the juicy details

the juicy details

Tattoo by Victoria Ohman (@fragilefyre) from Artful Ink (@artfulink) in Bohemia, NY. (Not the one she did on me!–just another beautiful piece of her work.)

If I’ve been posting seldomly, it’s because I’ve been living muchly. Expect some posts soon with juicy details on the following:

IMG_1074Lady tattooers and bizarre coincidences. I’ve been overhauling my novel again. It’s about a young woman aspiring to become a tattoo artist in the mid-1980s, when there were few women in the field. Recently I got to conduct a fresh batch of fascinating interviews with female tattoo artists, including Marguerite (the first woman to tattoo on Long Island) and Lynn TerHaar (the first woman to open a tattoo shop in Suffolk County). My life tends to be peppered with coincidences, for whatever reason, but the ones that ensued in the course of this research can only be described as bizarre. Details soon.

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Rivendell Writers Colony, Manor House, Third Floor Studio

Rivendell. I was lucky enough to spend two weeks at Rivendell Writers Colony in December. It was full of surprise gifts and lessons; anxiety and peace; fruitfulness and frustration and magic. (Also, a super-moon and a lot of bad ladybugs.) Rivendell just announced that it is closing its doors as a writers colony, which makes the whole experience feel even more poignant than it already did. Details soon.

Book reviews. Recently I’ve reviewed The Hunger Saint by Olivia Kate Cerrone, Posts by Tadeusz Dąbrowski, and Second Bloom: Poems, by Anya Krugovoy Silver.

IMG_1539The new tattoo. It’s true that I love tattoos, and I even wrote a novel about them…but I don’t get tattooed often, spontaneously or lightly. Like, maybe once a decade, after months of thought. I’ve never written about my own tattoo experiences. But I got tattooed recently by one of the artists I interviewed (Victoria Ohman of Artful Ink in Bohemia, NY), and something about this experience was special. Again, details soon.

I probably won’t post about transforming my basement into Hogwarts (for a Harry Potter birthday party for my two young sons)…but I’ll share this advice: Don’t browse Pinterest with two little boys on your lap. They may think you can perform honest-to-God magic, and before you know it, you’re making potions out of peanut butter and sunscreen, and you’ve got an edible Quidditch stadium on your hands.

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