In September I recommended Oryx and Crake to @DrSnit, a person I follow on Twitter.
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Then to both of our surprise Margaret Atwood retweeted this.
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This was cool because a famous author had noticed our exchange but in retrospect it seems to be standard social media marketing, track your mentions and regard your fans. But moments later it turned deeper, and dare I say, weirder:
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Now, I agree that Kidney boy does sound like a lame, super-hero side-kick, created by a large dialysis organization for an in-house comic book to give to pediatric patients. But I never imagined that a super-star writer would be creating my costume.
I remember thinking, “What is she talking about? She can’t be serious.”
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Five days later she was still thinking about this…
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Then a month after the initial exchange, Ms. Atwood delivered:
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And in full size:
Then a couple of days later:
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And finally last night:
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Full size
This has been wonderful and exciting. How cool is it to exchange with an author I love and respect. It demonstrates how small the world can be. Everyone go out and read Margaret Atwood. She does a great job of looking at where the world is going and extrapolating it forward into a unique, detailed and terrifying future. Start with Oryx and Crake, but I liked The Year of the Flood better.
Update
Ms. Atwood took her time but months after this exchange she tweeted the fully colored version:
Update 2. This incident ended up getting world-wide attention. Here is an article in The Guardian. Comics alliance cover it. And the artists from Periscope studios were even inspired to create their own versions of Kidney Boy and Dr. Snit.
Update 3. What happens to your traffic profile when you get a link from the front page of the World section of the Guardian?
I have loved the tweeting of Luis Alberto Urrea, and can attest to how highly regarded authors such as Atwood and Urrea have successfully used Twitter to connect with bookclubs (mine too) and super-friendly and kind relations with their readers. Tonight at my bookclub we consider Urrea's books, and I just saw a retweet from Kate Heartfield I think about your cool connections with Margaret Atwood. Twitter is so fine.
She's also posting pictures from the future!
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Have you seen the Periscope Studio artists' versions of your superhero versions?! http://periscopestudio.com/?p=3638 It's like some sort of crazy meme already!
Love it. We all may need Kidney Boy to come to the rescue…
Dr. Doofenshmirtz: [To Perry the Platypus and Kidney Boy], your dragon robot is no match for the limited edition Kidney Boy Robot (dedicated to the pursuit of truth, justice and clean urine . . .) Do you want to switch? Come on, be a sport!
Daniel F.
This is great!
Coincidentally I'm in the middle of reading a chapter on Margaret Atwood's comics and this morning I see the piece in The Guardian. How appropriate!
She's amazing! How does she manages to take the time to give so much to people?
Sorry for the typo.
What a lovely story:)