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The Book of Schemes
Simply defined, a "scheme" is nothing more than a systematic plan of action. Like snowflakes, no two schemes are exactly alike. This bizarre grouping of 36 mixed-genre short stories (sci-fi, horror and even some classic fiction) are all about schemes and the minds behind them. Some schemes are devious, like framing a blind rock start for war crimes . . . in another galaxy. Some schemes are pretty stupid, like kidnapping the girlfriend of a known world-class assassin, then trying to ransom her back. And some of these schemes are just plain different, like a trio of super villain finalists each vying to win the next annual Villain-Of-The-Year Award. So kick back, leave your conscience outside of these pages, and step into the world of the consummate schemer.
226 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2011
2 people are currently reading
11 people want to read
About the author
Marcus V. Calvert
23 books26 followersWho am I?
I’m that guy with the unfettered imagination who doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere. Who thinks up storylines like a vampire owing child support or how aliens could be responsible for a zombie apocalypse.
Put me in a cubicle and it’s hell. A warehouse floor, kitchen, or anything else not involving creative thought? About the same. Think of me as a compulsive writer who comes up with more ideas than I could ever hope to put to paper/CPU.
When I was 9, I taught myself how to type. By 12, I had banged out my first books off an old Underwood typewriter. Alas, I was told I was gonna be a lawyer. The longer I pursued that pipe dream, the less I wrote.
Then, after not going to law school and graduating with a useless Masters degree, I dabbled in corporate America for a few decades. One day, I realized that I had no business in the normal workplace, chatting about silly stuff with normal people. Granted, I worked with plenty of delightfully strange folks, I didn’t want to ladder climb or wait 40+ years to retire.
Along the way, I wrote out twisted thing after twisted thing. Then, in 2010, I received a promotion. Then I met an editor and paid off my $%&?ing student loan. For the first time in my adult life, I was debt-free.
That lasted all of 2 months.
I wrote my first anthology, Unheroic, in 2011.
The Book Of Schemes (2012) was another anthology.
Protected (2013) was my third.
By then, people were screaming at me to write a novel. Something about my short stories not being long enough (oy!). I ended up banging out a super villain trilogy called I, Villain:
I, Villain (2014)
Murder Sauce (2015)
Frag Code (2016)
By 2014 I picked up my entrepreneurial self-confidence. By late 2015, I quit my long-time day job and went full-on. Then my long-time self-publishing firm (under new management) crapped on me, via a mix of lousy customer service and unit price increases. Long-story-short, I had to retire all SIX of my first-edition books. Truly ruined my 2016.
Now, after many ups and downs, I’ve got 2nd Editions out under the following titles:
Unheroic: Book One (currently on Amazon)
Unheroic: Book Two (currently on Amazon)
I, Villain (currently on Amazon)
Murder Sauce (currently on Amazon)
Frag Code (currently on Amazon)
The Book Of Schemes: Book I (currently on Amazon)
The Book Of Schemes: Book II (by spring of 2018)
Batchery: Volume 1 (by winter of 2018)
And my next novel in the I, Villain world: The Coin Game (sometime in 2018)
For my current fans, please note:
*Batchery is a new project of mine. Think of it as my version of a "How-To" book for aspiring writers. Unlike the plenty that exist now, this one will be useful. :)
*I’m going to retire the Protected title and fold most of its short stories into Unheroic and B.O.S.The theme’s just not as funky-strong as the first two.
*The 2nd Editions will have new stories thrown in with most of the old ones my fans have come to adore (like Pimp My Spy Car or Life Tax)
Time’s sort of my ally. My biggest obstacle’s money (for now). I was planning to take the year off, do 10 books, and then get back into the game. Instead, my selling season unexpectedly kicked off this past May. Odds are I’ll only have 6 books ready by X-mas (not bad).
Selling at conventions is my main source of revenue.The books kinda’ sell themselves, as do the repeat sales (once they’ve been read). The problem’s that buying vendor slots costs money and most of my piddly resources were tied into getting six books up and out within a 12-month span.
I’m lucky to have some awesome people in my camp. Without ‘em . . . I don’t wanna go there. I bit off more than I could chew and can now see light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.
So, that’s enough about me. My goal’s to drop a ton of awesome books before I die—simple as that. If you want to look my works over in Amazon or follow me on Facebook, thanks. If you want to help me
I’m that guy with the unfettered imagination who doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere. Who thinks up storylines like a vampire owing child support or how aliens could be responsible for a zombie apocalypse.
Put me in a cubicle and it’s hell. A warehouse floor, kitchen, or anything else not involving creative thought? About the same. Think of me as a compulsive writer who comes up with more ideas than I could ever hope to put to paper/CPU.
When I was 9, I taught myself how to type. By 12, I had banged out my first books off an old Underwood typewriter. Alas, I was told I was gonna be a lawyer. The longer I pursued that pipe dream, the less I wrote.
Then, after not going to law school and graduating with a useless Masters degree, I dabbled in corporate America for a few decades. One day, I realized that I had no business in the normal workplace, chatting about silly stuff with normal people. Granted, I worked with plenty of delightfully strange folks, I didn’t want to ladder climb or wait 40+ years to retire.
Along the way, I wrote out twisted thing after twisted thing. Then, in 2010, I received a promotion. Then I met an editor and paid off my $%&?ing student loan. For the first time in my adult life, I was debt-free.
That lasted all of 2 months.
I wrote my first anthology, Unheroic, in 2011.
The Book Of Schemes (2012) was another anthology.
Protected (2013) was my third.
By then, people were screaming at me to write a novel. Something about my short stories not being long enough (oy!). I ended up banging out a super villain trilogy called I, Villain:
I, Villain (2014)
Murder Sauce (2015)
Frag Code (2016)
By 2014 I picked up my entrepreneurial self-confidence. By late 2015, I quit my long-time day job and went full-on. Then my long-time self-publishing firm (under new management) crapped on me, via a mix of lousy customer service and unit price increases. Long-story-short, I had to retire all SIX of my first-edition books. Truly ruined my 2016.
Now, after many ups and downs, I’ve got 2nd Editions out under the following titles:
Unheroic: Book One (currently on Amazon)
Unheroic: Book Two (currently on Amazon)
I, Villain (currently on Amazon)
Murder Sauce (currently on Amazon)
Frag Code (currently on Amazon)
The Book Of Schemes: Book I (currently on Amazon)
The Book Of Schemes: Book II (by spring of 2018)
Batchery: Volume 1 (by winter of 2018)
And my next novel in the I, Villain world: The Coin Game (sometime in 2018)
For my current fans, please note:
*Batchery is a new project of mine. Think of it as my version of a "How-To" book for aspiring writers. Unlike the plenty that exist now, this one will be useful. :)
*I’m going to retire the Protected title and fold most of its short stories into Unheroic and B.O.S.The theme’s just not as funky-strong as the first two.
*The 2nd Editions will have new stories thrown in with most of the old ones my fans have come to adore (like Pimp My Spy Car or Life Tax)
Time’s sort of my ally. My biggest obstacle’s money (for now). I was planning to take the year off, do 10 books, and then get back into the game. Instead, my selling season unexpectedly kicked off this past May. Odds are I’ll only have 6 books ready by X-mas (not bad).
Selling at conventions is my main source of revenue.The books kinda’ sell themselves, as do the repeat sales (once they’ve been read). The problem’s that buying vendor slots costs money and most of my piddly resources were tied into getting six books up and out within a 12-month span.
I’m lucky to have some awesome people in my camp. Without ‘em . . . I don’t wanna go there. I bit off more than I could chew and can now see light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.
So, that’s enough about me. My goal’s to drop a ton of awesome books before I die—simple as that. If you want to look my works over in Amazon or follow me on Facebook, thanks. If you want to help me
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 2, 2013
The Book of Schemes by Marcus V. Calvert was another great round of short stories, that were even better than the first book I had read. It seems that every time I tried to put down the book, I couldn't, unless I had just finished one of the stories. It got so that whenever I picked up the book, I had already decided how many stories I would read in that sitting.
I'm not sure why these stories were more compelling to me, but they seemed to draw me in faster and leave me wanting more, much more this book around. "Schemes" was an accurate theme for this, as each story had characters that were involved in many a calculated debacle. The book started out immediately with one of my to be favorites, The Inheritance. A story about a rich father who leaves a house full of jewels and deadly traps as his legacy to his offspring. With one said offspring, a daughter named Rosa, a different idea of acquiring her wealth has come to mind, and she sits aside and watches as each of her siblings perish in the booby trapped mansion. Each story had a twist to it that I didn't see coming and by the time I got halfway through the book, I was enthralled, since I never knew how a story would end. With Calvert, anything is game, from realistic fiction to pirates to vain hairdressers to cyborgs with lactating nanobreasts full of rum. Let me tell you, I really got a kick out of that one. The imagination this author has never ceases to astound me. And while I'm not the biggest Sci-fi/Fantasy fan around, the book had plenty of other types of stories to keep me satisfied. And because of the diversity of endings, I found them all interesting. I love to be surprised. I love when authors and artists think outside the box and do things that I've never read or seen before. In a world where everything's been done, originally should be highly prized. I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it. And so I leave you with one of my favorite paragraphs.
"With that, they rose out of him as one, a bloated fusion of tiny spectral bodies about the size of a full-grown water melon. I kicked in the second potion, which temporarily allowed me to banish extradimensional entities from this plane of existence. Normally, I'd se it to send demons back to their respective hells. If they put up a fight, I'd have to pit my will against their collective (crazy-as-shit) will and force them out...something I couldn't have done on my best day.
I'm an alchemist, not an exorcist."
ClassicsDefined.com
I'm not sure why these stories were more compelling to me, but they seemed to draw me in faster and leave me wanting more, much more this book around. "Schemes" was an accurate theme for this, as each story had characters that were involved in many a calculated debacle. The book started out immediately with one of my to be favorites, The Inheritance. A story about a rich father who leaves a house full of jewels and deadly traps as his legacy to his offspring. With one said offspring, a daughter named Rosa, a different idea of acquiring her wealth has come to mind, and she sits aside and watches as each of her siblings perish in the booby trapped mansion. Each story had a twist to it that I didn't see coming and by the time I got halfway through the book, I was enthralled, since I never knew how a story would end. With Calvert, anything is game, from realistic fiction to pirates to vain hairdressers to cyborgs with lactating nanobreasts full of rum. Let me tell you, I really got a kick out of that one. The imagination this author has never ceases to astound me. And while I'm not the biggest Sci-fi/Fantasy fan around, the book had plenty of other types of stories to keep me satisfied. And because of the diversity of endings, I found them all interesting. I love to be surprised. I love when authors and artists think outside the box and do things that I've never read or seen before. In a world where everything's been done, originally should be highly prized. I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it. And so I leave you with one of my favorite paragraphs.
"With that, they rose out of him as one, a bloated fusion of tiny spectral bodies about the size of a full-grown water melon. I kicked in the second potion, which temporarily allowed me to banish extradimensional entities from this plane of existence. Normally, I'd se it to send demons back to their respective hells. If they put up a fight, I'd have to pit my will against their collective (crazy-as-shit) will and force them out...something I couldn't have done on my best day.
I'm an alchemist, not an exorcist."
ClassicsDefined.com
March 2, 2022
I met Marcus in Cleveland at an art fair. We had a blast talking about his work, and I knew just on the brief conversation that I would love his work.
That turned out to be true. The Book of Schemes is a hilarious, dark, and thrilling collection of short stories. Check this out. It's so good.
That turned out to be true. The Book of Schemes is a hilarious, dark, and thrilling collection of short stories. Check this out. It's so good.
September 22, 2018
Marcus Calvert suffers from an imagination run amok. And that is a good thing for the rest of us! The Book Of Schemes: Book One, is full of short stories that are fantastical, twisted and filled with delicious characters. Where else could you read about the Seven Deadly Sins personified, each one of them working as beauticians in a hair salon? The price they charge might be too much for you to bear, but the services they provide are priceless!
Definitely pick this one up!
Definitely pick this one up!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews