Fresh Ink Gets Dizzy

Apr '07: Ink artist "Dizzy" has joined The Fresh Ink Group to provide artwork for essays, stories, and freebie emails by Stephen Geez, Doc & Doc Shearer, Lucas Cale, and more. Dizzy's résumé includes an eclectic mix of multi-media illustration, magazine graphics, tattoo design, and custom vehicle painting.  Look for his work in Tattoo Flash Magazine and others, and watch for more of his illustrations to appear on www.StephenGeez.com in the coming months. Dizzy's plans this year include launching a website and offering more outlets for his work. Catch some of his otherworldly expressions with the Geez fantasy tales "Vapor-Girl" and "The Age-Eater."  Be sure to add your email address to the free Fresh Ink Group membership list for updates on Dizzy's plans.

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Fantasy Patch Expands Its Reach

Jan '07: Fresh Ink Group founder Stephen Geez announces the international release of his latest novel, Fantasy Patch, a trade-paper English-language edition available in more than sixty countries.

Fantasy Patch star Danté Roenik offers an inside look at his work creating ad campaigns, his concepts financed by powerful, big-budget clients. Now selling the pharmaceutical industry's latest designer drugs, he dares to paint horns on the competition, his palette colored by a cadre of biz tycoons, corporate spies, news-mongers, law-suitors, suited looters, and the slickest high-gloss TV-production crew in greater Chicago. When the darker motives shaping mass media come to light, Danté's painted into a corner, his future about to be erased, panacea turning to plague as patients die and unhealthy doses of murder prove too hard to swallow. Too late to whitewash the stain of deceit, he must decide who deserves to appear in his picture, the true subject an unfinished self-portrait way past time to deliver.

A "media thriller" likened to the genres of legal thrillers popularized by Grisham or medical thrillers associated with Cook, Fantasy Patch shows how those in control of the message can't always see right from wrong, and don't always make the right choices.

Geez's character Danté is also featured in the short story "Krab Kaper," available free at www.StephenGeez.com. Fantasy Patch is available at Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble.com, or your favorite e-tailers worldwide. Stephen Geez appreciates reader feedback at info@StephenGeez.com, and would especially like to hear reaction to Danté's stories.

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Fresh Ink Members Enjoy Added Protections

Jan '07: Managing Director Ann of The Fresh Ink Group announces completion of new upgrades to its membership protections. New layers of firewalls have ben added to safeguard members' privacy, keeping their e-mail addresses even further from the clutches of wannabe spammers. Joining the free mailing list marked with a mailbox on the home page is how members receive occasional free stories and artwork along with updates about the latest Stephen Geez and Fresh Ink Group projects.

Also updated are the unique send features atop every story, essay, and e-card. To speed sends, reduce potential errors, navigate around odd browsers or service providers, and best protect every file-share from potential invaders, the send boxes now feature direct links along with the opportunity to include personal messages, a feature Fresh Ink's sites have proudly offered since 2003. Short of holding hands, jumping up and down, and singing "Kumbaya," the authors and artists at Fresh Ink Group can't express enough how strongly they urge readers to use this feature liberally and often. Sharing stories with personal messages is a wonderful way to reach out to loved ones, and it's the most rewarding way for introducing potential new fans to some very heartfelt images and tales.

Ann reminds readers that if any message appears to be from Stephen Geez or The Fresh Ink Group asking for private information or offering anything other than great works, please alert her at info@StephenGeez.com. The Fresh Ink Group puts a lot of time, effort, and expense into maintaining a safe, friendly, online community. And remember, every time someone actually buys a book to enjoy or give, the writers come fairly close to jumping up and down, holding hands, and, welll, singing "Kumbaya."

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Fresh Inker M.A. North Launches Lady

Jan '07: Fresh Ink Group writer Mark Allen North announces the release of his novel Courageous Lady, now available worldwide.

Lady imagines the story of Leigh West seeking harmony with nature in Alaska's majestic Tongass National Forest. She chronicles her adventures with wolves and bears as local Tlingit Tribesmen teach her how to embrace the transforming seasons of this glorious landscape. Facing the wrenching hardships of loss even as she struggles for her very survival, Leigh discovers a new passion through Native American spirituality, a new appreciation for the physical world, a new life where heartbreak gives rise to the inexorable ascendency of true love.

Retired educator and aerospace designer/engineer Mark Allen North has published his memoir as well as numerous technical and academic articles, but Leigh's story is his first novel, the opening installment in a continuing look at the spiritual saga of Leigh West. The trade paper edition of Courageous Lady with cover by acclaimed artist Francis S. Minick is available at Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble.com, or any online bookseller.

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Readers Love Geez in their Soup

Fans of Stephen Geez essays will be delighted to find "Tanya's Kite," a tribute to his late sister, just released in Chicken Soup for the Nature Lover's Soul published by Health Communications. Other versions of this essay have appeared in numerous periodicals.  It recently won the "Best Story of the Year" award voted by contributors of the magazine Yesterday's Memories.

Steve Zickman, co-author of Chicken Soup for the Nature Lover's Soul says his team believes "Tanya's Kite" and the other essays in this collection "will inspire people to consider new possibilities in their lives, find renewed strength, and reconnect them with the spirit of nature."

Originally writing the piece just for Tanya's family and friends, Geez eventually embraced the idea of sharing it with the Chicken Soup audience.  "Obviously, the vast majority were never lucky enough to know my sister, but I believe they can understand how much I'll always love her, and in that maybe they'll be inspired to appreciate the important people in their own lives."

Chicken Soup for the Nature Lover's Soul hit store shelves in March 2004.  Click Amazon.com or BN.com to obtain your own copy or send extras as gifts to family and friends.

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Gray Paints Magic at the Ink

Painter Ray Gray and his renowned Ray Gray Studios have joined The Fresh Ink Group, creating a growing collection of images with sentiments by Stephen Geez that site visitors and members can e-mail FREE with personal messages to friends and family.

A former six-time Golden Gloves boxer and double AAG winner who grew up in Detroit, Gray comes from an entire family of painters, studying as a protege of his own father.  He also credits his experiences working with other artists, especially R. T. Berry and Theo Dardie.  Known for a mix of realism and magical flights of fancy into surrealism and neo-impressionism, Gray's work can be found in galleries from Detroit to New York and Miami, as well as The People's Republic of China, or by visiting the Gray Studio Galleries website at www.FreeRayGray.com.

Coming soon! Gray's new Fresh Ink collection will soon be found at www.FreshInkGroup.com.  He is working closely with Geez to develop the kinds of images and expressions we all want to share with those who matter most.  Bookmark the site for all your special occasions and poignant moments, big and small, and be sure to join The Fresh Ink Group's mailing list to receive occasional free updates and surprises from Ray Gray, Stephen Geez, and your friends at Fresh Ink.

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Fresh Ink Draws Top Illustrator
Illustrator and painter D.R. Wagner brings his talent to The Fresh Ink Group, LLC.

A veteran of the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne, Wagner is a self-taught artist who prefers to study the masters like Michelangelo and Monet over “modern” or abstract painters.

Having taught numerous workshops and art classes, he enjoys capturing what he feels and seeing what it invokes in others. “I especially like working with writers like The Fresh Ink Group,” he says, “because no matter what or who we describe, each offers a viewpoint, and the audience adds the rest.”

Watch for Wagner’s watercolors and acrylics highlighting the essays and stories available free on this site. Don’t forget to send them to friends and family, and enter your e-mail address in our membership list to receive more freebies and previews of upcoming projects.

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Invigilator To Return

The Fresh Ink Group, LLC, announces the upcoming re-release of Stephen Geez’s sci-fi militia thriller, a fully revised and updated version of the alien-conspiracy tale that raised quite a few eyebrows. Sidestepping questions about how so much of what appeared in the first edition has since come true, Geez instead offers the following blurb for the new edition:

Pretending his body carries an alien and training to protect it is fun for young Eugene Weisman—until the game becomes deadly and his life depends on the secret that might truly live inside him.

Hand-picked to helm Program Invigil by a dying general who believes one alien escaped, Colonel McGovern is responsible for the detection, isolation, and eradication—wielding enormous inter-military power cloaked in secrecy.

Too old for the assassination biz, soldier of fortune Flynn Durbett is content to run a weapons-smuggling ring for governments and militias—but then old obligations become new ones, forcing him to balance his own beliefs with others’ right to decide for themselves.

Convinced the world needs him for salvation, Weisman attracts followers who believe he’s the true messiah. McGovern uses any method he deems necessary in his obsessive quest to protect life as we know it. But nobody knows for sure—except maybe the missing woman . . . if she can ever be found.

Do we really need to be saved—and who will deliver us? The government—or a loosely organized rag-tag militia? Is it all fantasy, or a threat greater than we can imagine?

Whatever the truth, only one man can be the Invigilator.

With a new cover by Fresh Ink Group artist D.R. Wagner, Invigilator will be available soon. Be sure to enter your e-mail address in the membership list to receive a personal alert when it’s time again to Invigilate.

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