Tag: tattoos

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

Today we meet Erika, a new mother who uses her tattoo as a way to heal from her debilitating fear of phone calls and her father’s death.

As she exited the shower, she caught her reflection in the full-length mirror, reminding herself for the hundredth time not to get in too big a hurry to get back in the gym.  There would be plenty of time for that when her maternity leave was over, which would be here before she knew it.  Maybe tomorrow, she thought to herself, she’d take Josie for a few laps in the park in the expensive jogging stroller that was currently being used as a clothing rack.  As she toweled off her back, her eyes were drawn, as they always were, to the tattoo over her left shoulder, just behind her heart.  Erika stepped backwards, closer to the mirror, tracing the part of the tattoo’s outline she could reach.  Almost four years, and it was still as vibrant as the day she’d gotten it.

That’s all for today! Be sure to check out some of the other talented people over at www.SixSunday.com.

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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!

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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!

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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!

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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!

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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!

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Welcome back to my 6-sentence snippet series from my book, Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook. Over the next 7 weeks, I will be sharing with you snippet from each chapter. (Click here to see last week’s snippet)

Today we meet Alice, a social worker who finds herself getting tattooed with three of her best friends on a long girls’ weekend, but missing the presence of the fifth member of their little group.

Sarah and Karen had always had their own inside thing going on, an inner circle within the inner circle, one the rest of them had always felt but denied existed.  Alice could still remember when Karen was introduced as the new girl in their Kindergarten class, after the Christmas break.  She’d followed them around on the playground until Sarah informed the group (they didn’t have a name for themselves at that point) that it was too mean of them to keep ignoring her, and allowed her in.  Was it really possible to hold a grudge against someone for stealing your best friend more than twenty years ago?  Was that what bothered Alice about Karen so much?  Maybe the pain of the tattoo was just making her delirious.

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!

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Welcome back to my 6-sentence snippet series from my book, Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook. Over the next 8 weeks, I will be sharing with you snippet from each chapter. (Click here to see last week’s snippet)

Today we meet Hallie, a young single mom finishing up her tech school degree so she can move herself and her son out of their Section 8 apartment and she can retouch the tattoo she got in her juvenile delinquent days.

Years ago, Hallie had gotten the tattoo in the kitchen of a friend of a friend who ran with her old crowd, back when looking tough meant something to her. It was supposed to be an artistic rendition of her initials, a drawing she’d done as a kid, but the friend of a friend who’d done the tattoo had been so messed up at the time the tattoo had come out lopsided and jagged, and Hallie had been too messed up to notice. It looked like shit; it really did. She kept telling herself that when she got it all turned around, she’d get it redone and smoothed out. It wasn’t exactly an option when you weighed it against gas money to drive your child to his Grandma’s and yourself to school so you could finally get things turned around. She didn’t need a tattoo to tell her she was tough now; she had the toughest job on the planet already.

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!

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Welcome back to my 6-sentence snippet series from my book, Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook. Over the next 9 weeks, I will be sharing with you snippet from each chapter. (Click here to see last week’s snippet)

Today we meet Jody, a woman with three kids who’s putting herself through nursing school so she can leave her husband. In this scene, she reflects on the foot tattoo she got for good luck.

Jody rubbed her temples, knowing this would be the most peaceful moment she’d likely experience that day.  They were right in the middle of clinical rotations, eight hours of nonstop chasing after the floor nurses, asking as many questions as you could and trying to keep up.  Her floor nurse was just over five feet tall and weighed over 200 pounds but was harder to keep up with than all three of her spastic children combined.

But, she figured, it came with the territory of being part of a degree program that had “accelerated” at the beginning of the name.  She needed accelerated; she’d already wasted seven years getting a mostly useless Bachelor’s degree in history, in which time she’d managed to punch out three kids and marry a husband who was about as useless as her degree.

It was why she’d gotten the golden koi tattooed on her right foot when she found out she’d been accepted to the program.

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!

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