jimhines

Myke Cole is the author of the Shadow Ops series, which he’s described not as military fantasy, but more as fantasy with the military experience. It’s experience that draws on his own life, including three tours in Iraq, and serving in the U. S. Coast Guard. His next book, Gemini Cell [Amazon | B&N | IndieBound], comes out on January 27.

Here’s Myke talking about his tattoo:

This is the progress of my quarter-sleeve thus far. I thought about tattoos for many years, making sure the idea is fixed firmly in my mind before finally getting it inked on. My second requirement for a tattoo is that it mark an event in my life I will want to remember forever, no matter how its character may change.

The Eagle & Anchor is the symbol of an officer in the United States Coast Guard. The device appears in a few places, on badges, on our hat-bands, and in many plaques and decorations. After six years in uniform, I finally decided that, even if I should be turned out of the guard tomorrow in disgrace (don’t worry, that isn’t happening), my attainment of an officer’s commission is one of the watershed events in my life. It is one of the things I am most proud of, a thing I will cherish forever.

The text across the top is from General Douglas MacArthur’s famous 1962 speech to the cadets of West Point as he accepted the Sylvanus Thayer award. The speech is incredibly stirring.

I was particularly struck by this passage: Let civilian voices argue the merits or demerits of our processes of government; whether our strength is being sapped by deficit financing, indulged in too long, by federal paternalism grown too mighty, by power groups grown too arrogant, by politics grown too corrupt, by crime grown too rampant, by morals grown too low, by taxes grown too high, by extremists grown too violent; whether our personal liberties are as thorough and complete as they should be. These great national problems are not for your professional participation or military solution. Your guidepost stands out like a ten-fold beacon in the night: Duty, Honor, Country.

There are many ways to interpret these words, but mine is this: That as a military officer, it is my duty to act on the will of the civilian government, to carry out and not set policy. In the end, professional violence must serve the will of civilian masters, else we have military dictatorships like the one presently governing Thailand. That must never be the case in the United States, and these words are my reminder that my first obligation is to the American people.

The tattoo isn’t done. Hopefully in the next year or two, I will be adding a life-ring on the opposite side of that arm. Behind the life-ring will be a crossed boathook and oar. Printed on the life-ring will be the words: SAVE AS MANY AS YOU CAN. Because being an officer is only one point of pride in my military service. Another is that I am a Search-and-Rescueman. Where members all military branches must put their lives on the line to slay others, I have the distinct honor of putting mine on the line to save them.”

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Today’s episode of Writer’s Ink features Sean Williams, an Australian author with a Whole Lot of published fiction, including the #1 New York Times bestselling The Force Unleashed. One of his latest books is Twinmaker [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy], “set in a future where “d-mat” technology, which allows for cheap teleportation and item replication, has created a seeming utopia of plenty.”

Here’s Sean showing off his ink:

In his words:

My plan is to get one tattoo for every book I have published. Unfortunately, because I’ve had trouble coming up with designs, I’ve fallen a bit behind. I currently have one tattoo. My forty-seventh book comes out in November.

I didn’t get my one and only tattoo until I turned thirty, after a string of failed romances. I was feeling pretty glum and needed to do something for myself, something defining and privately declarative, and eventually I came up with the perfect design for a place that normally only someone close to me would ever see. This was way back in the dawn of time, before everyone had a Chinese character on their upper shoulder.

The design comes from the I Ching. Hexagram 23, “Splitting Apart”, is usually associated with disintegration and decay, which seemed appropriate after all that heartbreak. It has a deeper meaning, though, as all hexagrams do, and it is this meaning that I wanted to be permanently etched into me. It goes something like this:

You have a cherry tree. It’s diseased and dying, which is obviously bad. But as long as there’s one cherry left on it with a viable seed, you can start over. You can grow a new, healthy tree from scratch to replace the old tree.

Repeat.

My tattoo is the character associated with that hexagram, since hexagrams themselves are hard to tattoo well and tend to warp with age. I may have got it wrong, it may mean “massive prat” if you say it the wrong way, but the story behind it has got me through some very difficult times in my personal and professional life. I’m glad it’s there.

My next two tattoos will be an infinity symbol and the outline of Mr Mischievous’s grin. All I have to do now is figure out where to put them. Decisions, decisions.

I told him that if he decided to catch up on those 46 other tattoos all at once, I’d be happy to have him back for a special edition of Writer’s Ink. But in the meantime, here’s a close-up of his tattoo:

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Michigan author Anne Harris, aka Jessica Freely, has spent more than fifteen years searching for a home for her latest novel, All the Colors of Love [Amazon | B&N]. But before we get into that, let’s hear about that frisky-looking devil tattoo…

My tattoo is a doodle of a little dancing devil I’ve been scribbling since I was in fifth grade. I got it when a good friend learned to tattoo and she desperately wanted to get ink in me. I’d never planned on having a tattoo, and was a bit skeptical, so I made sure to get something that was uniquely mine, and to get it on a part of my body I wouldn’t see all the time. As it turned out, however, I love it. Sometimes I do forget it’s there and it’s always a nice surprise when I glimpse it again. I’ve thought about getting more tattoos but I’ve never followed through on it. I may wind up being one of those rare folks with just one.

Anne/Jessica asked if she could talk a little about All the Colors of Love, which is a YA gay science fiction romance about Harry, the son of a supervillain. Harry veers between suicide attempts and futile plans to kill his abusive father.

Colors is a sequel to her first novel, The Nature of Smoke. It’s also the first gay romance she ever wrote, and changed the course of her career.

In her words:

I wrote the first draft around 2000 or so, when I was still firmly ensconced in traditional NY publishing. My mother had just passed and my dad was dying and I needed something to lift me up, so I gave myself permission to write anything I wanted. That turned out to be Colors and writing it was more fun and freeing than anything I’d ever done before. I was as surprised as anyone else, especially since working with these characters felt like invisible shackles had been taken off my wrists and for the first time I could just write.

I knew I had to pursue it.

Unfortunately, at that time there was no commercial market for gay romance, let alone a gay YA science fiction book written by a woman. My sf editor wanted me to make the characters straight and my agent convinced me to write Libyrinth instead, which I did, but I wrote Colors too, and I started the long search for a market. When one finally did develop, it was for gay erotic romance, not YA. I set Colors aside again and went on to published over 15 short stories, novels, and novellas (many of them sf/f) in that genre. Fortunately, markets change and now some publishers are taking non-erotic gay romance and several have started YA imprints. Finally, fifteen years after I first started this journey, Colors is out in the world. To say I’m pleased to share it with readers is a vast understatement.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Christian Klaver has been selling SF/F short fiction since the early 80s. Some of his recent work includes several Supernatural Case Files of Sherlock Holmes, and the fantasy novel Shadows Over London [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy]. He lives in Dearborn, Michigan, with his wife and daughter and a group of animals affectionately known as “The Menagerie.”

Klaver’s tattoo is one of three dragons he wears, and apparently began a bit of a family tradition. In his words:

I got this tattoo on my 30th birthday. (I have a smaller version on my chest.) My daughter liked the dragon so much she ended getting her own version for her eighteenth birthday. She liked *that* one so much she wanted another one for her 21st, and talked both me and my wife into a family tattoo party, which is why I now have a much larger version on my back.

 Am now kicking myself for not asking to see the back tattoo. I mean, just because we were in the middle of a restaurant at the time…

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Tobias Buckell is the New York Times bestselling author of such books as Crystal Rain, Halo: The Cole Protocol, and most recently, Hurricane Fever [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy], a techno-thriller about heavy weather and Caribbean spies. Toby and I have pretty much come up together as writers, and it’s been great to see his success over the years. He also has a pretty badass writing tattoo, which he talks about below. (Click the picture for a close-up.)

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I’d been planning to get my tattoo to celebrate my fifth year of being a full time freelancer, but couldn’t set aside the money for it until my sixth year celebration.

It’s a memento mori of a skull and crossbones, a call out to my growing up on ships in the Caribbean. And then underneath, instead of crossbones, I have a pen and a pencil. And then in bastardized Latin I have the phrase “CREO AUT MORI.” Rough translation: “Create or Die.” I got it to remind myself to keep creating.

Latin purists will ding me for the translation, as AUT MORI is infinitive, meaning it very technically translates as “I create or to die” but AUT MORI was often shorthanded on coats of arms as “OR DIE” so I used it. I like the 4 letter word 3 letter word 4 letter word symmetry when doing the visual design.

I got it while on a writing retreat in North Carolina. It took about three and a half hours, which is wild as I used to be absolutely terrified of needles.

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.