The Skin Artist

The morning Bill Becker awakes to find the butterfly tattoo, its wings poised for flight upon his chest, he is aroused and terrified by the itch of new possibilities—and addictions, including Lucy, the tattooed dancer who leads him on a quest for self-understanding. Both Lucy and Bill wrap themselves in new skins of ink, wrought by the same artist, a “shaman” who convinces them that every design will alter their futures. Exiled from his corporate life and from the failed marriage he left behind in a gated community, Bill journeys through the dark side of Charlotte, North Carolina, where he meets con artists and displaced hillbillies, each of them seeking transformation in the Queen City. Ultimately, Bill confronts the necessity to leave the city in search of his rural roots. There he must come to terms with his estranged family and with the skin he shed many years ago.

AUTHOR BIO: George Hovis has taught himself to write through eons of trial and an infinitude of error. After college, while working in an ink factory in Charlotte, he started writing seriously (and writing some seriously awful fiction!), and eventually pursued graduate school at Chapel Hill, where he was mentored by Clyde Edgerton and the late Max Steele. George’s favorite childhood author was Edgar Allen Poe, and he is still drawn to the Gothic; he wants the reader to feel horror and desire in equal measures, to believe in an enchanted realm. His stories and essays have appeared in The Carolina Quarterly, The Fourth River, and North Carolina Literary Review. A native of North Carolina, George lives with his wife and two children in Upstate New York. He teaches at English literature and creative writing at SUNY Oneonta.