Wattpad Block Party - Summer Edition III (August 2017)

Royal888 Presents: My First Book & My Writing Journey

Hi everyone. I am Sarah Royal. I read and write as a hobby on Wattpad and Radish Fiction App. In addition, I will be publishing my first book, Her Heart His Obsession on Tapas before the end of this summer and I am also in process of making audio books with Castbox in upcoming months. My next project will be hopefully discovering oolipo.

Thank you so much KellyAnneBlount for sharing your passion and love for reading and writing by hosting this party. We are grateful to your dedication and hard work that you put into bringing book fans together and helping them meet up.

Now, let's make a start by saying I feel so honoured to be a guest at this party this year. I have been following this party for some time now. I have enjoyed reading posts by passionate and lovely authors over time. The party has given the wattpad community something to look forward to every August and February since its launch. It is amazing that this party brings us together as a community and I love how I get to discover new authors and books each time I check out the party which is all thanks to Kelly Anne as founder and organiser of this party

I love this party so much but I never had the courage to apply to take part at this party as an author thinking I would never get accepted. Last year I also didn't apply. In fact I was very lucky to win a spot which was a prize of the block party giveaway that Kelly Anne hosted which I am very thankful for.

In this post I decided to make a list of important aspects of my Wattpad journey as reader and writer who writes for fun and would like to share some ideas focusing mostly on creation of my first book. I also I thought I feature a deleted scene from my book Her Heart, His Obsession which would be hopefully published on TAPAS app by the end of the summer.

So here is my highlights of my journey on wattpad before Her Heart, His Obsession came to be and beyond;

********The Beginning********

I started reading on wattpad in 2012 after I purchased an iPhone and searched the term "free books" on the app store. Before that, I did not have the app.

I read books for about two years on Wattpad before I got a sudden idea for my book "Her Heart, His Obsession". The book had a different name back then. It was called "A Witch's Blood and A Warlock's Obsession." I chose the name because the plot focuses on a futuristic dystopian world where witches and warlocks rule. In this fantasy world, the mates are not called mates like in vampire or werewolf books. They are called "blood matches". I had requests from readers later on that they asked can they use the name "blood match" in their own books and I said sure, why not?

At the beginning, besides the name being different, the cover of my book was also a default cover with a picture of a castle. That was until I met an author, winchestered_ on Wattpad. I read their fan fiction books. As a thank you for checking their books they made me covers and suggested that I adjust the name of the book if possible to help with the cover becoming more catchy. I didn't mind. The reason I had the terms; "witch" and "warlock" in the title was because I wanted to help readers who were looking for books with witches and magic to find my book. As you know Wattpad has vampire or werewolf categories but no witches or magic category. So I changed the title to "Her Heart, His Obsession". I received a range of covers over the upcoming months and used them every few weeks to the delight of readers and my delight. It did help create conversations with readers as I changed covers. It also helped attract new readers because of the covers that were more catchy than a Wattpad default cover that was on thousands of other books.

Now tip number one here; read on Wattpad and be nice. You never know who you meet. I met a nice author and read their books. They had some spare time so they made beautiful covers for me without being asked and also helped me come up with a title for my book that I am more happy with now. I am not implying that every author who you meet on Wattpad should do a favour for their readers. What I am trying to say is that if you read someone's book they remember you. I remember my readers. If there is anything I can do for them at anytime and I have the time, I will totally do it if the task is within my ability. The author who made me covers had some free time and saw I needed covers so she helped me out. She is on hiatus busy with her studies right now and I haven't spoken to her in months. However, she did what she could when she could when I needed it. So always make friends with people on wattpad and when you least expect it the people may help you in ways they can. I met more people next.