Guest Post: THE TWITTER NOVEL PROJECT

I grew up around rock music, and it pretty much influenced everything I've done in my life -- the tattoos, the dyed hair and painted fingernails in high school, the horrible thrash-metal band I fronted in college (we tortured our guitars more than we played them, and the less said about the fate of the drum kit, the better).


That band, though, as bad as it was, made me realize that I wasn't a musician. I was, and am, a nerd, and proud of it. And since rock was already so important to me, I did what every good nerd does -- I researched, and traced the history of all of the music I loved back to one place and time.


And that's how I found the MC5, the band that I consider to be the nexus of all of the good rock music that came after. It's one of the few bands that sounds as good today as it did more than 40 years ago, and that's saying a lot.


Of course, rock still influences everything I do, and what I do now is write. I decided, back in February, to write the first draft of a novel using Twitter.


Imagine my surprise when one of my first followers was Dennis Thompson, the percussion powerhouse behind the band of bands, Detroit's own Motor City Five.


I was (and am still) humbled and honored to have made Dennis' digital acquaintance, and I finally managed to work an MC5 song into the book. . . because, as every music nerd knows, it's all about the right song at the right time.


The Twitter Novel Project marches on, but the MC5 finally got some love in the book in Chapter 11:

"Damn if he ain't creepy," Eric muttered to himself, turning up the stereo. The MC5's "Motor City is Burning" blared out of his open windows as he pulled into the parking garage and killed the engine.

Read an excerpt HERE

Thank you Shawn