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A funny thing happened on Wattpad

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:9F9E377E-F968-4C58-82EE-8DDC3774340C21? 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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3.  some of its concepts & continuity are outdated and would be hard to fix without rewriting from scratch.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.