멜리사 머레이

Back in May 2025, I had a random dream about a love triangle between a princess, a widowed prince, and the sexy male nanny looking after the prince's children. I told a few friends about it, and they encouraged me to turn that random dream into a book. Many rewrites and edits later, now I'm querying a 109k-word adult romantasy novel rooted in Turkic mythology. It makes use of my doctoral dissertation.

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A princess by birth but an academic at heart, all Aylin Aga (26) wants is to play with her potions in peace, until her childhood sweetheart, Ender Volkan (29), now a widowed khan with three young sons, comes calling. For the sake of their khanates’ alliance, Aylin puts aside her resentment at his decade of silence in hopes the boy she knew survived inside the man he became. But then, her grandmother sends her a charmed ring and a warning: He’s not who you think he is. As a university-trained chemist, Aylin knows magic isn’t real, yet she can’t shake the suspicion that Ender is hiding a dangerous secret. 

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I spent a LOT of time world-building (no surprise there; character psychology and deep world-building are my favorite parts, after all)...which, naturally, includes a map. We've got khanates, caliphates, and kingdoms, but since Aylin is the daughter of a khan (and, later, engaged to another khan), the khanates are where the action takes place. So, if you're interested, I've got a high-res map of the world of Karanlik you can download below! Probably most helpful for my fearless and fabulous beta readers, but I thought I'd put it here for anyone else who might be curious. Click the map to zoom in!