Author David Mark Brown: Power to the Wattpad

Please join me in welcoming author David Mark Brown as the special guest blogger as he tours blogdom with his current release, FISTFUL OF REEFER.

Those who visit here know I read books in various genres, but David has a new one on me. His book is a dieselpunk, weird Western pulp featuring goats, guns and the camaraderie of outcasts. Marijuana was the plan, liberty the dream, revolution the result. Viva this! This debut novel is the first in a series David calls Reeferpunk -- an alternate history that explores the ramifications of an industrial revolution sans cheap oil.

Here’s a brief synopsis of the book: Set along the Texas Mexico border during the waning years of the Mexican revolution, FISTFUL OF REEFER focuses on a group of unlikely heroes and their equally unlikely foe as they stumble upon the fringes of a cabal bent on nothing short of redrawing geopolitical boundaries and world domination.

The anticipated release of this eBook exclusive is July 31st.

David is here today to talk about ‘Power to the Wattpad! (I hate you).’

Nothing beats sitting in front of a liquid crystal display all day long jamming my fingertips repetitively into alphameric and numeric buttons creating a splay of digital information from here to timbuk-twitter. Working in my pajamas. Rejecting routine hygienics. Watching matinees for research. It's the perfect life.

Except now I'm supposed to forgo compensation. That's right. And I blame Wattpad. If WP still stands for the Washington Post or the Workers' Party of Singapore in your antiquated mind, then it is time for me to introduce you to the world's largest electronic reading application.

Reader, meet Wattpad
So what does it mean to be the world's most popular e-reader? Well, you've no doubt heard of a little thing called Kindle. Kindle is Amazon's electronic reader device. It is also an electronic reader application which can be downloaded on iPads or most other electronic readers. It allows you to read fiction on your device. Wattpad is bigger. Wattpad's application has more downloads than any other, including Kindle.

Wattpad.com is a social sight for writers and readers. With the flick of a wrist and click of a mouse a wattpadian can access one of millions of works of short fiction, poetry and novels -- all for free. Granted 75% of those works tend to fall in the vampire or werewolf genres recently created to unburden the rest of the genres of these more nuanced brands of speculative fiction (that is the vampirc and werific).

Snobs and Critics
Some snobbish novelists and critical readers may denounce Wattpad as an amateurish cloister of narcissistic wannabes of the sort that gain airtime during the first round of American Idol (for the love of all things holy, tell your friends they have a horrible singing voice before they make national fools out of themselves).

To this I say two things: 1.) these amateurish wannabes represent a large portion of the world's readers (as well as future professional writers). 2.) the majority of Wattpad users are strictly readers--voracious readers.

And the whole dang system is free. This is great for readers, but what about writers?

As For Me?
I write dieselpunk, weird-West pulps called Reeferpunk (novels and shorts). Will making my fiction available on Wattpad for free increase my sales, buy my children the wine the so desperately need? I don't know, but I'm giving it a shot. (Full disclosure: as of October, 2010 I officially became a Wattpadian @hachebrown.) Ten days before the official launch (Today!) of my novel, FISTFUL OF REEFER, I started making it available for free on Wattpad.

In the years to follow this trend will only increase. Soon most readers will expect to find their fill of juicy beach romances for free. I can't feed my family on free. But maybe the free reads will result in paying customers. If not, the solution: return to a system of patrons supporting the arts. And I'm getting in before all the best ones are gone. I hear Oprah likes to read.

David, thanks for guest blogging. Thanks also for introducing me to dieselpunk and Wattpad. You have definitely given us something to ponder. Best of luck with your launch of FISTFUL OF REEFER.

Now a little background on David. As a little scamp he wrote his first award-winning story in 4th Grade, titled “The human bean.” It wasn’t a play on words. His profound piece about the human condition blundered into a mutant story about a human/legume crossbreed. (Curse you, phonics! But hello, commercial fiction!)

All grown up his first book, TAINTED LOVE: GOD, SEX AND RELATIONSHIPS FOR THE NOT-SO-PURE-AT-HEART (inspired by his soiled experiences) was published in 2002 by InterVarsity Press. After several years of retooling himself as a novelist (by drinking more and making less money), David reemerged in 2009 with two separate projects: GRIS-GRIS DAUGHTER and FISTFUL OF REEFER.

He and his lovely wife adopted their first child from Vietnam before producing a second through more traditional means.

For more on David and his writing, check out his websites http://www.reeferpunk.com/ and http://www.thegreenporch.com/ You can also find his profile on Wattpad @hachebrown.

Have you heard of dieselpunk before? What about Wattpad? Share your thoughts and help David launch his latest release. Thanks, as always for stopping by.