I have entered Wattpad’s “Open Novella Contest 2026” with a new fantasy romance story, “His Willing Sacrifice.”

Magdalene’s life was supposed to be over when she was sacrificed to The Wolf of The Woods. Instead she finds herself at the side of Markos, a wolfman with ambitious plans that Magdalene could help him achieve.

“His Willing Sacrifice” is a romantasy novella about teamwork in the face of injustice. Later chapters will contain explicit scenes. It currently has three chapters available and around 38,000 words to go before this version of the story is completed.

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There is such a huge culture shift between writing for mass market and writing for Wattpad. I don’t remember ever seeing the same level of participation and mutual discussion during a writing contest between mass market writers, especially indie writers. I feel like there was a lot of thinly veiled hostility towards outgroups, a kind of us-versus-them mentality that doesn’t really permeate my corners of Wattpad.

I mentioned back in my article about pantsing a novel that I loved doing NaNoWriMo and part of that was the sense of community. Everyone was writing together, and could be curious about each other’s stories. My experience so far is that the ONC and Wattpad in general foster that sense of community very strongly. I’ve been having a blast with it so far.

If this type of fantasy powerplay is your thing, I’d love to hear from you on the story. Please follow along over on Wattpad!