Tune in to the Voice of Indie podcast Wednesday November 11 at 8 pm EST. Our guest this week is Gwen Plano, author of The Heaven and Earth trilogy. Gwen will be with us for the entire hour, sharing news of current projects, chatting about her past work, and answering your questions and comments. So join the discussion via Twitter by using #FreshInkGroup in your tweets. We will also open the phone lines during the show to take your calls live on the air. We hope to find you in the audience!
Hey! Did you know Fresh Ink Group publishing produces a weekly live podcast called Voice of Indie? The hosts of the show are me, Beem Weeks, and author and publisher Stephen Geez. Every Wednesday at 8 pm EDT we welcome authors, musicians, and artists into our studio for a full hour of discussions. We also open the phone lines so listeners can call in with their questions and comments.
Past guests have included author and journalist Ronald E. Yates, musicians Ron and Zach Tippin of the prog rock band Widetrack, sci fi author Robert G. Williscroft, and Robert McKenzie, author of The Chair.
This week’s guest is Christian romance author and gospel singer Jeannie Sharpe. Be sure to mark it down on your calendar. And if you miss any show live, you can always find it in the archive!
Past Guests:
Tune in to the Voice of Indie podcast Wednesday October 14 at 8 pm EDT for an hour with Widetrack. This Michigan prog rock band has been making big waves with their fourth studio album The Unwakening.
Tune in here: VOICE OF INDIE
Visit the band’s web site here: WIDETRACK
Grab your copy of The Unwakening
Join the discussion on Twitter using #FreshInkGroup
Rating: ★★★★★
Author Stephen Geez possesses a talent for crafting tales that draw readers into the unique and vivid worlds he creates. This collection of 19 short stories offers a smorgasbord of genres, characters, lives, and situations with which everyday people can and will identify. From the very first story to the last, Geez has a way of keeping the reader enthralled and entertained.
“Halfway House” tells a sad tale of loss and the search for redemption. “Vapor Girl” is trippy and far out, and one that will surely remain with you. “Family Treed” sprinkles the weird and humorous on this wonderful word salad. “Tailwind” is a thoughtful piece about a pair of aging friends in the latter stages of life. “The Age Eater” carries a note of science fiction and a hint of creepy. But my favorite is a story entitled “Holler Song”. This story harkens to the Ozark Mountains of Daniel Woodrell’s modern classic Winter’s Bone, where poor people caught up in impossible circumstances will do whatever it takes just to survive the lives handed to them.
There isn’t a bad story in the entire collect. Stephen Geez has been a favorite of mine since I first read his novel What Sara Saw many years ago. If you’re a reader with a keen eye for the literary, this is one you’ll want on your bookshelf.
Greetings to all readers! Join me in welcoming author Stephen Geez to The Indie Spot today, as we celebrate the release of his new short story collection entitled Comes this Time to Float. Take it away, Mr. Geez. . .
Salutations!
Hey! You’ve made it to day 16 of my extended blog tour! I would like to thank my esteemed host, Author Beem Weeks, for sharing some blog space today. I hope to interest you story-likers in trying my first book in way too many years, this my only collection of short fiction: Comes this Time to Float: 19 Short Stories by Stephen Geez. You could add another “by Stephen Geez” to that, as I put the moniker in the subtitle, too. I’d be forcing it to find a theme, except maybe that all my stories try to look at something I think is important, but told in a decorative sort of way. Written here and there among novels over two decades, they show a variety of genres and styles, as I get restless. Now they’re tucked between jacketed hard covers and softs, or in e-however-you-likes.
The Enticement
Each tour stop will offer the opening paragraphs of a story from the book, then link to the full story online. A few will also link to audio-shorts narrated by me. An RRBC-specific promo video will be foisted on you every day. Using a narrator didn’t seem right for my own trailer, so yeah, it’s me. Be sure to post reviews in your favorite places, most helpfully if Amazon. RRBC members, be sure to report the Amazon link to your Reviews Coordinator for quarterly credit.
And you, I thank, too.
A Geez Author Blurb
Stephen Geez grew up in the Detroit suburbs during the American-auto domination. He earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees at the University of Michigan—Ann Arbor. He retired from scripting/producing television and composing/producing television music, then expanded his small literary management firm into indie-publisher and multi-media company Fresh Ink Group. Now he works from a deck overlooking the lake in north Alabama, helping other writers share their compelling narratives with the world.
The Book Blurb
Prepare to think as you explore these wildly disparate literary short stories by author, composer, and producer Stephen Geez. Avoiding any single genre, this collection showcases Geez’s storytelling from southern gothic to contemporary drama to coming-of-age, humor, sci-fi, and fantasy—all finessed to say something about who we are and what we seek. Some of these have been passed around enough to need a shot of penicillin, others so virgin they have never known the seductive gaze of a reader’s eyes. So when life’s currents get to pulling too hard, don’t fight it, just open the book and discover nineteen new ways of going with the flow, because NOW more than ever Comes this Time to Float.
The Promo Video
Today’s Sample: “Veneer”
In the end, bad weather turned out to be what pierced the veneer.
Two uniforms pounded on the door, demanding entry and using her name like they had a right. She remained frozen, barely breathing, her stroke-addled leg throbbing, finger twitching on the trigger of Daddy’s rifle.
Bam bam bam! “Mizzus Heidway!” came the door-muffled call of Sheriff Dander, his voice a rumble under that drone of wicked downpour shotgunning the tin roof. “Now, y’alls got to come with us! They’s evacuatin’ the whole valley!”
Twenty years since Mama died and left her the house, twenty years since Iris came back to live the South Alabama life she’d fled hoping never to return, twenty years running all her errands in nearby towns to avoid in-yer-business local busybodies, yet now these uniforms had the gall to come uninvited right onto an old woman’s property.
“If you’re in there, you’s got to come out now!”
Nothing is what she ever got to do, especially for two bullies with badges. She’d seen Sheriff Dander on the news a few times, always under investigation for some kind of brutality. Seems like the kind of person who wants to be a cop is the one who has no business being one.
Letting her screen door slam, the intruders retreated into a frenzy of rain. Iris Heidway hobbled to the window and peeked through the curtains. A county van packed with busybodies turned around, then rocked and swayed its way back up the hill, splashing through a frantic gravel-washer streaming down the rutted road. She couldn’t see herself climbing in with that mob, or wedged between all those so-and-so’s at some makeshift shelter, everybody grabbing and hugging, you’ll be okay honey this’ll be over soon anything you need just let us know . . . Touchers pretend they’re doing something for you, but they’re the ones tricked by a fool’s notion of connection. Anybody lays a hand on Iris Heidway, he’ll be lucky to get it back.
The Whole Story
I’m adding each day’s story to my blog. Be sure to come back here!
https://StephenGeez.WordPress.com
The Audio-short
Okay, find “Veneer” along with the other two in my YouTube channel, precise link on my blog today.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA2kP6eBIs7nUtOzrH7ObBw
Find the Book Now
Should be just about everywhere, but here are the biggies:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/comes+this+time+to+float?_requestid=1776240
Other Places I Lurk
https://twitter.com/stephengeez
Instagram: StephenGeezWriter
https://StephenGeez.Wordpress.com
Greetings to all book lovers! Fresh Ink Group has two brand new releases here in the new year! One is a collection of brilliant short fiction from author Stephen Geez. The other is a detailed investigative book addressing pain management versus opioid addiction.
Prepare to think as you explore these wildly disparate literary short stories by author, composer, and producer Stephen Geez. Avoiding any single genre, this collection showcases Geez’s storytelling from southern gothic to contemporary drama to coming-of-age, humor, sci-fi, and fantasy—all finessed to say something about who we are and what we seek. Some of these have been passed around enough to need a shot of penicillin, others so virgin they have never known the seductive gaze of a reader’s eyes. So when life’s currents get to pulling too hard, don’t fight it, just open the book and discover nineteen new ways of going with the flow, because NOW more than ever Comes this Time to Float.
Managing pain with opioids is a science—except politics, money, and overzealous law enforcement are denying American patients the relief they so desperately need. Demonizing the best pain reliever we have leads to needless suffering, even suicides, and it drives the rise in deadly street drugs. Helen Borel gathers and presents the evidence, the intimidation, the raids of clinics, the chilling effect on those very professionals we trust to care for our loved ones and ourselves. She looks hard at the Veterans Administration, Drug Enforcement Agency, Department of Justice, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Chapters include “The Suboxone Hoax,” “The Wrong Arms of the Law,” and “The Epidemic of Death,” plus an entire section on solutions for this widespread crisis. Read American AGONY now—or you might be the next one hurt.
Once upon a time, authors, no matter the talent level, needed a big machine known as the publishing house, to get their work into the hands of readers across the globe. Publishing houses offered cash advances, secured shelf space in all the leading retail shops, and made sure the media received advance copies for the purpose of writing reviews of the project at hand.
Unfortunately, getting published by the big machine proved limited in potential for most writers. Your work wouldn’t even find its way to a publisher without first getting discovered by an agent. And even if you did manage to catch the eye of one of these middlemen, you still weren’t guaranteed that big advance, the prime spot on the shelf at Barnes & Noble, or the five star review from the New York Times. In fact, writing for 95% of those who fancied themselves authors was little more than a wishful fantasy.
But we are no longer living under the shadow of the big machine. If we want to write and be published, it’s an easy task. And that may not always be such a great thing. See, here’s the problem: Everybody is a writer today. That means the novel you spent months (or even years) writing is now in direct competition with two million other titles, all seeking the same readers.
While great opportunities are now within reach, the deep pockets of those large publishing houses are not. That means there likely won’t be a marketing team to plot our campaign for world domination. So we learn from one another. We find those things that work for us and mingle them with new ideas that may have worked for others. It’s the indie way.
One of the tools within our reach is the book trailer. Sure, YouTube seems flooded with videos touting this story or that one. But these sneak peeks work quite well for the movie industry. In fact, most of us determine the films we’ll pay to see based almost entirely on the trailers we watch. If done right, there is no reason book trailers can’t accomplish the very same results.
And how do we do it the right way? By making ours stand out from the million or so other clips already on social media. Offer the viewer something that’s visually appealing, that snags the attention and holds it until the very last frame. Even the music must be compelling, telling the story as much as the images do. But don’t just rely on simple music and still photos with blurbs splashed across them. Seek out that which is different.
Fresh Ink Group offers that which is different! We utilize video, animation, music, voice-overs, still photos, graphics unique to the project, and a large array of sound effects. If you want something more in your trailer, consider taking a look at Fresh Ink Group.
Coming soon…
Okay, so Jazz Baby has a brand new cover. Why the change? Well, to be honest, I hated the original cover—hated it with a passion. Everything I had hoped it would be fell well short of the original vision I saw for my first novel. I had intended for the image to convey a feel for the era in which the story unfolds. It failed miserably.
There are elements of the original cover that were in line with what I envisioned. Unfortunately, the main image came off as cartoonish and amateurish. This detracted from the story itself. I recall a few readers mentioning that cover as a hurdle they had to overcome when deciding to purchase the book. How many others chose to pass on it?
So here it is, with its brand new cover, spine, and back cover. We also cleaned up the few typos that slipped past the editorial process. It’s a fresh new day for Jazz Baby.
A very special thank you to Stephen Geez and Fresh Ink Group for putting this cover together.
This short story collection from publisher Fresh Ink Group showcases an amazing array of talent by indie authors from across the globe. These wonderful newcomers to the world of published authors waste little time in building the foundations of what will certainly be entertaining and successful writing careers.
There are 42 stories contained in the collection, each a winning or runner-up entry from FIG’s annual short story contests. Genres dip into the worlds of Fantasy/Sci-Fi, Humor, Literary, Horror, Hope, Suspense, and more.
The skill level of the authors is consistently impressive. Writers from Canada, India, Japan, and numerous American states, lend their talents to the world of storytelling with unique and fresh new voices.
Writers Holly Riordan, Talya Tate Boerner, and Anna Cates lead the way with 4 winning entries apiece. Another name to watch for is Jasper Grawl, whose novel Valhalla is available from Fresh Ink Group. Grawl has mastered the art of satire with his 1st Place Humor winner “The Big Prologue.”
Each story in the collection is taut and skillfully executed. For those who enjoy great short fiction, this is a book you’ll want on your shelf or on your Kindle.
The Indie Spot! 