Thank you for participating in the Espresso Love journey and welcome to the bonus content for Espresso Love! This is a short story collection containing prequel, sequel, spin-off, alternate-universe, collaborative and interactive content. Spoiler alert: Please read Espresso Love before entering!
Table of Contents:
1. UHHBM1 Fight Club Community Collab: Naoki Maeda (Espresso Love) vs Sigma (@NickUskoski's Sigma/Star)
2. @ESP_Shizuka's account: Letter to Naoki Maeda
3. Brandy (Cosmo Clock 21 Teaser)
4. @ESP_Shizuka: Unsent Message 10/16/2007
5. @ESP_Shizuka: Page 36 of "Intermediate English for High School II"
6. Manuscript - Spin-off ending involving a manuscript
7. Turnaround - Recap of events in the past
8. By The River - A philosophical conversation in nature about rocks
9. Iced Lemon Tea - Regarding the first day they met
10. @ESP_Naoki: Act 1 - Baseball, Records of a Lost City
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Espresso Love Post-Completion Next Steps
1) The super cute coffee charm free GIVEAWAY returns! (See second last page of Espresso Love for details on how to participate)
2) The interactive "sequel" project part 1 launches. The CHARACTERS have JOINED TWITTER and WATTPAD! Follow or bookmark @ESP_Shizuka , @ESP_Naoki , @ESP_Shirayuki for sequel, spin-off, clues and more bonus content! Make sure to interact with them, ask them questions and see how they respond!
3) Join the ESP STREET TEAM! While the manuscript is finished, I'll still need your amazing support to send it along the editing and publishing route! (Seeking representation and publishers) Please share the Espresso Love novel with others, and join my exclusive contact list for special behind the scenes updates and info on how you can contribute! Send me a PM to join!
4) Give Espresso Love a review and tags on GOODREADS.com/TAKATSU !
5) Espresso Love Short Stories will be written - including prequel, sequel, memories, moments from different perspectives, alternate endings, fun content, and more! The official collection will be here, called "Espresso Love: Fragments". Cosmo Clock 21, the sequel novel is also in the planning phase. Stay tuned!
6) MULTIMEDIA COLLABORATIONS will be in progress to take it beyond text and encourage creative interpretation! Inviting all talented artists, painters, illustrators for artwork compilation and merch and independent singer songwriter, composers and musicians to create an original mini album soundtrack. Contact me if interested!
7) Get exclusive Espresso Love t-shirts, phone cases and other merch at SOCIETY6.com/TAKATSU , more designs coming! Try Shizuka's drink: http://tiny.cc/espdrink
8) Stay tuned for reader submission contests for prizes such as merch, Starbucks gift cards, shoutouts and more! Maybe in the form of "fanfiction", fanart or other fun activities :)
9) Ask me any questions on Twitter @taka_chan or comment below and I will reply to you or write a blog post for full answers ;)
9) Don't forget to head to my site TAKATSU.TK for more info, news, behind the scenes, interviews, thoughts, philosophy and insight. Follow my updates on FACEBOOK.com/TAKATSUMUSIC , TWITTER @taka_chan , INSTAGRAM @taka_chan , YOUTUBE.com/TAKANOVEL , GOODREADS.com/TAKATSU
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About Espresso Love
[ Dystopian / Philosophical / Magical-Realism / Literary / Romance ]
Award-winning pioneer of the cell phone novel movement in the West, author of "Secondhand Memories", "Move", "All's Well That Ends Well", TAKATSU, will be experimenting with an ambitious full prose narrative.
A literature-afficionado meets a strange girl in a coffee shop and shares an intellectual conversation, ultimately sparking a journey against an oppressive system, mindless agents and civil unrest for his past, love, and soul - but yet all that remains is a peculiar coffee order.
Espresso Love is a literary fiction project that challenges our views of the human condition, the capitalist mechanism and reality, set in dystopian Tokyo, where the System drains identity, thoughts, memories, and emotions.
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"They say your order reveals the depths of your being. Like wearing your heart on your sleeve."
Sometimes the small things in life, are the start to something bigger.
Sometimes it is all that's left, to remind us of who we are.
"System is Everything."
An Individual vs System novel.
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"An interesting 'vapoury' style that seems to hover off world at times. ...atmosphere and dialogue are strong...shows assurance and poise. Also very promising in suggestions. ...Author's intent to invoke/evoke mystery is very effective...haunting and strange (which is good); intelligence present on page...some sense of terror in the core here... You're on to something different, striking."
- B.W. Powe, Associate Professor, Dept of English, York University and author of "A Tremendous Canada of Light", "A Climate Charged", "Outage", "The Unsaid Passing", and "Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye: Apocalypse and Alchemy"
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"Struck me to the very core of my being..."
"Intellectually challenging..."
"Very interesting concept of reality... Thought provoking.."
"Like a seven course meal full of spice and illumination... One does not listen to a classical piece to get to its ending. No. It is the ride, the moment by moment...a genuine Masamune among stories."
"...your words, the effect of them on my mind as coffee to my senses..."
"Espresso Love is highly intelligent and worthwhile reading...profound and multi-layered."
"I am awestruck at the philosophical stance of your writing. Your writing is akin to that of Murakami in its surrealist execution."
"It's not a regular thing to find a piece of work that oozes sophistication and embodies literature and art in Wattpad."
"It's ambiguous but I feel like that's the point of it...the style of writing is unique and not something that I've read before."
"Surprisingly bittersweet, like a good cup of coffee. It really makes you think and question the reality around us."
takatsu.wordpress.com/reviews for reviews by teachers, published authors and young readers alike.
Record-keeping: Spiritual #14 / Mystery/Thriller #15 / Science Fiction #20 / General Fiction #62, Featured on Wattpad, IndieReader and TV series @DIGonUSA
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REFERENCES/ALLUSIONS/INFLUENCES OF THE NOVEL:
- Psychologist Carl Jung's Collective Unconscious theories
- George Orwell's 1984; Franz Kafka's The Trial; Haruki Murakami's 1Q84, Kafka on the Shore, Wind Up Bird Chronicle; Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
- Karl Marx's Criticism of Capitalism
- Structuralist Movements
- Northrop Frye's Archetypal Criticism of Literature
- Aristotle's the Poetics
- Platonic Views on Love
- Freud's Superego, Ego & Id
- George Berkeley's subjective idealism
- Lewis Mumford's The City in History
- John Berger's Ways of Seeing
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MUSICAL REFERENCES/MENTIONS IN THE NOVEL:
Soundscape/Playlist available here >> http://tiny.cc/espmusic
Nirvana - "Turnaround"
Simon & Garfunkel - "Sound of Silence"
Lisa Ono - "Volare"
Paganini - "Violin Concerto No. 4"
Chopin - "Nocturne No. 1"
Mendelssohn - "Hebrides Overture (Fingal's Cave)"
Pablo de Sarasate - "Jota Aragonese (Op. 27)"
Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Schubert
Bohren & der Club of Gore - "Kleiner Finger" and various
Jason Mraz - "Freedom Song"
Maroon 5 - "Sunday Morning"
John Mayer
Bob Dylan - "Desolation Row"
SUM41, ONE OK ROCK, Flumpool
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Join the revolution and grab Shizuka's signature Starbucks order! Send in your pictures and comments! >> http://tiny.cc/espdrink
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RATE the novel on Goodreads!
Find it via http://goodreads.com/takatsu
LIKE THE FB PAGE!
http://facebook.com/espressolove
http://facebook.com/takatsumusic
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Copyright © 2013-2014 by TAKATSU
All rights reserved. This literary work or any portion thereof may not be reproduced, distributed or used in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations for non-commercial purposes with full credit and source information given.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are actual research, references, and accurate details intended to be used fictitiously and objectively. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.