Month: September 2012

Welcome back to my 6-sentence snippet series from my book, Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook. Over the next 2 weeks, I will be sharing with you snippet from each chapter. (Click here to see last week’s snippet)

Today we meet Megan, who’s welcoming her brother home from the military for his first Thanksgiving in eight years, but when he comes home it’s not quite the homecoming she expects.

Her eyes widened a mile.  She’d never once considered getting a tattoo.  Even if she had considered it, she never would have done it.  Just like her smoking, her parents never would have approved.  Even now, at thirty-one, going and getting a tattoo was about as likely as asking her mother to watch her German shepherd, Daggit, so she could go off and spend the night with her new boyfriend.  But looking at Nathan, buzz cut and broad-shouldered, she knew she was going to do it.

That’s all for today! Be sure to check out some of the other talented people over at www.SixSunday.com, and come back to visit next week!

Welcome back to my 6-sentence snippet series from my book, Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook. Over the next 3 weeks, I will be sharing with you snippet from each chapter. (Click here to see last week’s snippet)

Today we meet Anna, a grad student who’s struggled with her thesis year ever since her mother’s suicide, and when she finally graduates, she finds a reason to celebrate.

Just below the inside joint of her elbow, the ink still scaly and dry, was the word “Love” written in the unique script of her mother.  Anna wanted it on the inside of her arm because she knew someday it would be the very crook of her arm where she would carry her own children, the same way her mother had carried her. She was sad that they’d never be able to meet their grandmother, but in a small way, it would be like they knew the same kind of love that flowed through the veins beneath the inked skin.  She’d scanned the letter that her mother had enclosed in her old birthday card and taken to the best tattoo shop in Blacksburg the day before graduation, the day her cooperating professor told her she’d aced her master’s thesis. Some of the essays were going to be published in the college’s literary journal, the Hokie Review.

Every essay had been based on something that Anna had found in the box of keepsakes her dad had set aside for her, the one she’d banged her knee on earlier that year.

That’s all for today! Be sure to check out some of the other talented people over at www.SixSunday.com, and come back to visit next week!

Welcome back to my 6-sentence snippet series from my book, Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook. Over the next 4 weeks, I will be sharing with you snippet from each chapter. (Click here to see last week’s snippet)

Today we meet Kasey, a woman who’s getting ready to get a tattoo with her adoptive mother when she informs her that she has only a short time to live.

Their quest to create another child had gone into overdrive since her mother had broken the news about having cancer.  For once, it was Kasey and not her mother who was putting all the pressure.  In fact, Grace didn’t seem to care at all. She just wanted, she said, to enjoy the time she had left with those who loved her the most, like they had last night way past Jonas’s bedtime, joking about all the silly wigs and hats they would have picked out if she’d had the chemo, if the doctors had found the cancer early enough, sobering when they remembered that the doctors had not.

She looked over her shoulder in the bathroom mirror while she waited. The hummingbird tattoo had healed nicely, and Kasey found herself constantly staring at the delicate wings Curtis had managed to pull off while she sat there muttering obscenities under her breath.

That’s all for today! Be sure to check out some of the other talented people over at www.SixSunday.com, and come back to visit next week!

Welcome back to my 6-sentence snippet series from my book, Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook. Over the next 5 weeks, I will be sharing with you snippet from each chapter. (Click here to see last week’s snippet)

Today we meet Jessica, a teacher who finds herself wishing for her first tattoo (and her first child) after getting skin cancer removed leaves her with an unsightly scar.

Jessica ran her hand over the growing scar.  It felt strange to the touch, thin and smooth like the skin on the tops of her feet.  She bent over to look at the scar, a grayish blue color, about the size of a cassette tape.  The doctor had had to take a larger section of tissue to get all the melanoma beneath the surface.  The spot looked and felt dead, like it just didn’t want to work like normal tissue anymore, like it had given up, like Jessica felt more days than she liked to admit.

“Well,” Dave said, kissing her scar and grabbing her free hand, “look at it this way; now you have an excuse to get that tattoo you’ve been talking about for years.”

That’s all for today! Be sure to check out some of the other talented people over at www.SixSunday.com, and come back to visit next week!

Welcome back to my 6-sentence snippet series from my book, Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook. Over the next 6 weeks, I will be sharing with you snippet from each chapter. (Click here to see last week’s snippet)

Today we meet Sarah, an almost-forty woman looking to get her first tattoo after recreating her life after her emotionally abusive ex-husband, in an attempt to get back to her roots.

It had taken a long time to get here, but she loved living simply, with a great new group of friends, a new career, everything he’d convinced her wasn’t worth her time.  Now, if she could just get back to her old friends.  Those friends in the middle – Jason’s friends – they’d just been filler, and they’d disappeared when her money had.

That was what the Celtic scroll meant to her.  She could trace the interlaced lines of the scroll, weave them through an intricate path of knots, and end up back at the beginning, where things were simple and clean.  It had been a long, jumbled series of paths that had led her here, but she was finally back; she was ready.

That’s all for today! Be sure to check out some of the other talented people over at www.SixSunday.com, and come back to visit next week!