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Richard Donnelly's avatar

Hey Simon I just read your May 15, 2023 post Why I Left Wattpad for Substack. It came up #2 when I googled Wattpad vs Substack. You should get some money from Substack : ) Seriously, if people were weighing the two (I'm not, just like to see how competing sites compare) you make a convincing argument. An excellent article, informative, extremely well-written.

Just a thought as I read: When you got all those readers on Wattpad, did any agents contact you? Thanks if you care to answer. No big deal if not. I'll certainly continue to follow avidly. Thanks.

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Simon K Jones's avatar

Hi Richard! Thanks for stopping by. This article does seem to pop up on Google fairly consistently, despite being quite old now.

I never had contact from agents while active on Wattpad. Part of the problem, over time, was that the 'success' there felt quite ephemeral and beyond my own control. Hence while the raw numbers can be lower on Substack, they are far more meaningful.

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Richard Donnelly's avatar

Clearly you can write, Simon. They should be chasing you down the street with a contract : )

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Mike Miller's avatar

It's obvious from the last two week's comment I knew Miller was gonna die. But the bad guys pulled out the "more subtle" method than sending in the rogue AI in a T-800 joked about last week.

The quick cuts between scenes this week definitely had the "action climax" vibe you were after, even if the main action happened off-screen.

Hopefully Clarke and Co. can access Justin's data relatively soon-ish, because, of course, the assassination of Miller more-or-less ends having anything tangible to investigate. After all Hutchenson has all day to cherry-pick, alter, remove, or destroy whatever he wishes.

"The Second Coming" may get used a lot, but there's reasons for that... Yeats was on fire when composing it.

Besides, you have a rogue AI slouching towards (New) Bethlehem to be born.

Given your posts earlier this week about the writing not going well, you can relax now. You pulled off this chapter effectively...

Unless the writing not going well was about trying to find interesting things to say about "TKO."

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Simon K Jones's avatar

Yep, they're still going for plausible deniability. No point going all-guns-blazing for someone like Miller. Much as Miller liked to think of himself as being important, he was really just a pawn. You can imagine there being countless 'Millers' in various industries, governmental positions, civil institutions and so on. Any kind of authoritarian takeover relies on the cooperation of lots of weasels, right?

As you say: Miller was the key witness and he's gone. Sure, they might have something in his files, or even in Hutchinson's files, but that seems unlikely. Miller will have been careful, and a clean-up job will have swung into action the moment Miller was arrested.

Glad the chapter came together - it was a bit last-minute this week, due to various factors (including the key/trouser leg debacle). That said, there's a sort of breathlessness to this storyline, so pulling it straight from the crucible kinda served in its favour, I think.

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Jenny Homan's avatar

I think I missed number three... But this is awesome.

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Jenny Homan's avatar

Thanks Simon. I'm on my way.

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