Guys, I need a favour and it won't cost you a penny.

So, if you've looked at the Blog, or liked The Chimping Dandy on Facebook, or followed the Twitter feed recently or know me personally, you'll know that I've released a book for the Kindle.  Here it is look, in this picture:

You can press here to go to Amazon

Now, take a look at the bottom of the screen... Just above that five star rating *cough*, you'll see the price.  It's in red, you can't miss it.

That's right, it's £0.00 pounds, that's quite literally free. (Well, for a limited time at least)

How many things can you get for free nowadays? Not a lot, well, not unless you're one of those people who help yourself to a handful of pick'n'mix whilst you're walking around ASDA, or tests the car doors in public car-parks to see if you can get yourself a new car stereo or a glove-box worth of loose change (But we all know that you're not that kind of person don't we?).

So, from today until Sunday 3rd November, you can download all 407 pages, all 75 chapters of the book, if you have a Kindle, or the Kindle app for your Smartphone, Tablet or PC. with absolutely no cost to yourself.

I can see a few of you looking a bit quizzical, as if to say, 'It was only about £2 when he was charging for it, why has he suddenly made it free?  And more to the point, if I'd known that he was going to offer it for free, I wouldn't have bought it with cold, hard, cash in the first place.'

To the people who've already bought it, and want your money back, I completely understand, if you drop me an email at thechimpingdandy@hotmail.co.uk with your address, I'll stick you a couple of quid in the post with a signed picture of me naked for you to put up on your wall.  (In fact, if you just want a signed picture of me naked to put up on your wall, feel free to get in touch - Although it won't be a very big picture, it's quite cold in the UK at the moment.)

Why am I offering this, the first collection of my meandering musings for free? (Well, for a limited time at least).

It's all my Brother's fault you see, the one who lives in the hollowed out volcano in the Mediterranean.  He has bought our dear, pigeon shattering Father (TM) a new Kindle and, I'd quite like to be able to download my book to this new device for him without him saying 'Why have I got to pay to download your book?  It's not like you're a real author or anything, you're not exactly John Grisham are you?'

What I'd like you to do, is just take five minutes to download the book, or if you don't have the Kindle reader app, take five minutes to download that, then take five minutes to download the book, and then...

I'll start that again, it was getting away from me a bit.  I need between 10 and 15 minutes of your precious time.

1. Download the Kindle reader for your device (if you haven't already and it's not a Kindle)
2. Get a FREE COPY of the book From here
3. Write a quick review (This is the most important bit for me if you've got the time)
4. Pimp it to anyone that you think needs cheering up, you're doing a public service here people - Laughter is the best medicine, as they say in The Reader's Digest.

Thanks for listening guys, I'd really appreciate it if you could find the time to do this, I want my Dad to be proud of me, like most of us do - You can think of it as your kind act for today, you have my permission to be as grumpy as you like for the rest of the day, after you've followed the above four steps that is.

You do try to do one kind thing for someone every day right?

You should, we should all aspire to be more like this chap, The Free Help Guy, people love him, he's great.

P.S. Hopefully, sometime next month the real paper version of the book should be released, I think it's going to be about £8 and I will happily sign copies and write funny stuff in it for you for free if you send it to me with some form of return postage.

-oOo-

OK, I'm the first person to admit that everything above reads like I'm a needy A-hole who just wants to pimp his crappy book and he's trying to use you wonderful Internet people to do it for him because he's broke.

And whilst I'd be lying if I said that I didn't want people to read my books, because I think some of the stories are genuinely funny, I didn't decide to publish the collections to make a fortune and quit my day-job  (about a hundred people have to buy a book at full price before I see any money at all) this particular appeal is all about my relationship with my Dad.

And this is why.

Help me out guys?