Sunday, September 20, 2009

There's Tweeting, and then there's Tweeting a whole novel

So here I am almost cross-eyed from editing this morning, when I go online to relax and I read about Matt Stewart. Apparently, he has Twittered/Tweeted a whole novel called "The French Revolution" and it's about-

Loosely structured on the greatest identity crisis ever, The French Revolution tells the story of a San Francisco family forging its place in history.

Esmerelda Van Twinkle, a failed pastry chef turned wretchedly obese copy shop manager, stumbles into motherhood after a semi-intentional liaison with good-natured coupon distributor Jasper Winslow. Born on Bastille Day, their twin children Robespierre and Marat revolt against archaic rules imposed by their autocratic grandmother, surmount radically misguided parenting, and combat wars in the Middle East to achieve great personal gain.

Just as the family is on the cusp of achieving meteoric success in politics, business, music, and gastronomy, fissures from the past crack open spectacularly, derailing their bid for long-lived power while cementing a reputation for the ages.

I don't know, it doesn't sound off-hand like a book that I would pick up, yet I have to learn not to be a book snob in the way that others are genre snobs when it comes to crime ficiton. Not to mention that I hate Twitter, which is just silly and irrational on my part.

Just how would this work in terms of a layout?

In blasts of 130 characters or so (leaving room for hashtags and links), it will take approximately 3700 tweets to transmit the 480,000 characters in my novel.

He even realizes that this is a tall order, but-

To be honest, I don’t think anybody'll weed through all my tweets.

That said, reading a few lines via Twitter is a cool & easy way for you to give this book a test drive. It’s like checking out a few minutes of a TV show before deciding if you want to order the whole season.

Therein lies the brilliance and the initial novelty should bring him an audience that he most likely never would've had.

Regardless, good luck, Matt.

10 comments:

Dale said...

It sounds a bit of an excruciating method to get your work out there to me but hey, I'm Twittertarded so what do I know?

Valerie said...

Yours is the second blog I've read about Twitter. I don't feel comfortable twittering to being I don't know, always feel I'm intruding in private conversations. But that's by-the-by. I can't imagine a whole book being twittered. It seems a bit of a disjointed thing to do.

Unknown said...

I've a hard enough time twittering a conversation.

JDC

Rosaria Williams said...

Hey, I hear that all the writer has to do nowdays is EVERYTHING.

Doc said...

Twitter? Really? Crap, I can barely type so I don't think I'm going to be going down this road anytime soon.

Doc

SkylersDad said...

I don't tweet, I have just never seen the allure of it.

Paul D Brazill said...

My cyber mate Anne Billson is doing the same with 'The Psycho Murders.'

Cormac Brown said...

Dale,

I am Twitter-challenged as well, though it couldn't be any excruciating than regular book tours, could it?

Val,

It would be a difficult read, but as the author stated, it's more of a way to draw attention the book.

Editor JDC,

Agreed, and sometimes I'm not huge on Facebook's brevity either.

Rosaria,

That seems to be the universal lament with author and publishing-related blogs...at least if your name isn't Oates, Rowling or Brown (that would be Dan, not me).

Doc,

It wouldn't work with the rhythmn of your stories. Every time one of your sentences picked up steam, the reader would have to shift to the next tweet.

Sky Dad,

I wonder if it is a generational thing, though I do see some people our age using the thing.

Paulie Decibels,

More power to her if she can get it off the ground.

Gifted Typist said...

are you tweeting yet cormac?

Cormac Brown said...

Gifted,

Nah, my two and half blogs would get the info first, as well as the many social networking sites that I already am a member of. So why would I bother with Twitter?