Ask the Author – the Question: I am curious about how you got in on the Zoe Chant action. And how exactly does it work when multiple authors write under a single pen name?
Hah! I got in on it because I have a friend who writes for Zoe and she spent years trying to get me to apply to write for them. Eventually I did. And while that sounds easy enough on the surface, it took me two rewrites of one book and then another entire book entirely to actually manage to write A Zoe Chant Novel, instead of ‘just’ a paranormal romance.
Roughly how it works is that there are several writers who each do their own series, or multiple series, under the Zoe name. There are guidelines and a beta-reading process to make sure that the books we write are Zoes, ie, fit the guidelines; books that don’t are rejected/have to be rewritten. (And no, I’m not going to go into the details of the guidelines, which I consider to be largely, although not exclusively, proprietary.)
Within the guidelines, the Zoe writers are allowed to pursue the storylines and characters they want. It’s not a shared universe in any way, just a shared author name. All the Zoe books are fated mate shifter romances with heroes who are not what’s called ‘alphaholes’ in the industry, so they have a fundamental commonality in that, but–like, for example, my shifters’ clothes go with them when they shift, but lots of other Zoe writers have their clothes NOT go with them, which can allow for Sudden Naked Shenanigans. There’s lots of other stuff, but basically, within a certain set of parameters, everybody gets to do what they want. And they’re really a lot of fun to write, and readers seem to enjoy them greatly. :)
Plus, writing for Zoe means I learned how to write a romance novel!!!! I genuinely thought it was beyond my skill set, and I’m SO PROUD of myself for doing it! :D