BooksChatter: ☀ You Think This is a Game?: Internet Tough Guys [3]

Thank you for joining us on the Virtual Book Tour for You Think This is a Game?, a Young Adult Thriller by Bernard Maestas (2 December 2015, Rebel ePublishers, 179 pages).

This is the third book in the Internet Tough Guys series.

PREVIEW: Check out the book's synopsis and excerpt below, as well as details about the other titles in the series. Read the Prologue and the first two chapters with Amazon Look Inside.

Please do take part: comment on our post and follow the tour where you will be able to read other excerpts (☀), interviews (ℚ), reviews (✍) and guest blog posts (✉).

Synopsis | Teaser | The Series | Author Q&A | About the Author | Tour Stops

Synopsis

Wisecracking smartasses Ted and Alex are an elite army of two, fighting for fortune under the banner of their private military corporation Reagan Kirwan International. MIT-trained computer hacker and engineer Ted is the brains.
Freerunning ex-French Foreign Legion commando is the brawn. With their unique combination of skills, they are in high demand on the blurry and ever-changing modern battlefields.

When oil is struck in a Somalian province, two titans of the energy industry collide head-on over the lucrative rights. The result is a war which rages both in the boardrooms and on the already bloody sands.

Hired for the simple task of tipping the scales, Ted and Alex’s mission takes a dangerous and deadly turn. They learn they are not the only trump cards in play and, this time, they may be on the wrong side. Facing the most dangerous of adversaries, constant perils, and treacherous corporate politics, they must stand together if they want to survive – and, more importantly, collect their paychecks.

Because war is a two-player co-op and all they have is each other.

Teaser: Excerpt

Prologue

Every one of the Ted Reagan's shallow, panicked breaths came with a steep price in pain. Thick, noxious black smoke scorched his lungs and stung his eyes, giving him a perfectly valid excuse for the streaming tears streaking his smudged face. Burning tires and cooking flesh wafted on dark clouds, prodded his gag reflex but that was far down the list of his worries.
      The frame in front of him, with its missing door, exited onto a street of once blinding daylight, now clouded by the smoke. Gunfire cracked relentlessly, stabbing like needles in his ears while the heavier thunder of the larger explosions rattled him to the bone as they rolled beneath him. Each shot, fired in anger, called Ted's attention to the open doorway, to the sheer lack of protection between his suddenly vulnerable-feeling self and the battle raging just outside.
      Ted sat upright only thanks to the clay wall at his back against which he'd fallen. His legs, limp and useless, lay stretched out in front of him, his arms fallen weakly into his lap. His hands, though, they were strong with fear, knotted into tight, cramping, unrelenting death grips around the butt of his Glock pistol. Icy anxiety flowed through his body, numbing his hands to the aches while tremors of fright robbed him of any hope of accuracy.
      Through all the mortal terror streaming like ice in his veins, Ted felt a single candlelight of hope warming his chest, keeping his heart from frosting over. It had nothing to do with the gun in his hands which, even under perfect conditions, he was only average at wielding. It was the patient bangs, louder and sharper than the chattering call-and-answer of gunfire in the street, coming from the next room that forced him to believe, however irrationally, that he could survive this moment.
      Tempted to shut his eyes and hold onto the comfort of those nearby gun blasts, he would have if it weren't for the shadow. It was impossible to make out through the smoke, through the disorientation of his ringing skull, but it seemed to be closing, seemed to darken the open doorway in front of him. Rubbery arms lifted from his lap, the wobbly sights of his pistol swaying over the square of daylight before him. His gloved finger reached for the trigger.
      In that moment, nothing but survival filled his mind. Even the last time he'd trained his sights on a doorway, ready to fight for his life, was forgotten, washed away in the sheer instinct to survive. He could only hope this time went better than the last.

You Think This is a Game?
Available NOW!

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The Series: Internet Tough Guys

Say That To My Face | Godwin's Law |

Click on the book cover to Look Inside the book on Amazon and read an excerpt.

Say That To My Face [1]

Alex is a throwaway teenager in New York, pitfighting for scraps. Ted is a bored suburban high schooler in Illinois making a profit on changing grades and pirating movies.Together they become international mercenaries, battling for their own profit, occasionally stumbling on doing the right thing, and taking sarcastic jabs at each other along the way.

Using their collective talents, they rob a crooked bank president, rescue the kidnapped daughter of an oil tycoon and hunt high value insurgents in Iraq for the bounties on their head. They train government troops in one African country to crush the tribal government of a neighboring country and then train the tribal militia opponents of the adjacent country. In Russia they hunt down a wanted war criminal on the run from the UN, exposing a human trafficking operation.

Realizing that they are at their best together, they go into business for themselves, picking the jobs they want, when they want, and reaping all the profits.

[Published 30 November 2013, 222 pages]

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Godwin's Law [2]

Gwen Kane, estranged daughter of a Forbes millionaire and bearer of a horrifying secret is lured into a dangerous international cult. It falls to Alex Kirwan and Ted Reagan to rescue her. What should be easy money for the mercenary team of a freerunning ex-commando and his computer hacking partner proves to be anything but as they find themselves doggedly pursued across Europe, Canada and the United States by highly trained forces with resources vastly disproportionate to the recapture of one missing acolyte.

Can they unravel the mystery of Gwen's importance in time to survive?

Will Gwen pierce the seemingly impenetrable armor around Alex's heart?

And, above all, will Alex and Ted get paid?

[Published 15 November 2014, 252 pages]

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About the Author

Bernard Maestas lives in paradise. A police officer patrolling the mean streets of Hawaii, he has a background in contract security and both military and civilian law enforcement.

When not saving the world, one speeding ticket at a time, he can usually be found wasting time on the internet, playing video games -- or both. Occasionally, he finds time to write books.

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