Book Spotlight: Permanent Ink by Avon Gale & Piper Vaughn

Permanent Ink
(Art & Soul #1)
by Avon Gale & Piper Vaughn
Release Date: August 7, 2017

About Permanent Ink
At twenty-three, Poe Montgomery is going nowhere. He still lives in his father’s basement and spends most of his time tagging with his friends. When an arrest lands him in debt, Poe accepts the front desk job at Permanent Ink, the tattoo shop owned by his father’s best friend, Jericho McAslan. Jericho is nearly twice Poe’s age, but with his ink and prematurely graying hair, he quickly takes the starring role in Poe’s hottest fantasies.

Jericho is known for his ability to transform poorly designed tattoos into works of art, but he was once as aimless and misdirected as Poe. Wanting to pay it forward the way someone once did for him, Jericho makes Poe his apprentice and is determined to keep things strictly professional. Easier said than done when Poe makes his interest—and his daddy kink—abundantly clear.

Jericho can’t resist Poe or their intense chemistry for long. But between the age gap, tension with Poe’s father, and Poe’s best friend calling him a sellout, they’ll need to ensure they’re both on the same page before they can rewrite their rocky start into something permanent.


Read my five-starred review of Permanent Ink.

Add Permanent Ink on Goodreads.

Purchase Links


An Excerpt from Permanent Ink
The next afternoon, a muggy day in mid-August, I strolled into Jericho’s shop, Permanent Ink, a few minutes after twelve. A girl who looked like a 1940s pinup model lounged against the front counter filing her nails. She wore a black dress covered in cherries, and her bright-red hair rivaled the shade of her perfectly applied lipstick. She glanced up at me with complete disinterest and kept working her thumbnail with what looked like a glass file. “Can I help you?”

“Uh, yeah, I’m looking for Jericho. Landon told me to come by and see him about the front desk job.”

She jerked her head toward the rear of the shop. “He’s making coffee.”

I took that as permission to escort myself to him, passing several closed doors and darkened rooms along the hallway. One appeared to be the pinup girl’s domain, with pictures of her and a bunch of people who dressed like her plastered collage-style on the walls. I assumed the rest of the rooms were tattoo spaces, but the lights were off in all but one. The place was a lot bigger on the inside than I thought it would be.

When I found Jericho in what must’ve been the break room—the very last open doorway before the emergency exit—he was in the middle of filling a carafe with water from the sink. I rapped on the doorjamb with my knuckles, and he glanced over his shoulder.

“Hey,” I said.

He nodded at me and returned to his task. “Hey yourself.”

I stepped into the room, shoving my hands into the pockets of my hoodie, and stared appreciatively at the way Jericho’s thin black T-shirt clung to the well-defined muscles of his shoulders. We’d only crossed paths a handful of times during the years he and Landon had been friends, but I’d always thought Jericho was fucking hot. He had to lift weights. His biceps were clearly defined under all the ink, and judging by his ass and thighs, this was not a man who skipped leg day at the gym.

Fuck, I should not be looking.

“Um.” I tore my eyes away from his ass and sucked my lower lip into my mouth, briefly catching the stainless steel hoop that pierced it between my teeth. “My dad told me to come by to see you. Said you need someone to work the front desk.”

“I do.” Jericho poured water into the coffee maker and shoved the carafe into place before jabbing at the power button. He pivoted to face me, arms crossed over his chest. “Are you interested?”

I lifted a shoulder. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

Jericho’s dark eyebrows drew down over his hazel eyes. Despite his youthful face, silver liberally threaded his short beard and hair, the close-cropped sides revealing more gray than black. Somehow it intensified his appeal instead of aging him. I knew he couldn’t be much more than forty—younger than Landon for sure—and I loved the fact that he clearly didn’t give a fuck about the gray. He was all natural, not trying to cover it up with that cheesy ass Just For Men shit. “If this is how you talk to your prospective employers, I’m surprised that gas station hired you.”

I started to reply, but Jericho held up a tattooed hand.

“This is how it’s going to be,” he said. “If you show up on time and do your work, you’ll get paid. If you do a good enough job, we can discuss an apprenticeship once I find a decent replacement.”

I tried to protest the apprenticeship thing, but he kept right on talking.

“Don’t steal anything. Don’t be rude to my customers. And don’t think I won’t send your ass packing the second you step out of line with me.” Jericho backed his words with a hard-eyed glare. “I’m giving you a chance because I like your father, and because someone helped me when I was doing my damned best to ruin my life. I’d like to pay it forward, but I won’t tolerate your bullshit. Got me?”

I tipped my chin. “Yeah, I got you.”

“Good.” Jericho grabbed a mug from the dish rack in the sink. “You can start today, if you want. You’ll work the desk from noon to eight Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday. Four to midnight Friday and Saturday. We have three tattoo artists—me, Pete, and Zeek—but we don’t all keep the same schedule, and Zeek splits his time between here and Chicago. Roxanne is our piercer, and she also covers the desk whenever the receptionist isn’t working. She’ll show you the ropes. But remember clients can only book appointments in person. Also, we usually do consultations from noon to one, so if anyone asks, tell them that’s the best time to come in.”

“Okay.”

“You probably met Roxanne on your way in. Go see her, and she’ll help you sort out your new-hire paperwork.” Jericho turned to the coffee maker, clearly dismissing me.

That was that, then. Apparently, like my father, Jericho didn’t mince words.

I went to find Roxanne.


A Note from Avon Gale & Piper Vaughn
Hi! This is Piper Vaughn and Avon Gale and we're here today to talk about our sexy new contemporary romance, Permanent Ink, in which the worlds of street art and tattooing collide when a silver-fox tattoo artist falls for his much younger apprentice—who also happens to be his best friend's son.


About Avon Gale & Piper Vaughn
Avon Gale wrote her first story at the age of seven, about a “Space Hat” hanging on a rack and waiting for that special person to come along and purchase it—even if it was a bit weirder than the other, more normal hats. Like all of Avon’s characters, the space hat did get its happily ever after—though she’s pretty sure it was with a unicorn. She likes to think her vocabulary has improved since then, but the theme of quirky people waiting for their perfect match is still one of her favorites.

Avon grew up in the southern United States, and now lives with her very patient husband in a liberal Midwestern college town. When she’s not writing, she’s either doing some kind of craft project that makes a huge mess, reading, watching horror movies, listening to music or yelling at her favorite hockey team to get it together, already. Avon is always up for a road trip, adores Kentucky bourbon, thinks nothing is as stress relieving as a good rock concert, and will never say no to candy.

At one point, Avon was the mayor of both Jazzercise and Lollicup on Foursquare. This tells you basically all you need to know about her as a person.


Piper Vaughn wrote her first love story at eleven and never looked back. Since then, she’s known that writing in some form was exactly what she wanted to do. A reader at the core, Piper loves nothing more than getting lost in a great book—fantasy, young adult, romance, sci-fi, she loves them all (and has an over-two-thousand-book library to prove it!). She’s an avid tea drinker, a hockey fanatic, a vintage typewriter collector, and loves to travel so much she has “wanderlust” tattooed on her ankle and dozens of countries on her bucket list. Recently, she discovered the world of nail art and realized she’s pretty handy with a paintbrush—as long as it’s a miniature one.

As a bisexual and Latinx person, Piper takes great pride in her heritage. She grew up in an ethnically diverse neighborhood and strives to put faces and characters of every ethnicity in her stories, so her fictional worlds are as colorful as the real one. She currently resides in the suburbs of Chicago with her husband, son, and a cat that has Piper wrapped around her little paw. Above all, she believes that everyone needs a little true love in their life…even if it’s only in a book.


Connect with Avon

Connect with Piper


Giveaway
To celebrate the release of Permanent Ink, one lucky winner will receive a $20 Amazon gift card and a “Poe” coffee mug! Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on August 12, 2017. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following the tour, and don’t forget to leave your contact info! 

Follow the Permanent Ink blog tour.


Comments

  1. I'm so upset I have to work and can't read Permanent Ink right now! Thanks for the post and enjoyed your review! peachescon(at)gmail(dot)com

    ReplyDelete
  2. Uh, uh. That's not the way you answer your employer, bro. Jericho would have decked you if you weren't his best buddy's son. ;) #Just Saying :P
    mushyvince(at)gmail(dot)com

    ReplyDelete
  3. Love the excerpt, of course!

    vitajex at aol dot com

    ReplyDelete
  4. LOVED this book. So deliciously sexy. Congrats on the release, looking forward to the next one

    amie_07(at)yahoo(dot)com

    ReplyDelete
  5. Premise sounds interesting. Congrats on the new book in the series =)
    humhumbum AT yahoo DOT com

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks for the excerpt!
    legacylandlisa at gmail dot com

    ReplyDelete
  7. Congrats, Avon & Piper, and thanks for the excerpt and good review. This sounds great. I love the age-gap relationship, being on the high end of one myself, and it will be interesting to see how that's dealt with. - Purple Reader,
    TheWrote [at] aol [dot] com

    ReplyDelete
  8. Congrats on the new release! I loved the book.
    serena91291@gmail(dot)com

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Release Blitz: Saved by Hazel James

Book Spotlight: Cherry Pie by Samantha Kane

Review: The Wrong Kind of Angel by Ruby Moone