Saranna DeWylde and the meaning of tattoos.

Saranna is going to give away ONE copy of Furyous Ink per TEN comments, so comment away people! I will draw a winner on the 27th and announce it here on my blog.

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I have a tribal tattoo on my thumb.

I got it when I was sixteen to piss off my mother. I was at a friend’s house and her brother had just gotten out of prison and asked me if I wanted a tattoo. He said he’d do it for free. Sixteen and intelligence don’t always go hand in hand. I nodded vigorously and he set about giving me my first tatt. The homemade gun didn’t have a needle, it used a piece of guitar string and hurt like holy Hell.

And I didn’t get the tribal art I wanted, I got something that looks like a cross between a tick and a spider. It’s the only tattoo I have that I regret. It kept me off of Missouri Highway Patrol because of its resemblance to a spider. A spider tattoo on your hand is a common tattoo among the Aryan Brotherhood—a gang that is believed to have its roots in San Quentin. Most commonly it means that the wearer is a racist. As I am not, I usually wear a ring over this tattoo. It gave me no end of trouble when I was working in the prison. I had lots of inmates think I would either treat them better or worse than they deserved based on that tattoo.

In prison, tattoos are another language with which to communicate information. They can note a person’s crime, status, sentence, and even their “specialties.” Some have multiple meanings. Teardrops, for instance, can mean the wearer has killed someone and the number of teardrops means how many, or it can be a tear for a loved one they’ve lost. A spider web can mean a web of addiction, but most commonly when its placed on the elbow, it means that the wearer is killer.

Many of these tattoos that are specific to certain gangs, if an uninitiated person is found with them, they will give the wearer the option to remove the tattoo themselves or said faction will remove it for them—usually by cutting off the offending tattoo.

There was inmate I knew who got “Evil Minded” tattooed across his forehead. He was only doing a short bid, though. Most inmates don’t get tattoos on their forehead in they’re doing life without the possibility of parole or belong to MS-13. In MS-13, every tattoo has a significant meaning and the more tattoos you have, the higher your place in the gang.

I think about these things when I write tattooed characters. My heroine in Furyous Ink is a tattoo artist and tattoos are an intrinsic part of her culture, especially with the Amazons. I designed the tattoos myself that marked the Arachne and the Amazons. They utilize a spider, but it is never on the wearers’ hands. Each signifies the others triumph over their enemies. For the Amazons, it’s a great horned owl clutching a spider and for the Arachne, it’s a spider clutching the owl in its legs.

Furyous Ink was a fun book to write and I hope readers have just as much fun with it as I did.

Marcus Kage has four dead women on his hands. As a detective, he knows that’s more trouble than his city needs. As a Lycanos, he knows that’s more trouble than his city can handle. A tattoo found on each vic identifies them as Amazons, and Athena’s tribe of warrior women need half an excuse to start a war on a good day. A clue leads him to the artist who tattooed the victims—and suddenly Marcus can barely keep his horny beast at bay.

As a Fury, Megaera Eumenides can see straight to the soul of a man, and she likes what she finds in the strong, honorable Alpha. They claim each other, mark each other, and with every heated mating their bond grows stronger. Life would be just about perfect if they didn’t have a supernatural assassin to avoid…and Marcus’ past haunting him…and Meg’s secrets to overcome…and a murderer on the loose.

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Saranna bio:Saranna De Wylde has always been fascinated by things better left in the dark. She wrote her first story after watching The Exorcist at a slumber party. Since then, she’s published horror, romance and narrative nonfiction. Like all writers, Saranna has held a variety of jobs, from operations supervisor for an airline, to an assistant for a call girl, to a corrections officer. But like Hemingway said, “Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure, only death can stop it.” So she traded in her cuffs for a full-time keyboard. She loves to hear from her readers.

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