New Book Published

The Methusela Strain started life as a long short story, which won a special commendation from The New Writer novelette contest, when submitted. It spent some time languishing in a drawer for want of a suitable publishing opportunity. I revisited the original a few weeks ago, whilst searching my files during a 'tidying up' exercise, and decided it would make a good ebook. It needed more work and more content to make it into a proper story, so I spent time on enlargement and editing and came up with the book presented here.
With the cover, I wanted to present an idea of the content whilst giving some indication of the themes. The warmth of the loving couple seems to contrast well with the harsh and cold architecture of the background through which they are walking together toward an unknown future. It took some considerable time, trawling through the pictures available on the site I use for this purpose: http://www.dreamstime.com/ is an excellent place to find such pictures, with over 12,000,000 royalty free images, each available at very reasonable cost.

The story?
The Methuselah Strain is set in the not too distant future, on Earth, following a couple of catastrophic events, which have reduced the population significantly. Advances in gene manipulation have seriously modified the ability of the human body to exist for longer than at present. Similarly, advances in computer technology, nanotechnology and robotics have ensured that the ancient dream of the 1970s has finally come about. Almost everything is automated and many of the cyborgs are all but indistinguishable from human beings.
Into this world of ease and lack of purpose, beyond hedonism, I bring my two major protagonists. Lucy, aka The Prime Renegade, is an expert at the technology and, sick of the artificiality of life, seeks to end the rule of machines. She also needs and wants a man she can love and who might father a child for her. Randal is a devoted hedonist with little technical knowledge, who spends his time in athletic endeavours with the various sex toys with which he's surrounded.
When these two meet, what will be the result?

If I've intrigued you enough to tempt you to read more, you can freely sample the first 20% of the book using this link, which takes you to the Smashwords page where my books are displayed for sale: http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/stuartaken  Here you can also buy the ebook for any of the available ereaders, including your PC or Mac.

If, on the other hand, you feel you can risk the $1.49 or £1.05 to buy the Kindle ebook without sampling it first, you might want to try the links to Amazon, as follows:
USA: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=stuart+aken&x=8&y=20
UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=stuart+aken&x=13&y=18