Dan Brown shares with Wattpad users what influenced and inspired him as writer from a young age through to his professional career today.

The long-awaited new novel from Margaret Atwood. The Year of the Flood is a dystopic masterpiece and a testament to her visionary power. The times and species have been changing at a rapid rate, and the social compact is wearing as thin as environmental stability. Adam One, the kindly leader of the God's Gardeners—a religion devoted to the melding of science and religion, as well as the preservation of all plant and animal life—has long predicted a natural disaster that will alter Earth as we know it. Now it has occurred, obliterating most human life. Two women have survived: Ren, a young trapeze dancer locked inside the high-end sex club Scales and Tails, and Toby, a God's Gardener barricaded inside a luxurious spa where many of the treatments are edible. Have others survived? Ren's bioartist friend Amanda? Zeb, her eco-fighter stepfather? Her onetime lover, Jimmy? Or the murderous Painballers, survivors of the mutual-elimination Painball prison? Not to mention the shadowy, corrupt policing force of the ruling powers . . . Meanwhile, gene-spliced life forms are proliferating: the lion/lamb blends, the Mo'hair sheep with human hair, the pigs with human brain tissue. As Adam One and his intrepid hemp-clad band make their way through this strange new world, Ren and Toby will have to decide on their next move. They can't stay locked away . . . By turns dark, tender, violent, thoughtful, and uneasily hilarious, The Year of the Flood is Atwood at her most brilliant and inventive.

THE YEAR IS 2050. Human-like androids have become integrated into society and every household, becoming part of our daily lives. They look exactly like us from the pigment of their artificial skin to every follicle of their hair. They protect. They serve. They obey. They learn. Tyler North is a struggling young photographer in New York. When he wins a voucher for a personalized android, Tyler reluctantly purchases one and names it Aiden. Instead of a dull subservient Android, he was blown away by Aiden's adaptiveness, and is not like the regular androids Tyler had met before. However, Tyler can't hide Aiden's free-willed gift against the corporation that built him who planned to use Aiden for a more sinister purpose. Whoever controls Aiden can change Earth for the better...or worse. Mechanical Gods is a near-future Science Fiction Epic by D. Alec Lyle, infused with stylized heart-pounding action, sleek thriller, and provocative intrigue. Picked as part of Wattpad's Up and Coming List (2018), and Editor's Choice List (2020). STATS: 132,385 words [ 511 pages in a paperback ] [Highest -- #1 in Science Fiction] [ #1 in Philosophical ] [ #1 in Android ] [ #1 in LGBT ] [ #1 in artificialintelligence]

A reading group guide for MaddAddam.

The Freeze-Dried Groom is one of the nine stories in Margaret Atwood's fantastic new collection Stone Mattress. A collection of highly imaginative short pieces that speak to our times with deadly accuracy. Vintage Atwood creativity, intelligence, and humor: think Alias Grace. Margaret Atwood turns to short fiction for the first time since her 2006 collection, Moral Disorder, with nine tales of acute psychological insight and turbulent relationships bringing to mind her award-winning 1996 novel, Alias Grace. A recently widowed fantasy writer is guided through a stormy winter evening by the voice of her late husband in "Alphinland," the first of three loosely linked stories about the romantic geometries of a group of writers and artists. In "The Freeze-Dried Groom," a man who bids on an auctioned storage space has a surprise. In "Lusus Naturae," a woman born with a genetic abnormality is mistaken for a vampire. In "Torching the Dusties," an elderly lady with Charles Bonnet syndrome comes to terms with the little people she keeps seeing, while a newly formed populist group gathers to burn down her retirement residence. And in "Stone Mattress," a long-ago crime is avenged in the Arctic via a 1.9 billion-year-old stromatolite. In these nine tales, Margaret Atwood is at the top of her darkly humorous and seriously playful game.

"As a child, I was one of those who buried treasures in jars, with the idea that someone, some day, might come along and dig them up. I found similar things while digging in the various gardens I have made: old nails, old medicine bottles, fragments of china plates... That is what the Future Library is like, in part: it will contain fragments of lives that were once lived, and that are now the past. But all writing is a method of preserving and transmitting the human voice." There’s a secret book that no one will read for 100 years. It is a book from the future, so it hasn’t been published yet. It is kept in a locked room, in a Norwegian library. There is a sacred grove that will provide the paper for its pages. And there are 100 authors who will write its secret stories. 100 years. 100 stories. 100 different writers. This is the Future Library (Framtidsbiblioteket). It is being created by Scottish artist Katie Paterson for the city of Oslo in Norway. When Katie had to choose the first writer to contribute the first story, she named Margaret Atwood, prizewinning author, poet, essayist, literary critic, and Wattpad’s official Fairy Godmother. Read Margaret's thoughts about her involvement in the project here. *Watch Margaret on Periscope on May 26th 2015 to witness the live event, and stay tuned for a special Wattpad writing contest coming soon!*

Stan and Charmaine are a married couple trying to stay afloat in the midst of an economic and social collapse. Job loss has forced them to live in their car, leaving them vulnerable to roving gangs. They desperately need to turn their situation around—and fast. The Positron Project in the town of Consilience seems to be the answer to their prayers. No one is unemployed and everyone gets a comfortable, clean house to live in . . . for six months out of the year. On alternating months, residents of Consilience must leave their homes and function as inmates in the Positron prison system. Once their month of service in the prison is completed, they can return to their "civilian" homes. At first, this doesn't seem like too much of a sacrifice to make in order to have a roof over one's head and food to eat. But when Charmaine becomes romantically involved with the man who lives in their house during the months when she and Stan are in the prison, a series of troubling events unfolds, putting Stan's life in danger. With each passing day, Positron looks less like a prayer answered and more like a chilling prophecy fulfilled. Keep reading and be sure to enter The Heart Goes Last Fiction contest!

What happens when all your apocalyptic nightmares seem to be coming true? In this lyrically poignant piece, Margaret Atwood reflects on growing up in the age of the scarlet fever, diphtheria, polio and the whooping cough that swept Canada in the 1940s. Yellow signs with the words 'QUARANTINED' became a signature of the era and marked doors in neighbourhoods across the country. Drawing from her own experiences and the experiences of her parents who lived through the Spanish flu, Atwood sings words of encouragement, "Take heart! Humanity's been through it before. There will be an Other Side." And while nothing is scarier than an enemy you can't see, there is always hope and there is always another side. In a way that only she can, Atwood takes a look into the past and the present to give us words for the future. Copyright belongs to O.W. Toad and this piece first ran in The Globe and Mail.

May nawawala, di nababalik... 'Pag bumalik, mawawala ulit...  The game they used to play for fun turns into a game of mischief, trust, suspicions, missing possessions, mysterious riddles, and blood.  Each member of the Classics Club began missing one by one as a mysterious shadow stroke and took the cards of Jack and Ace.  Buried secrets unfolded as two fates foresaw: You die knowing something or you die knowing nothing.  Just like the deck of cards lying on the table, gambling and taking the risk are the only options. Know the mechanics. Trust no one. Deceive minds. The only underlying rule to win this game is to catch the conniving fool and play the cards right.  These are how they played the game...  MAY NAWAWALA.  ___  🔎 RANK 9 OUT OF THOUSAND STORIES (06-23-20)  🔎 RANK 7 OUT OF THOUSAND STORIES (06-25-20)  - Cover by: saphiruxx Illustrated by: thantanum - ×CLASSICS SERIES #1×  04|01|20

Words or quotes from the book I've been reading that caught my attention and reflects my life.