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WORK TITLE: Dare Ya!
WORK NOTES: with Jason Sibley
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://janthonymagyar.wixsite.com/dareya * http://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwbooks/article/Anthony-Magyar-and-Jason-Sibley-Release-Suspense-Novel-DARE-YA-20160802 * http://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwbooks/article/Anthony-Magyar-Jason-Sibley-Pen-DARE-YA-20160830
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in MS.
EDUCATION:Graduated from Mississippi State University.
ADDRESS
CAREER MIILITARY:
Served four years in the U.S. Marine Corps.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Anthony Magyar is a writer and novelist. Originally from the small town of Ackerman, Mississippi, he is a former marine who spent four years in the U.S. Marine Corps. He earned a degree in mathematics from Mississippi State University.
Dare Ya! is Magyar and coauthor Jason Sibley’s ” testosterone-fueled debut,” an action thriller involving veterans of elite military units and the chaos they endure, survive, and sometimes start, noted a Publishers Weekly reviewer. In the often brutal environment of the Mississippi State Penitentiary, a group of inmates has put aside normal prison differences to become business partners. Their enterprise has the potential to make them rich, and when they are paroled, they combine their efforts to launch as soon as possible.
Friends and former inmates Matthew Cassidy, once a member of the Marine Corps Force Recon, and Evan Matthews, formerly a member of the elite Combat Control unit of the Air force, create a website called Dare Ya!. The site is based on challenges presented to willing participants to perform outrageous, dangerous, or just plain silly stunts for cash rewards. Reminiscent of the television program Jackass, the Dare Ya! site becomes a huge hit, promising even larger financial rewards.
Soon, the Dare Ya! site attracts the attention of financiers and investors from the Weisenstein Institute. The infusion of cash the institute provides makes Cassidy and Matthews millionaires, and the site thrives and generates large amounts of cash. However, the duo’s business has also attracted the attention of a mysterious enemy known only as the Director. This individual, along with an associate named Constance, seeks to destroy the Dare Ya! site and ruin Cassidy and Matthews.
Cassidy and Matthews are faced with an inexplicable enemy whose motives are unknown. To maintain their lucrative business, and to keep themselves save, they must determine who the Director is and what he (or she) wants. They must also take whatever steps necessary to protect their business and themselves, using every dirty trick and legitimate technique they learned during their military service and as prison inmates. Even those skills, however, may not be enough to stop the Director and Constance before they turn Dare Ya! into just another memory, an outrageous concept that quickly burned through its audience and ended up unable to sustain itself. Worst of all, Cassidy and Matthews, and those closest to them, may be turned into corpses if the Director succeeds.
The Publishers Weekly contributor concluded his assessment of the book by saying “Readers should be prepared for a lack of subtlety and plenty of macho posturing.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, October 18, 2016, review of Dare Ya!.
Publishers Weekly, October 17, 2016, review of Dare Ya!, p. 54.
ONLINE
Anthony Magyar and Jason Sibley Website, http://janthonymagyar.wixsite.com/dareya (July 22, 2017).*
Born and raised in a small Mississippi town. I joined the Marines and then earned a mathematics degree from Mississippi State University.
Anthony Magyar grew up in Ackerman, Mississippi. He spent four years in the U.S. Marine Corps and earned a Mathematics Degree from Mississippi State University. Anthony enjoys everything country and simple living.
Jason Sibley is a U.S. Air Force veteran, who was born and raised in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Jason's hobbies are reading and writing fiction along with sports.
Dare Ya!
263.42 (Oct. 17, 2016): p54.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Dare Ya!
Anthony Magyar and Jason Sibley. Elevation, $16.95 trade paper (362p) ISBN 978-1943904-05-1
Magyar and Sibley's testosterone-fueled debut tacks back and forth between the Mississippi State Penitentiary (aka Parchman Farm) in 2008 and a bloody slaughter that occurs at a water tower near a college campus in Nebraska five years later. Best buds Evan Masters, a former member of the Air Force's elite Combat Control unit, and Matthew Cassidy, a former member of the Marine Corps' Force Recon, not only survive Parchman but emerge with a plan to create Dare Ya, a website based on stunts that they and their followers concoct. An infusion of capital from the Weisenstein Institute makes them millionaires. Meanwhile, their mysterious enemy, known only as the Director and aided by his deadly associate, Constance, plots Dare Ya's downfall. Outrageous and humorous dares abound. For example, on TV's Conan O'Brian Show, Evan agrees to jump off a ladder into a pool of Jell-O wearing only a G-string. Readers should be prepared for a lack of subtlety and plenty of macho posturing. (Dec.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Dare Ya!" Publishers Weekly, 17 Oct. 2016, p. 54. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA468700036&it=r&asid=556ae077b01b35851c7ed6a53931c2b8. Accessed 3 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A468700036
Dare Ya!
by Rhonda WilsonJason Sibley
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KIRKUS REVIEW
Two Special Forces veterans and ex-cons strike it rich with a gonzo social media website and then battle a vengeful conspiracy in this debut thriller.
Matthew “Cass” Cassidy, an ex–Marine Force Recon honcho stuck in a sweltering Mississippi prison on trumped-up charges, and fellow inmate Evan Masters, an ex–Air Force Combat Control honcho who practically runs the place by bribing guards, meet cute when they beat up some gangbangers. Bonding over their military backgrounds, the two have a jaunty time in the poke, complete with an egg-eating contest straight out of Cool Hand Luke, until the warden, at the behest of a shadowy man called Mr. Felsner, hires an inmate death squad to murder them. Fortunately, the eight shiv-armed neo-Nazis are handily defeated and maimed by Evan and Cass. Released from prison, the two brainstorm a surefire internet scheme: a website called Dare Ya!, where people challenge each other with crazy propositions and post videos of the results. (Cass gets the ball rolling with a nude bungee-jump from a balloon.) Before you can say “Mark Zuckerberg meets Jackass,” Dare Ya! goes viral and turns Cass and Evan into celebrity zillionaires who dare Conan O’Brien himself to undergo an on-air nipple piercing. Alas, Mr. Felsner, now titling himself the Director and assisted by lady assassin Constance, aka “the shorthaired vixen,” carries on his obscure, fitful war against Cass and Evan, escalating from a denial-of-service hack to a massacre in which college kids are dared to climb a water tower and then mowed down by snipers. In Magyar and Sibley’s haphazard tale, Cass and Evan are lively, if not exactly nuanced, heroes—Evan, a redneck who likes liquor and Las Vegas floozies, is especially entertaining. Their bromantic banter and blithe violence (“the crack of breaking cartilage echoed throughout the cafeteria”) keep the story moving—except when they are building their dotcom juggernaut, a project that is as boring as every other dotcom-building saga. The Director is a cartoonish but inept villain whose strategy of attacking other people as an oblique and murky way of getting at Cass and Evan generally misfires. Not all that much daring is required to take down such a hapless bad guy.
An energetic, but sometimes-feckless action potboiler about a wacky dotcom.
Pub Date: Dec. 6th, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-943904-05-1
Page count: 366pp
Publisher: Elevation Book Publishing
Program: Kirkus Indie
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18th, 2016