"I didn't set out to write The MoonQuest," Mark David Gerson explains of his novel's genesis. "The MoonQuest found me."

More precisely, an odd-looking man in an even odder-looking coach pulled by two odd-colored horses found him.

It was March 1994 and Mark David was teaching a creative writing workshop in Toronto. As participants settled into writing, these characters — who would later become the mysterious O'ric and his mystical mares, Rykka and Ta'ar — rode onto Mark David's blank page.

Their tale would become the opening scene of the first draft of a novel that would reveal neither its story nor title to him for many months.

When it finally did, Mark David was living in rural Nova Scotia on Canada's Atlantic seabord, where The MoonQuest's initial drafts took form.

It took more than a dozen years of revisions, each penned in a different part of Canada or the United States, before The MoonQuest won its first award (2006 New Mexico Discovery Awards for unpublished fiction). It has since won four more awards, including a New Mexico Book Award and a Gold Medal in the Independent Publishers Book Awards, and is now first volume in The Q'ntana Trilogy, a generational fantasy epic comprising The MoonQuest, The StarQuest and The SunQuest. The Q'ntana Trilogy is now on its way to the big screen, with The MoonQuest feature film slated for release in 2012.

Throughout that time, Mark David has continued to guide groups and individuals through the same blocks to creative power, personal empowerment and spiritual growth experienced by Toshar and his fellow Q'ntanans in The MoonQuest.

Find out why The MoonQuest has been a favorite with book competition judges