LOU'S TATTOOS

2017 Red Ribbon winner, The Wishing Shelf international book awards (Adult-Fiction).

A tattoo artist is pursued by the man of her dreams, but her biker-gang friends mistake him for a hit man out to get her.

It's 1995, and Galen Randall, the world's greatest nature photographer, is a recluse who, ironically, has never been photographed.

Lourdes O'Malley idolizes the faceless Galen Randall and dreams of taking pictures like he does someday. Meanwhile, she works in her pop's tattoo parlor in Miami.

Buddy the Blade is a hitman who claims he was in Las Vegas at the time a certain murder went down in Miami. Only Lou O'Malley knows that Buddy was in her chair, getting inked, that day. His alibi is blown if she ever testifies against him. Buddy needs to silence Lou.

Lou is beloved by hundreds of motorcycle gang members, who wear her inked art proudly. So, when the bikers hear that Buddy the Blade wants to get rid of Lou, the gangs rally to protect her.

Then, by chance (if you believe in "chance"), Randall meets Lou. He is smitten. He follows her when she takes a trip Out West to photograph the national parks there. Neither Lou nor her biker friends know who Randall is and, as it happens, her friends will only recognize Buddy the Blade if they can see the ornate tattoo Lou inked on his back.

As a result, Randall is searching for Lou all over Moab, Utah, while motorcycle goons follow Randall, thinking he is Buddy the Blade. Other motorcycle thugs follow Lou, thinking to keep her safe.

The bikers try scaring Randall, misdirecting Randall, ambushing Randall, having him arrested on trumped up charges, anything to keep him from finding Lou. The bikers following Lou try many gambits to keep her from seeing them, but Lou outsmarts them again and again.

It's a muddle of murder, motorcyclists, and mistaken identities, culminating in a life-and-death contest between Galen Randall and Buddy the Blade, with Lou O'Malley's life as the prize.