Heartfelt AF

My "award winning" YA novel is debuting on Wattpad

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Psst … hey.

Welcome back to

Stock Fiction

. A (mostly) short fiction newsletter inspired by stock photography.

Your story today is about one hard working writer’s quest to get her best and most beautiful novel into the world for mass consumption. Tired of dragging her middle-aged butt uphill both ways through unforgiving slush and perpetually dining on dog poop, our hero ventures blindly boldly into the realm of free-to-all media content, leaving behind her lofty dreams of industry relevance and financial validation and taking up the torch of WTF DO I HAVE TO LOSE AT THIS POINT?

Will she be met with cheers? Jeers? Crickets? Rotten tomatoes?

Only time, and the loyalty of her beloved audience, will tell.

Oscar-worthy melodramatics aside, my scintillatingly sweet YA masterpiece, See Dot Smile has just graced the Wattpad virtual bookshelves, with the first chapters ready and waiting for hungry eyes to devour them.

Speaking of eye candy, how about a cover reveal….

Boom!

Hold up … what’s that?

The clearly fabricated highly coveted Heartfelt AF (or FELTY) Award, for excellence in making you feel things. All the things, you guys. ❤️

Okay, but this pitch actually did win a contest….

See Dot Smile: Young adult, contemporary romance.

An impassioned girl on a quest to lose her heart and virginity to her first love by graduation day, learns that happy endings aren’t one-size-fits-all when she unexpectedly falls for a hopeless romantic who is coming to terms with his asexuality.

Summary….

It’s the first day of senior year and Dot just heard the most perfect piece of news: Joshua Jameson, the guy she’s madly in love with, is single. While Dot’s fantasy life with Joshua has been building with intensity since the two of them swam naked together the summer before eighth grade, she’s been denied the ‘real deal’ for years, thanks to new girl Ali swooping in, stealing her dream lover, and keeping him captive for an eternity. Dot finally has a chance to make something happen, but her friend group’s constant demand for her amateur therapist skills, Joshua’s angsty post breakup healing process, and her own lack of romantic game in the ‘real world,’ is making that nearly impossible.

So, when Bud shows up, with his special brand of social awkwardness and sexual ambiguity, Dot discovers she likes being distracted by the quirky guy who isn’t projecting sex fantasies in her brain 24/7 or asking her to solve all his problems. Bud vows to help Dot get the guy she’s always wanted, but the two soon find their budding friendship blossoming into something more. And just as Dot starts to lose herself in funny love with Bud, he takes a big step toward understanding his own romantic identity, leaving Dot to wonder where she fits in a love story that leaves out a key ingredient in her recipe for a happy ending: Sex.

And these people actually read the book….

“I just love the way you write. Your voice is so uniquely yours, and it’s so easy to read! I love the way you balance the internal monologue with the external dialogue. You have a gift for making it feel so natural and for fitting in those final punchy lines that land big thoughts and ideas at the end of a chapter. It’s delightfully snarky in all the best kind of ways. And the parts that are more intimate are done really well. There’s lots of care taken there and it shows!!” W.F.

“It's SOOOOOOOO good, Meg!  How do you do this? The conversation, the descriptions, the character development, the voice, the feelings. This is so much better than the current book I am reading! It is so getting published!” S.F.

“I loved it. Especially the characters. You made them so real.❤️❤️❤️❤️. It gave me fernweh. That word for nostalgia for a place you’ve never been.” L.N.

“I laughed. I cried. I [REDACTED].” J.O.

How does the author feel about it?

Incredibly proud.

I agree with my readers. The characters people in this story are some of the best human beings I’ve ever breathed authorial life into.

When I started brainstorming this book, I had just finished writing my third YA novel. I felt practiced. Ready to tackle something more challenging. So, I decided to write a raunchy comedy about a massive clique of horny teenagers, at the center of which was one girl, tasked with keeping them all together and managing their various romantic and sexual entanglements to the detriment of her own. I was going to call it “The Dirty Dozen” because I planned to give voices to TWELVE DISTINCT CHARACTERS.

Then I sat down to write the book.

Twelve characters swiftly became six and while the raunchiness wasn’t abandoned entirely, the story itself grew a massive heart, something this author should have suspected would happen given her track record with love stories.

There is so much love in this story.

Not just romantic love—yes, a shit ton of that— but all kinds. The protagonist’s main obstacle is her own unrealistic fantasy of what “love” is supposed to look like. The shape it takes, the way you find it, the way it feels, and the way you express it. All of her ideals are challenged when she falls for someone who doesn’t fit the template she’s created for her romantic journey.

And guys, no joke. The real hero in this story is going to take your breath away.

What the hell is Wattpad?

It’s a publishing platform. Like Substack, but not at all like Substack. It’s free to writers and free to readers, which means there are occasionally going to be ads to scroll through. Boo! Hiss! BUT! - There’s a massive young adult audience and an equally massive romance audience to be found there, which is why it’s where I need to be to get my book in front of eyeballs.

Wattpad, like all social media disguised as something less diabolical, runs on addiction algorithms. If I want to become visible to the platform’s discovery bots, I will need to show up, eagerly and often. For this reason, I will be posting new content from my novel every day for the next 4 to 6 weeks, or however long it takes to get the whole gorgeous beast published. I hope readers will find this titillating. Apart from visibility, I will also need support, in the form of—you guessed it—FOLLOWERS.

What is the author expecting from her Substack audience?

I’m doing my best to set realistic expectations these days, because disappointment is a soul crushing bastard, and also because … I get it.

So, here’s what I’m after:

There are roughly 220 people subscribed to

Stock Fiction

.¹

Let’s say, realistically, half that many people are reading it consistently.

And let’s say, of the 110 people reading it consistently, half of them have an appreciation for young adult novels.

And let’s say half of that group appreciates heart stopping romance.

Of the remaining 27.5 people, let’s assume 80% of them have full time jobs, kids, their own writing projects, plans, and pursuits, and would have no bandwidth left to consume a long form story right now or possibly ever.

That leaves 5.5 people.

Let’s round it down to 5 for simplicity's sake.

That’s what I’m after.

I would be honored if five of you would read my novel.²

I trust you can work it out amongst yourselves. 😉

And this little button will get you where you need to go.

Thank you as always for reading and supporting me on my journey.

Wish me luck!

1. I didn’t want to do the math all over again. But since I wrote this post, there are 20 more of you. ❤️💜💛Thank you so much for being here!

2. Remember, it’s free. And also … your buddy Meg wrote it.