Cloud Atlas author David Mitchell to drip feed latest work via Twitter
David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas, has revealed that his next work will eschew traditional publication routes and instead be drip fed onto the micro-blogging platform Twitter in 140 character instalments.
The Right Sort, a short story said to be unconnected to his next novel, will be packaged up onto chunks of 20 tweets to be published over the next seven days.
Despite embracing social media for the project Mitchell himself remains to be sold on the merits of the medium, saying: “I'm not really a social media animal.
"I like my privacy... I don't want to make public the ante-rooms of my mind. I don't want to add to this ocean of trivia and irrelevance, it's already vast and deep enough."
Mitchell’s new-found conversion to the social media cause was inspired by his publishers, who are keen to promote his latest work – The Bone Clock. Rather than be a mere ‘gimmick’ the author has customised the story specifically for the medium.
Set in 1978 The Right Sort is narrated by a teenage boy whilst ‘tripping out’ on Valium, delivering the story in "a sequence of nice little throbs and pulses - those are the Tweets”, said Mitchell.