I woke up to a ton of Wattpad notifications yesterday. This was a puzzler, because I hadn’t posted there since last fall, and follow stats there plummet when nothing new goes up.
This caught my eye as soon as I logged into my profile:
21? My big, ungainly mega-book about the past of my Restoration novels is at #21 on a Top 100 list? Sweet! But…it didn’t answer my main question: why now?
That’s where the message in my Wattpad inbox came in. Congrats! it declared, and went on to explain that Downrigger has been chosen as a Featured Book in a new Wattpad program called (wait for it) Featured Books.
For 21 days, Downrigger will be showcased to the Wattpad community at large. And I’m pleased to report a bunch of people are adding it to their lists–some are diving right into reading it.
Well, then. Color me happy, eh?
Edited to add: I’m told I need to provide a link to the book. No problem! Here:
Click here to open Downrigger on Wattpad.
I still don’t know why the book was chosen, but the whole “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth: thing comes into play. I’m delighted it’s getting attention. That’s the reason I put Downrigger out for public consumption after all. I adore its main characters, and its weird twisty, sprawly plot is a thrill ride.
You might wonder why didn’t I buff it up and sell it, if it’s so good…well. Several answers:
- it is not professionally edited, and I’m reluctant to spend the necessary time & money on doing that for books in this series at this time.
- it’s much too big for one book but not big enough for two, and that would be another formatting headache I wouldn’t need on top of editing.
- some of its concepts & continuity are outdated and would be hard to fix without rewriting from scratch. Which I’m definitely not interested in doing right now.
Despite all those obstacles, I have a deep-seated need to complete projects. Downrigger’s presence in my unfinished-books queue was a constant distraction and source of creative guilt. It needed a better home than my hard drive, a final destination I could send it without feeling I should apologize for its unpolished, ungroomed condition.
Thanks to Wattpad, it now has a home. I was happy for that alone. Now it’s being featured?! I’m grateful, entertained, and all around chuffed that it’s getting some reading love.
And in a total aside, I’m learning that Wattpad community members have the AWESOMEST names for their reading lists.
Thanks, Wattpad. Thank you, readers. May you enjoy reading about Hook, Doug & Misha’s adventures as much as I enjoyed writing about them.