"Red Letter Days" by Matt Pryor

Red Letter Days is the debut novel from Matt Pryor (The Get Up Kids, The New Amsterdams, The Terrible Twos). "This was never meant to be a book about emo or even the band in particular, I didn't want to write about the 'scene.' That is already well documented," he explains. "I just wanted to write a book to see if I could do it. It's the same way I felt when I was sixteen and I wanted to make an album: I don't really have a reason, it's just something I wanted to do." The result is a collection of short vignettes about Pryor's early life, his struggle with childhood diabetes and what it was like crisscrossing the country (and the continents) with his band in the days before iPhones and texting. It's a snapshot of a time period that feels nostalgic yet familiar. "Every one of the stories in the book is one that I've told backstage, at a bar or on a porch," Pryor says. "I just wanted to translate them from an oral tradition to a written one." From playing shows in nontraditional venues