.Photo by Ash Dainel.

What did he know about this case? Bass Johnson, dead pimp and dealer; shot in the head; gator bit the arm off his corpse; fired his 9mm once. Gus needed a ballistic match. — June 22, 2:31 p.m.

Bloodthirsty reptiles, dead pimps and automatic weapons make for spicier-than-average Twitter posts, but unlike the rest of Richmond, Terry Taylor isn’t updating the world on his 9-to-5 life. He’s writing a novel. On Twitter, 140 characters at a time.

Taylor, an Alabama-born Richmond resident, is a self-proclaimed storyteller, and he feeds a wild tale into his social-networking sphere.

Taylor (handle: @ttaylordude) is tweeting up a full-length novel — a gritty, violent,
dark-humored saga set in rural Alabama — from his office desk at Big River Advertising, where he works as creative director. He’s one of many writers across the country experimenting with this art through Twitter, whose conventional purpose is to allow users to follow each others’ real-time chats and referrals.

On the dock in Panama City, 6 men unloaded 530 kilos of heroin that was wedged inside the walls of the fishing boat. — June 25, 2:41 p.m.

It flows out “thought-by-thought,” Taylor says, emerging on his Twitter account at a steady clip of 10 to 20 posts per day.

“It’s addictive. It’s enjoyable,” he says. “I literally sit in [company] meetings thinking about what’s going to happen to Gus.” (more…)