Last November I took part in Nanowrimo – National Novel Writing Month. And wrote a novel. It’s Fifty thousand words that I’m actually rather proud of. It’s called ‘Rock And Roll Is Dead’, and it’s about a band who go on a journey. (it’s worth noting that, while it doesn’t contain any sex or violence, it does contain lots of swears – if that’s likely to offend, best get someone to edit it for you first 
)
Download the PDF For Free (1.9Mb)
Big, big thanks to the people who were reading it as we went along - you’ll see some of their tweets in the book from when they replied to the characters on there. Your encouragement and willingness to talk made-up nonsense to imaginary people was invaluable in shaping the direction of the book and providing the motivation to keep writing. Nuff respect.
It’s available as a free download by clicking the link above or on the book cover to the left. Sadly, the links in the PDF aren’t clickable – I’m hoping that the eventual version of it will be fully interactive (the .rtfd version of it that I’ve got is fully clickable, I just can’t get a version that looks good AND is clickable. One or the other but not both… I’ll get there.)
All the twitter and blog content in the book was ‘real’ - it was posted to the web as I went along, and the twitter responses are real responses from real twitter users – none of that interaction is ‘faked’ (other than the characters being fictional… if you see what I mean.)
There will, in due course, be a paper version of it available on Lulu for you to buy, and there are some great band T-shirts, available from the widget below!
I’m already thinking about what happens next for the characters, so the two Twitter accounts and one of the blogs will be ongoing – feel free to join in the fun – @Drum_Monkey_ and @TheDistanceMeg are the Twitter accounts, andhttp://verfremdungseffekt.posterous.com is their blog…
-o0o-
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Deeply generous of you to share your work, Steve. Much appreciated.
Blue skies
Roy
My pleasure, Roy – hope you enjoy it. Please do drop back in and post your thoughts when you’ve finished it
MP3s, eBooks, Digitizing and ‘The Experience’ « SoloBassSteve.com: Shiny Happy People Blogging… // Jan 27, 2010 at 11:52 pm
[...] ….if you don’t believe you, go and download my eBook… for free! [...]
Thanks for sharing – some real laugh out loud moments.
Free To Share My Music | John Albert Thomas // Aug 5, 2010 at 7:28 pm
[...] Lawson’s novel, Rock & Roll Is Dead–despite vulgar dialogue and the insinuation that following Jesus is irrational–did an [...]
Inspirational stuff! I am very impressed by how you’ve summed up the contemporary issues of the industry as well as the rock’n'roll myth in such an easily digestible format. I loved the use of blogs and tweets as a topical touch especially as (some of?) those links actually work. I’ve been enjoying the playlists while reading. Thanks for the free book and great read. I’ll be back to check on your blogs.
I read your book last night and blame you for keeping me up past my bed time. This is seriously good stuff and addresses the how/why/what of music beautifully. I’ll bully one of my IFA colleagues, (a drummer), into reading it. I’d like to borrow Gem’s rant to The Man as a teaching aid for contracts!