody want the next one, then how well it sits inside the canon. Technical polish matters least of the three, because that is what editing is for.
• One winner per book. We may choose no winner for a book if nothing reaches the standard, and if that happens we will say so publicly rather than quietly.
• The decision is final and we do not enter into correspondence about individual entries. We are a small team and we would rather spend the time reading.
• Results announced by 27 March 2027.

If a winner declines the agreement, or cannot deliver the manuscript within the agreed time, we may offer the place to another entrant or run the book again.

• A publishing agreement to write and deliver the full novel. Nothing is published and no money is paid until that agreement is signed by both sides.
• Fifty percent of net receipts from the published book, paid quarterly with an itemised statement. Net receipts is defined in section 9, and that definition is identical to the one in the agreement.
• Author credit on the book, on this site, and in the archive.
• A Lunara's Realm gift set.
• An invitation to future writing events and first sight of future opportunities.

Net receipts means all money we actually receive from the sale or licensing of the book, less platform and retailer commissions, payment processing fees, sales tax and GST, refunds and chargebacks, and the direct costs of producing that title.

Direct costs means editing, proofreading, cover art, interior design, ISBN registration, print and fulfilment costs on physical copies, and advertising spend booked specifically against that book.

Direct costs do not include general overheads, salaries, the cost of running this website, or the cost of running this competition. Costs are recouped from net receipts before the split, not taken out of the author's share afterwards.

• Lunara's Realm owns the world, the characters, the names, the premises and the canon, before and after this competition, and nothing here changes that.
• You own the words you write.
• Winning means you license those words to us to publish. It does not mean you sign them away, and the agreement sets out exactly how long the licence runs and when rights revert.
• You keep your moral rights. Your name goes on the book.

We collect your name, email and entry in order to run the competition, and we handle them as set out in our privacy policy. We do not add you to any mailing list unless you ask us to.

• We may change these terms, and if we do the version and date at the top change with them. Material changes during an open competition are emailed to everyone who has already entered.
• We may cancel or postpone a competition. If we cancel one that is already open, we will say why.

• These terms are governed by the laws of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, and the courts of Hong Kong have exclusive jurisdiction.
• Nothing here excludes any right you have that cannot lawfully be excluded under the law that applies where you live.
• Where a competition is regulated in your jurisdiction, local requirements prevail over anything inconsistent here.

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