Tag: tattoos

Welcome back to my 6-sentence snippet series from my book, Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook. Over the next 10 weeks, I will be sharing with you snippet from each chapter. (Click here to see last week’s snippet)

Today we meet Beth, a woman who got a tattoo on her honeymoon ten years ago after marrying her husband with cystic fibrosis. As she celebrates her tenth anniversary, she reflects on the permanence of the tattoo.

Charlie sat up to cough, bracing himself with his left arm. Beth’s throat tightened; she could barely even see one year into the future, let alone ten. The tattoo was already starting to fade, the once-black vine now a dark, drab olive green. Why did they always turn greenish instead of fading to gray? Still, if it faded to green, it would only make the rose vine look healthier, more alive, and the edges of the red petals would have the hint of pink they always got when they were at their fullest bloom.

Maybe she’d keep the tattoo after all.

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 11 weeks, I will be sharing with you snippet from each chapter. (Click here to see last week’s snippet)

Today we meet Lacey, a woman who’s struggled for 4 years to sell the house that she owned with her ex-husband, the last symbol of her old life. She always said when she sold the house, she’d cover up the tattoo she got the day after she got married.

She’d always said she’d treat herself to a Betsey Johnson swimsuit when the house sold, but they’d announced a month ago that they were going out of business. By the time the house sold, she wouldn’t have a chance. Oh well, it made a better early birthday present anyway, Lacey thought to herself, admiring the suit as she relaxed on the chaise. But the tattoo – she couldn’t really cheat with the tattoo. If she covered it up now, it would only remind her that those last ties still weren’t severed. For the millionth time, she pushed a familiar thought from her head… that it would never be over...

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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I have not fallen off the Six Sentence Sunday planet, I promise. Actually, I have been spending pretty much every spare minute editing the hell out of my new novel, Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook. Over the next 12 weeks, I will be sharing with you a 6-sentence snippet from this book, starting today.

Today we meet Jenna, a college girl getting her first tattoo with her sister and her father, the two closest people in her life. She has a complicated and tense relationship with her mother, who kicked her out of the house when she was growing up.

Jenna turned the corner to the narrow hallway that led to the house’s single bathroom at the end of it, walking by a large tin type photo they’d taken at Silver Dollar City for Jenna’s twelfth birthday.  They’d dressed them all up in olde tyme outfits, her father almost a spitting image of Jed Clampett.  Jenna sat on his knee in a bonnet and pigtails, the frilly frock they’d dressed her in gathered in a big pile of ruffles that fell well below her short legs.  Laura wore what looked like a christening gown even though she was nine years old, smiling softly under her bright white lace bonnet, her hand resting on the shoulder of their mother, the one Jenna struggled to call “Mom”.  In the photo, she looked tired, probably from chasing two high-energy girls who constantly caused trouble when they were together around a theme park all day.

Jenna was a spitting image of her mother, especially in this photo, but the similarities ended there.

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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It’s the end of April and I’m getting closer and closer to getting Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook ready for showtime. Today’s six is from one of the stories from this collection.

In this story, we meet Kasey, a young woman in denial about the aggressive nature of her mother’s cancer, a denial that takes the form of trying to give her another grandchild, thinking it will restore her will to live.

Kasey’s birth mother had only been thirteen when she became pregnant, and her birth mother’s aunt (whom Kasey had lovingly referred to as Murr for years) had stepped up to take care of her, become her mother in the loosest definition of the word.  Murr was a lot easier to say than “Great Aunt,” and lot less awkward than calling her by “Grace,” her first name.  Kasey watched her through the glass, seeing tears of what Kasey hoped was joy (but could have easily also been from one of her increasingly frequent coughing fits) collect in the wrinkles on her face, creasing starkly as she laughed watching her grandson dance in front of the fire.  Hopefully he wouldn’t take after his father and think the fire was a toy.

“Is Gracie really going to get a tattoo with you tomorrow?” Shannon asked, her bottom lip shivering in the cold air.

“She says she is, so she better,” Kasey shrugged.

That’s all for now! Be sure to check out all the other talented peeps at Six Sentence Sunday. We all toil away in obscurity; this is just one way we get our names out there.

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