Mass market paperbacks coming soon!

Amazon offers this service (I'm an idiot, I just discovered it), and I'll be reformatting Villain and Wayward to publish in an actual paper copy.

I know were moving away from it, but some folks like it, so why not?

I don't know how the price points are, but like Villain's Kindle edition, I'll put it as cheaply as possible, with just a buck or two coming my way.

First I'm finishing the Wayward edits, though!

Done with the edit!

DONE! I'm finished with the edit. All done, except for two problems I need to fix that make no sense. One is 13 pages, the other is 9. So done for all intents and purposes.

My content editor, Josh Hoade, is through the first act and working on the second. Once we're both done, it goes to my final editor, Ashley Daoust, then I format and publish. I'll throw it up as soon as it's ready, and right now it looks like I'm going to beat my March 2013 deadline (I published Villain on 3/28/12).

This version will come out of the gate after Ashley's edit so we won't experience the problems from the first book, where readers found a ton of stupid grammatical errors. I didn't expect anyone to read the thing, so I didn't think to worry about a professional edit. My mistake.

Erik Von Lehman is hard at work on the cover, and I'm including his first sketch of some of the interior art. I just love how he draws Blackjack and Apogee.

More in a bit!

Editing is coming along

Working hard on the edit, so in the meantime here's a few links to the reviews. 41 from Amazon and 20-something ratings from Pubit (Barnes & Noble).

http://www.amazon.com/Blackjack-Villain-The-Series-ebook/dp/B007PV3QW6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1350668839&sr=8-1&keywords=blackjack+villain

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15724648-blackjack-villain

All those good reviews are setting a high bar for book two...

First draft to Blackjack Wayward done!

That's right. The first draft is done and ready for edit. It's quite a mess, but I think there's a good core there, and the action is out of hand, perhaps topping Villain.

The process is now as follows, make a heavy edit on the second pass, then have the two editors go at it. Then publish and start on the third one, which is already plotted out and partially outlined.

I know some of you guys are eager to get your hands on the second book. At this pace, it looks like December we'll be ready.

Thanks again for all your support!

I'm on Facebook, search for BEN BEQUER. Yes, it's a Q.

People like it!

Nine reviews as of this morning with an average of 4.444 stars out of a possible 5.  I'm humbled by and thankful to all the kind reviewers (even those that called me BeGuer - it's a "Q" people :P).

I'm hard at work on book 2, almost 220 pages into the first draft, and if anyone is wondering, it looks like about the end of 2012 when I'll be completely done with all the drafts and subsequent edits at my present pace.

There are also two more series percolating in my head.  One is futuristic space opera stuff, inspired by Niven, Asimov and Roddenberry (oh, and Clint Eastwood...).  I don't have this one in my head fully, save the leading character, and the over-arching plot thread.  It's intended to be something more serialized, shorter than Villain, but with the same Beguer style.

The other comes courtesy of my latest reading of George R. R. Martin, and a wealth of other inspirations from Weiss/Hickman's Dragonlance saga to Cornwell's Arthurian tales, to Robert E. Howard.  This idea is sort of an overreaction to watching HBO's excellent Game of Thrones series and subsequently starting to read the first book.  Part of what's motivating me here is a prevalence of late-middle ages technology and socio-economy in describing the time periods of much of the fantasy I'm seeing published or on TV/Movies. I miss the old sword and sandal epics of the fifties and sixties as well as some of the older heroes that led to everything we're doing now, like Conan and John Carter.  I know gleaming metal plate armor is cool looking, as are massed charges of destriers laden with heavy armored lance bearing knights.  But it seems that most of what I'm seeing these days revolves around a European pseudo-feudal political system with clean castles, and heavy-handed laws to protect everyone.  I recall the joy of reading Howard's The Scarlet Citadel and Lieber's Ill Met in Lankhmar and having a feeling that the ground was muddy, and there was little to protect our protagonist but his guile and the edge of his sword.  Now, I know a lot of Roman stuff is out there, including great books by Valerio Massimo Manfredi and Simon Scarrow, but these are governed by the rules of history, and can't venture in the the shadowy realm of fantasy.  I mean, you're not going to see a coiled serpent rise out of the Rubicon as Julius Ceasar and Legio XIII crossed it.  Besides, I mean to go back farther, perhaps inspired by a period far back as the Uruk period of Mesopotamia, but with an original world and lore that I'm already putting together.

But, Blackjack Wayward (as it's tentatively called so far) is next, and I'm already making plans for the third and fourth books.

It's on Amazon!

The book is live on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Blackjack-Villain-The-Series-ebook/dp/B007PV3QW6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333258638&sr=8-1

here's a brief sample


http://www.pdfhost.net/index.php?Action=Download&File=4830109ef6656f9505d966c240a50ed6

Back cover image

(if this thing ever prints)

Artist's name is Erik Von Lehmann and I can stop spouting wonders of the guy's work

www.erikvonlehmann.deviantart.com

email: daxerxies@aol.com

Prologue - a little taste of it.

I sensed him well before I could see him.  A man in my line of business learns to respect every random anxious feeling, or he doesn’t last long.

This guy had the subtlety of a category 5 hurricane.  He also had powers and an ego to match.   No sooner had I come out onto the balcony of my Malibu home to take in the sunset and down a cold beer than the entire landscape changed.  It transformed from the warm purple and orange, to darkness, swept through by shadows, as a whole storm front moved in too fast to be a natural occurrence.  The slight breeze turned into a gale, and the clouds above coalesced into the outline of a cruel smiling face, eyes illuminated with white-yellow lightning.

I dropped my beer and threw myself through the sliding glass door as the first crackle of lighting tore into the balcony, exploding inward along with a cloud of wood and glass.  I flew through the air like a rag doll flung by an angry child, spearing through a wall into the kitchen and coming to a rest atop the shattered remains of the center island.

The air crackled electrostatically, and my lungs burned as every breath felt like a surge of wafting energy.  I came to my feet and glanced over my shoulders through the wrecked wall at the wide chasm that lay beyond the smoldering balcony.  I shook the glass and dust out of my face, and noticed the hairs of my arms standing on end as he entered, carried aloft by his god-like powers and after looking around his stern gaze settled upon me.

I blinked my vision clear, but the world still had a bright white tinge.  It illuminated him like an angel as he touched down into the remains of my living room.  He was tall and powerful, wearing ridiculous blue and yellow tights.  He called himself Atmosphero.  Yes, Atmosphero.  My real name is Dale McKeown, but I’m known as...

“Blackjack,” he said “fancy meeting you here.” 

I should have jumped out of the way, or maybe I did but he was faster, lancing his horrible powers at me through the hole in the wall, raw lightning crackling through my body.  I screamed, overcome with rage, impotence and pain, as I watched him destroy the remnants of the wall in front of me and shatter the entire kitchen around me.  Light exploded in the back of my mind, and I thought bitterly of the sunset I enjoyed a minute before.   

A gust of wind lifted me off the ground, like an overgrown marionette, as lightning racked my body like a thousand pulled muscles and tendons all at once.  He cackled, reveling in his power and tossed me across the room.  I careened into the dual steel refrigerators, destroying them and bathing their contents as I fell to the floor.  Caked in milk, juice and egg, I was momentarily out of sight, and that was the only chance I needed.

Because Atmosphero wasn’t the only one in the room with super powers.

He was hidden by what remained of the wall between my living room and kitchen but I could feel where he was, and imagined him strolling forward casually to finish me off.

I buried my dislike for the peacock and flung a massive piece of marble through the wall.  It was effortless, like throwing a Frisbee.  The huge shard of countertop tore through drywall and studs, like a tank rolling downhill and I laughed, thinking I had him.

Hopping through the wide hole, I saw him standing there, unharmed, the marble countertop floating in the air a few feet from him.  His mocking smile dripped with disgust, as if he expected more of a challenge from me.

He flung the countertop back at me but I intercepted it with a punch, detonating it into a hailstorm of marble fragments.  I rushed forward, but he took to the air to avoid me and my hairs stood on end as he charged up again.

"Come down here, asshole," I roared.  "And let me give you a proper welcome."

I was bigger than him, bigger than most people, and a lot stronger.  I usually depended on my bow and trick arrows, but in a straight up fight I could crush him. 

"Aw, are you mad I beat you so easily last time?" I taunted, hoping he'd get reckless and rush me, but despite our growing grudge, he was a pro.  Atmosphero was going to fight me on his terms.

“Damn man, that’s rough,” he chuckled, glancing around my shattered house.  “I guess no subletting this one.  But don't worry; the walls in San Quentin are a bit sturdier.” 

I rushed him, but he was quicker.  My fingertips almost latched onto his cape as he flipped over me and flung a powerful charge of wind that heaved me out of the house through the damaged balcony, and down the rocky Malibu hill.  I crashed down the cliff through rock, brush and dirt, bouncing a half dozen times until I came to rest on the soft sands of the beach two hundred feet below my home.

Bruised and battered, I came to my unsteady feet and looked up, half-expecting the next bolt of lightning from Atmosphero, but he hovered over my home looking down at me.  Maybe he was surprised I was still on my feet, or perhaps he was unsure what to do next, but he got an idea fast.

Atmosphero summoned up his storm powers with a wide cast of his hands, a tornado formed beneath and around my house, a great howl of wind and sand that ripped the structure from its foundation, piping and wooden struts and lifted the whole thing into the air.

Then he hurled it at me.

It came so fast, a whole house hurling headlong at me, that I had no way to avoid it, nowhere to go.  I could only chortle before the house crushed me.  The sheer weight of the tons of concrete and masonry forced me down, collapsing atop me and burying me deep in the sand.  The crashing sound was deafening, a disharmonious mix of exploding wood, shattering glass and twisting metal.  But I lived, and started to dig myself out.

Atmosphero helped, noticing the movement in the wreckage and wanting to finish me once and for all.  He lifted a whole wall section off me, casting it aside.  Still stuck under some of the structure, I could see him floating above; feel the rush of his wind powers lifting whole pieces of the devastated house.

Above me lay the bent and twisted remains of the garage door, and when he flung it away, I struck, hurling one of the destroyed refrigerators at him (though how the fridge ended up in what was essentially my garage, I'll never know).

It caught him by surprise, slamming into his chest and knocking him over, pinning him long enough for me to reach him.  I picked up the fridge and lifted it off his stunned and bloodied form; his eyes were filled with a mixture of rage and fear.

"Hey asshole," I said, "Thanks for fucking up my house.  Now I'm going to fuck up your face," I said and slammed the heavy fridge down with my full strength back on him.  I lifted it and pounded him once more with the shattered fridge, pulverizing the wobbly aluminum and plastic frame.  Now it was my turn to rip through pieces of metal to get to him.  And his turn to surprise me.

Atmosphero whipped back the remains of the refrigerator into me with his wind powers, sending me reeling a few paces.  At the same time, he came to his feet and summoned a vortex of wind that spun around us, whipping up shreds and pieces of the destroyed home like a wall of metallic and wooden death.

"Time for you to learn a valuable lesson," he said, spitting blood.  Atmosphero slugged me across the face with more strength than I had imagined he had, but this was what I wanted: a standup fight. 

The only problem was my body didn't cooperate.  My arms were heavy and useless, pinned to my sides and I stood there, semi-paralyzed, as he powered fist after fist into my face.  I couldn’t do anything, couldn’t focus my thoughts.  I could barely stand.   He unleashed his full fury and the pain of each blow was intense.  I staggered backwards a few steps then fell down on to my knees, receiving more and more punishment, blow after pummeling blow.

The rub is he’d get away with it because he was the hero and I was a scumbag villain.

What next?

Now that the blurb is done and semi-ready (aka laughably inadequate), is it time to send this thing to agents/publishing houses?  I don't know.  It's a weird book.  Sci-fi mixed with super heroes.  Even I don't want to read it.  It's actually kind of cool, and I know I have a winner because every time I read it, I'm blown away at how cool everything is, but there's a long way between self-gratification and the New York Times Bestseller list.

So self-publish.  I've got it formatted in epub and mobi, and I'm trying my hardest to stop editing it, so I don't have to reformat it again and again every day.

But it eats at me...do I send out a few query letters.  Just a couple to see if anyone is interested?

Cover

This is what I have so far...

Yes, that's a pen-name.  It's all strategerie.

UPGRADES!

New working synopsis/blurb...

I'm Blackjack. A small-time villain. I know I’m not a big leaguer, but more than one wannabe hero has ended up in traction after getting in my way. I mostly stick to easy stuff, though, like popping banks and armored cars, and make a little money where I can. Living good is nice, you know?

I thought I had it all figured out, until I found a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: A slot in a big time super villain team.

The gig seemed like a dream. Steal bits of dusty old crap from different parts of the world and make serious cash. But little would I know that what would start small would end up sending me halfway across the galaxy (or was it to a different dimension?), and at the end of it all the fate of our planet, and everyone living in it, would be in my hands.

Oh, and I met a girl.

A girl that changed everything.

A cover is in the works!

Ok, so I found a killer artist who's going to start working on the cover at once.  Here's a link to his deviant art site:

http://erikvonlehmann.deviantart.com/

He's so talented, I might get him to do a few more illustrations (as his time permits) to slot in the middle of the book.  Hell, I'm planning on it.

Thanks Erik!!!