In a blog entry a couple of weeks ago, I introduced one of my new books, [Twitter 英語術] (translation: English Language Techniques for Twitter,) which is available at http://www.chrisbelton.com/blog/?p=70 if you haven’t yet seen it. During this introduction I mentioned that the book contains a twist that will probably mark a first for the publishing industry, in that it is three-dimensional with a past, a present and a future. I also mentioned that it contains one other twist, which I did not reveal at the time.
Well, the time has now come to reveal the whole story…
But, before that, allow me to quote from the previous blog entry so that you’ll have some idea of what I’m talking about.
Quote: ———————
The central premise is that of a young Japanese man deciding to record every small event of an entire day for posterity. He starts at 05:00 a.m. one Saturday morning and tweets about every small thing that happens to him and around him until 05:00 a.m. the following morning. He tweets from his room, he tweets from the beach, he tweets from the train, he tweets from shops, he tweets from restaurants and he tweets from coffee bars.
These tweets are not just one-way tweets; he also interacts with some of his followers during the course of his tweet-a-thon. In fact, he becomes very friendly with one follower from the UK and a mini-romance begins to blossom with the rest of the world watching.
———————: Unquote
Okay, now that you’re up to speed, to continue…
Starting at 05:00am (Japan time) on Saturday June 5th and continuing through to 05:00am the following morning, the entire book will be posted tweet by tweet on Twitter in the exact same way as it appears in the book. The characters involved are as follows:
Keita Yamashita: @keichiga
Angela Crawford: @punkangie
Yves Breugher: @yvesbreughel
Surinder Thakur: @surinderIT
Helen Grovers: @helengrovers
If you take a look at the above characters’ profiles on Twitter, you will notice that the story has already started. All have been members of Twitter since February, and they have posted approximately 1,500 tweets between them so far. The book itself consists of 530 tweets, which means that anybody who has purchased and read the book only knows one quarter of the story if they are not yet following the characters.
And that is not all. The story is a work-in-progress and will continue after June 6th on a daily basis. The romance first ignited within the pages of the book (and, in due course, on Twitter) between Keita and Angie will continue to evolve well into the future to produce a novel-like story that will be written before the eyes of the reader in the real time.
So there you have it; the world’s first reality fiction with a past, a present and a future.
P.S. If you decide to follow the characters, please also feel free to follow me and my co-author at the following addresses:
Christopher Belton: @beltonwriter
Yoichi Hareyama: @y_hareyama
