Melissa Blair's "A Broken Blade" became huge on TikTok with a viral scavenger hunt. Now, you can buy the book on sites like Amazon and Bookshop.
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After falling in love with countless romantic fantasy novels discovered on TikTok, Melissa Blair wrote and self-published her first book, "A Broken Blade."
But the creativity didn't stop there. She also hatched an anonymous launch campaign where 25 #BookTok creators received a box including her book, a letter, and a series of clues they would need to decode in order to reveal which one of their fellow BookTokers wrote the alluring fantasy.
Blair's campaign quickly went viral, garnering over 2.6 million views under the hashtag #abrokenblade as readers tuned in to the slowly unraveling mystery. After two weeks, Blair was finally revealed and now her book will be officially published by a major publishing house.
Romantic fantasy books like "A Broken Blade" are popular on TikTok and regularly go viral amongst BookTok creators — the hashtag #fantasybooks has over 522 million views and #fantasyromancebooks has 20 million. While paranormal and romantic fantasy novels captured Blair's heart, she knew there was a missing perspective.
"I found that most of the books take place in colonial societies, but that part of the world is rarely explored," says Blair. "As an Indigenous person, I wanted to know more about the people from these lands, how transfers of power had happened, how they were talked about, and how it affected people. Other books didn't seem to want to tell that story, so I decided to give it a try."
"A Broken Blade" is a dark and romantic fantasy starring Keera, the King's Blade, his favorite assassin, and the most talented spy in the kingdom. When a mysterious figure called the Shadow threatens the crown, Keera begins to hunt the enemy through the magical Faeland, trying to discern if the Shadow is a Mortal, Elf, or a Halfling, until she makes a shocking discovery that leaves her questioning who the real enemy is and remembers a promise she made long ago.
Melissa Blair is an active creator and member of the Booktokcommunity, so when she hatched the plan to write "A Broken Blade," her launch campaign was naturally born alongside it.
"Through watching and creating content, I knew people would love some mystery and intrigue — I would give them their own whodunnit to work out," says Blair. "I wanted people to work together, make new friends, and collaborate to unmask me as something fun to do as a community."
At the beginning of December 2021, Blair anonymously sent 25 boxes to BookTokers that included her book (without her name), a letter explaining the mystery, a segment of a coded message, and two wax seals. Creators would have to collect all five segments of the message to decode it, meaning they had to find unboxing videos from different creators, which encouraged them to work together.
The final part was video clues Blair anonymously posted on TikTok under the account @abrokenblade, which hinted that the coded messages were letters the creators needed to unscramble.
"A group of BookToker creators started working together to create a Google Doc where they could post all their hints, theories, and ideas. They called themselves the Scooby Gang and would go on Live for hours reading the book, interacting with me on the anonymous TikTok account, and trying to decode the message," Blair recalls.
"Eventually, someone in their Live suggested that the waves were a reference to the publishing company I had self-published under, Nibi Books," she says. "Nibi" is the Anishinaabemowin word for "water."
"Once they translated 'thank you' to 'miigwetch,' Scooby Gang was able to decode the message from a jumble of letters to: 'This book was written by Melissa Blair. Miigwetch for playing along.'"
In March, Union Square & Co. announced it will be officially publishing "A Broken Blade" and the rest of the "The Halfing Saga," a "surreal" opportunity for Blair.
"I'm so excited for Keera's story to continue as Union Square & Co publishes The Halfling Saga, but I hope to put out other books too," Blair says. "I promised myself that if I ever got to be an author, I would become the storyteller I needed growing up. So, that's my goal. I'm going to write broadly with stories centered around Indigenous and queer characters. . . And if you end up reading them, all I can say is chi-miigwetch!"
