'Keitai' is up again

Keitai Friends, available at smashwords for free.

Hi Folks, 

It's been a busy week for downloads as 'Memoirs of a Vending Machine' continues to power on at smashwords. I haven't had as much luck yet with 'Kujira' but its early days yet. I have been promising to include the manga images that I had originally posted with Keitai Friends in Kujira. I unpublished Keitai Friends because it was a chapter of Kujira and I didn't think it was a good idea from a sales point of view to have them both available. Well... I've changed my mind. I miss not having it up and watching the download figures climb so I've re-published it, manga images and all. 

Just in case I haven't convinced you to have a read. Check out the excerpt from Keitai Friends posted below.

Keitai Friends

Josh’s mood snapped viciously and without warning. He broke away from the counter, still holding the magazine. Without thinking, he slipped the magazine into the inside pocket of his black leather jacket continuing on, at pace, through the maze of aisles, bookshelves and people, towards the exit. Steaming with anger and a serial killer expression he dodged and weaved through the last crowded walkway. A joyous sense of triumph grew in his mind as he approached the exit leading to the Hankyu station meeting area where there would be a crowd of hundreds. He could blend in with all the other foreigners, escaping with the magazine and satisfying his sense of justice.
His pace slowed as he crossed the boundary between the store and the exit. A sense of anticlimax taking hold as he realised that no-one had noticed nor cared.  He walked out into the crowd and felt insignificant, his mood slipping down through a series of gears almost to a state of depression. No longer angry, he paused at a vending machine, staring at the cans but really staring at nothing. He fished around in his right hand pocket for some change and yanked out a handful, choosing a 100 and a 10 yen coin. Feeding in the coins, a red lamp flashed and he pressed it, releasing a small brown bottle of Dekavita - an energy drink. He hoped it would snap him out of the depressive mood that had taken him over. The thud as the drink hit the dispensing tray triggered a sense of the familiar, shifting his mood closer to equilibrium. He picked up the bottle, snapped the aluminium twist top and sculled a good third of the refreshing drink.
Still facing the vending machine, wiping his mouth on his sleeve and turned slowly to face the crowd. Out of the corner of his eye he saw them coming in his direction and knew instantly that his number was up. There was no place to run in the underground world of the largest train station in Osaka. Umeda station was monitored by hundreds of cameras and he stood out as a foreigner in an homogenously Asian city. 

BTW: The spoiler I mentioned in one of my previous posts over at Barnes and Noble  seems to have had an effect on sales. As I mentioned, it was riding high with four stars for a few weeks until a spoiler came along and gave it one star. That dragged it down to a three and sales have slowed. If anyone reading this blog is hooked up to Barnes and Noble's Nook Books, how 'bout a decent rating and a nice comment? I'll let you have the book for free if you do.


Oh and BTW again, My new weird short story 'Bug' is doing pretty well over at wattpad. If you go there you'll also find Keitai Friends posted although you won't find the images. 'Bug' comes up as 'The Bug' 'cause wattpad wouldn't let me post it as 'Bug'. As you might have already guessed, I prefer 'Bug'. If you have a read, how about a comment or a vote or something. Again, if you do this, I'll let you have it for free.


Cheers


Beerubaroyaji