Stephen Geez is a retired businessman, television producer, and music composer/producer who writes novels, essay collections, all manner of shorts, and industrial scripts. With University of Michigan bachelors and masters degrees including English Language & Literature, he’s a maven of language mechanics and literary styles who argues that any message is more compelling if told like a story.

I’m proud to host Stephen here, today. Enjoy!

Fantasy Patch

A media thriller by Stephen Geez

Snippet, jetting back to Chicago

“No sign of Hank,” Durbett tells me after clicking off. “Said his car’s gone, but his house is wide open like he left in a big hurry. They still ain’t found your phone book―”

Ring. They found Hank’s cell-phone number! Durbett tells his man to have one guy stay there while the other one skedaddles to meet us at the airport. Then Durbett tries to call Hank, putting it on the cabin speaker phone so we can both talk.

“Yeah!” Hank answers.

“It’s Danté!―here with a friend! What happened?”

“They took her! There was two cars at your house, people inside. I started to walk over, but they was leaving, and she went with ’em. He uncorks the Barnahay curse bottle and lets the expletives flow for a moment, finally explaining, “Then I lost ’em.” I learned some new words, plus new ways to use the old ones.

“Where?” Durbett asks, calmer than I feel. “Which way?”

“I’m in Stickney, on Cicero Avenue. They went somewhere in the warehouse district, but I been driving around looking for their cars and haven’t seen ’em yet.”

“He has a warehouse in that area,” I tell Durbett. “I’ve been there.”

“Tell him where.”

I give Hank directions―it’s only a few blocks from where he is.

“Yes! I can see their cars now, parked at the side.”

“How many people with her?” Durbett asks.

“Three guys, but they didn’t look too tough. I was thinking I could―”

“No,” Durbett tells him. “We’ll be there soon. Don’t risk her safety moving too fast. Just stay close, don’t get yourself seen, and be ready to follow if they take her outta there. Hit reply to tell us if anything changes.” Durbett clicks off and asks me, “You know your way around there?”

Comment from Stephen Geez

Please support today’s host by giving that follow button quite a thorough clicking. Today is Day 4 of my 4 Wills Publishing blog tour to tout Fantasy Patch, my media thriller. The snippet above features soldier-of-fortune Flynn Durbett assisting Dante. Adding a character whose skills are needed to drive portions of the plot can be risky; it can render your protagonist passive. The other side of that risk is rendering your protagonist “too good to be true.” Adding a character can work as long as your protagonist proves responsible for the outcome. So I did something I’d never done: I recycled a character from another novel . I’m decidedly not a follow-up-book kind of writer, but a single character? Well, I knew this fictitious Flynn Durbett feller quite well from all the time we spent together in my military sci-fi novel, Invigilator. Dante needed Flynn’s kind of help. That meant simply using him or finding a way to integrate two very different kinds of books with stories happening decades apart. One read of both books and you’d know which way I went. Seriously. Thanks for sharing your time.

Fantasy Patch Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO_BBFVKrgU

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