HALLIE EPHRON: I confess, it's taken me awhile to become comfortable with Millenials' romance with tattoos. I want to ask, "Don't you know your skin will sag when you get older?" "Do you really want that on you when you interview for a job?" "What's going to happen when you get tired of it? ... I want to ask, but don't.
My dear friend and author Vicki Stiefel (Chest of Stone) is far ahead of the curve on this. She's got them. And she's not a millennial.
So here's a page from Vicki Stiefel... how tattoos twine through her real life and her fiction.
VICKI STIEFEL: I take the receipt
from the clerk.
“Is it real?” He
points to the tattoo on my finger, the one with all the flowery vines.
“Yes, it is.”
“Really?” His tone
bubbles with skepticism.
The urge to reply
with snark is strong, but all I say is, “Really.”
I assume his
disbelief is because I'm not a Twentysomething or a Goth or a biker, either,
although I do still possess a bit of the hippie I once was.
But, hello? Tattoos
have gone mainstream.
What is it about these permanent inkings—living symbols etched into our flesh—that make them so compelling?
I blame my tat
addiction, er, acquisition on my late crime-writer husband, Bill Tapply, who
sported a mayfly tattoo to honor his fly-fishing passion. When he chose to get
another tat, I joined in. He got Kokopelli. Mine? A Celtic spiral tattooed on
my wrist, which was the inspiration for Clea’s tat in my novel, Chest of
Bone. Hers is magical. Mine? I'll never tell.
Clea’s tattoo is
“applied” by her dying mentor, the act of which comes with lots of blood and
pain and launches my story. But I’m not the first author to pen tats into a
tale.
Novels use tattoos as symbols, plot threads, and more. Good guys, bad
guys, and even corpses are fleshed out with ink in their skin. Can you imagine Moby
Dick’s Queequeg without his tats? Or Lisbeth Salander’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo minus that dragon on her
back?
Speaking of dragons, the serial killer in The Red Dragon wears a
William Blake design, which he believes is a spirit he calls "the Dragon.”
Tattoos play a huge role in Elizabeth Hunter’s masterful Irin Chronicles’ The
Scribe, where they heighten the wearer’s magic powers. Magic of the evil
kind illuminates Mr. Dark’s “human” tats in Bradbury’s Something Wicked This
Way Comes. From the Man Booker finalist’s The Electric Michelangelo to the evil preacher’s tats in Night of
the Hunter, a character’s tattoos can add layers of meaning to a
character and a novel, which is part of why I love them.
My Wyvern wrapped
around a Key symbolizes two of my series’ characters from The Afterworld
Chronicles.
I’m not alone in sporting a tat from my books. To quote the
marvelous Rob Hart, “Books and tattoos have a lot in common. Both are
intimate — and sometimes painful — acts. They’re addictive, in that you finish
one and immediately ache for the head rush of another.” Rob’s got his New
Yorked inked on his skin. Elizabeth Hand, Kevin Wilson, Steph Post, and
many other writers wear ink based on their books. Other tattooed authors range
from Dorothy Parker to Julie Hennrikus to China Mieville. As ink-decorated John
Irving told The New York Times, “Tattoos are souvenirs. They’re road
maps of where your body’s been.”
Legions of readers,
those wonderful folks who devour our work, ink themselves as a permanent badge
of their love for authors and reading. They sport tattoos from Lord of the
Rings and Harry Potter novels to those of Jane Austen and Sherrilyn Kenyon.
They wear open books with “I’ve lived a thousand lives” or “Books are proof
humans can do magic” or “Wanderer,” which is etched into my forearm beneath an
open book.
I am that wanderer
of ideas and of books. And, yeah, I want to get another tattoo.
Oh, BTW — if you
plan to get a tattoo, do it right. Go to a reputable tattooist whose style you
admire. Be sure you’re passionate about the tat, since without costly laser
removal, it’s forever. Finally, copyedit your design. Seriously. Or this
might be the result.
Do you have
tattoos? Care to show and tell?
HALLIE: I think all our readers know that I do not. Or if I did, it would be my secret.
Vicki Stiefel''s
fantasy suspense series, The Afterworld Chronicles, launched with Chest of
Bone, the tale of a Mage, a Monster, and a Mission. Her mystery/thrillers
include Body Parts, The Dead Stone, The Bone Man, and The Grief Shop,
a Daphne du Maurier prize winner. All feature homicide counselor Tally Whyte. Her writing and photography have also appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery
Magazine, Worcester Magazine, Wild Fibers, Dive Training, and other
national publications. She co-wrote (with Lisa Souza) and photographed the
non-fiction 10 Secrets of the LaidBack Knitters, and recently published
Chest of Bone, The Knit Collection.
With her
late husband, William G. Tapply, she ran The Writers Studio workshops in
creative fiction. For six years, Vicki taught fiction writing and modern
media writing at Clark University. She mentors writers and students and
critiques writing in a variety of genres, from partial to completed
manuscripts.
The
Afterworld Chronicles' second novel, Chest of Stone, will hit
shelves Nov. 2017, and she’s pounding the keys on the series' third novel,
Chest of Air. In the works, her next mystery series will feature a
tattooist.
Twitter: @vickistiefel
