Skin of Tattoos
Genre: thriller
Sometimes your best friends are your worst enemies.
Los Angeles homeboy Magdaleno is paroled from prison after serving time on a gun possession frameup by a rival, Rico, who takes over as gang shotcaller in Mags’s absence. Mags promises himself and his Salvadoran immigrant family a fresh start, but he can’t find either the decent job or the respect he craves from his parents and his firefighter brother, who look at him as a disappointment.
Moreover, Rico, under pressure to earn money to free the Cyco Lokos’ jailed top leader and eager to exert his authority over his rival-turned-underling, isn’t about to let Mags get out of his reach.
Ultimately, Mags’s desire for revenge and respect pushes him to make a decision that ensnares him in a world seeded with deceit and betrayal, where the only escape from rules that carry a heavy price for transgression is sacrifice.
LINKS:
Available in ebook and paperback on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2bSRjqP
https://facebook.com/ChristinaHoagAuthor
https://twitter.com/ChristinaHoag
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7341116.Christina_Hoag
EXCERPT:
“Ay yo, homes!” A familiar voice sliced through the bustle. “Mags!”
I twirled faster than a ballet dancer, my stomach clenching. Fuck. It was him. Rico. Slashing across the street aiming the shopping bag in his hand at me. His baggy shorts slung so low the waistband of his boxers showed. Socks, white as fluorescent light, pulled neatly to his knees. Ink flowing out of the arms and neck of his plaid shirt. Exactly how he looked the last time I saw him.
The memory of that day bore down on me. We were kicking it at a street corner, and Rico was bragging about how he shot a trey-eight into the ceiling of a liquor store he was jacking, and the storeowner pissed his pants. As he was talking, he took the .38 out of his waistband in a live re-enactment, and I just had to take the piece, feeling its cold weight in my hand for just a second or two before handing it back to Rico. That second or two cost me twenty-six months of my freedom.
Rico threw his arm around me. A thick gold chain shone around his neck. I had a cord with an orange arrow slung around mine.
“Ese.” My voice had as much life as a three-day-old soda.
I never knew if he dropped that thirty-eight by accident, as he said, or if he saw his chance to set me up. I kinda figured the latter. Someday, somehow, I’d get him to admit the truth to me.
“I thought that was you. But I said to myself, ‘Mags, in that fuckin pendejada? Couldn’t be.’ But I looked again and simón, it was. Whatup with this shit?” He flicked the red nose ball. I caught his wrist in midair and stared him down in his swamp eyes. “Easy, fool,” he said.
I dropped his wrist. “Just making a few bones.”
“I heard you was back. We been waiting for you at the garaje, but you ain’t showed up.” Rico drilled my eyes. “You avoiding your homies or what?”
The ball was itching my nose like an oversized mosquito bite. “I got parole and all that. I just wanted to get set up first.”
“I figured you needed a couple days to get readjusted, get some pussy.” He shook his head. “But damn, this shit?” He shook his head. “You ready to get crazy again?”
“Keeping it lo pro, Rico.”
Rico studied me. I suddenly glimpsed myself in his eyes—I had become a small brown man.
He brightened up. “Hey, I just had a kid. A boy. I’m buying some bottles and blankets and shit right now.”
“Felicidades.”
“With Maribel. But I got my side action, feel me?”
“You were always real slick with the jainas.” I knew a little flattery would soften the rough edges of the meet. He smiled big.
“Tell you what, loco, I’ll give you some lessons, make you real smooth.”
“Yeah, I’m out of practice now.” I tried to laugh.
“A lot of changes gone down in the barrio. We need to catch you up.” His arm hooked my neck in a chokehold. “You our firme homeboy, man, you’ll always be part of la familia. We need you, fool.” He squeezed a little too hard. “You come by the garaje. We got a jump in day after tomorrow. We’ll be waiting. We’ll hook you up again, then you can dump this shit.” He pointed his forefinger at me with a barbed wire smile. “Missed you, Mags.”
I watched him vanish into the crowd of shoppers, and spat on the ground to get rid of the bad taste that had flooded my mouth.
“Ay yo, homes!” A familiar voice sliced through the bustle. “Mags!”
I twirled faster than a ballet dancer, my stomach clenching. Fuck. It was him. Rico. Slashing across the street aiming the shopping bag in his hand at me. His baggy shorts slung so low the waistband of his boxers showed. Socks, white as fluorescent light, pulled neatly to his knees. Ink flowing out of the arms and neck of his plaid shirt. Exactly how he looked the last time I saw him.
The memory of that day bore down on me. We were kicking it at a street corner, and Rico was bragging about how he shot a trey-eight into the ceiling of a liquor store he was jacking, and the storeowner pissed his pants. As he was talking, he took the .38 out of his waistband in a live re-enactment, and I just had to take the piece, feeling its cold weight in my hand for just a second or two before handing it back to Rico. That second or two cost me twenty-six months of my freedom.
Rico threw his arm around me. A thick gold chain shone around his neck. I had a cord with an orange arrow slung around mine.
“Ese.” My voice had as much life as a three-day-old soda.
I never knew if he dropped that thirty-eight by accident, as he said, or if he saw his chance to set me up. I kinda figured the latter. Someday, somehow, I’d get him to admit the truth to me.
“I thought that was you. But I said to myself, ‘Mags, in that fuckin pendejada? Couldn’t be.’ But I looked again and simón, it was. Whatup with this shit?” He flicked the red nose ball. I caught his wrist in midair and stared him down in his swamp eyes. “Easy, fool,” he said.
I dropped his wrist. “Just making a few bones.”
“I heard you was back. We been waiting for you at the garaje, but you ain’t showed up.” Rico drilled my eyes. “You avoiding your homies or what?”
The ball was itching my nose like an oversized mosquito bite. “I got parole and all that. I just wanted to get set up first.”
“I figured you needed a couple days to get readjusted, get some pussy.” He shook his head. “But damn, this shit?” He shook his head. “You ready to get crazy again?”
“Keeping it lo pro, Rico.”
Rico studied me. I suddenly glimpsed myself in his eyes—I had become a small brown man.
He brightened up. “Hey, I just had a kid. A boy. I’m buying some bottles and blankets and shit right now.”
“Felicidades.”
“With Maribel. But I got my side action, feel me?”
“You were always real slick with the jainas.” I knew a little flattery would soften the rough edges of the meet. He smiled big.
“Tell you what, loco, I’ll give you some lessons, make you real smooth.”
“Yeah, I’m out of practice now.” I tried to laugh.
“A lot of changes gone down in the barrio. We need to catch you up.” His arm hooked my neck in a chokehold. “You our firme homeboy, man, you’ll always be part of la familia. We need you, fool.” He squeezed a little too hard. “You come by the garaje. We got a jump in day after tomorrow. We’ll be waiting. We’ll hook you up again, then you can dump this shit.” He pointed his forefinger at me with a barbed wire smile. “Missed you, Mags.”
I watched him vanish into the crowd of shoppers, and spat on the ground to get rid of the bad taste that had flooded my mouth.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Christina Hoag’s new novel Skin of Tattoos carries a message of anti-violence with a protagonist whose decision to join a gang haunts him both emotionally and physically for years afterward.
The novel, published by Martin Brown Publishers, is available via Amazon and other leading booksellers in ebook and paperback.
“My goal with this novel is not to glamorize gangs, in fact quite the opposite,” Hoag says. “I wanted to show how tough and stressful life in a street gang is. Members have to constantly be looking over their shoulders and live within the gang’s demands and narrow confines of gang rules while constantly putting their freedom and lives on the line for the gang.”
Hoag is the co-author of Peace in the Hood: Working with Gang Members to End the Violence, a book on turning former gang members into community peacekeepers that is being used as a text in three universities. She also covered gangs many times during her career as a journalist. The genesis for Skin of Tattoos came from her interviews with gang members deported from Los Angeles to El Salvador in the early 2000s.
“The spread of gangs was an odd yet fascinating consequence of the civil war in El Salvador, which caused a huge migration of Salvadorans to the United States, many to L.A. where they encountered gangs and formed their own as protection,” Hoag says. “Years later, the United States started deporting these young men to El Salvador, a country most had left as small children. Some hardly spoke Spanish. Many simply formed new gangs in El Salvador. Gang violence is now sadly a huge threat in that country.”
Says Kirkus Reviews -- “Hoag is a talented writer, summoning Mags’ world on the page with remarkable empathy and detail…A well-crafted, engaging novel about an ex-con trying to break free…surprisingly nuanced and wholly enjoyable. Readers will become quickly invested.”
Christina Hoag’s new novel Skin of Tattoos carries a message of anti-violence with a protagonist whose decision to join a gang haunts him both emotionally and physically for years afterward.
The novel, published by Martin Brown Publishers, is available via Amazon and other leading booksellers in ebook and paperback.
“My goal with this novel is not to glamorize gangs, in fact quite the opposite,” Hoag says. “I wanted to show how tough and stressful life in a street gang is. Members have to constantly be looking over their shoulders and live within the gang’s demands and narrow confines of gang rules while constantly putting their freedom and lives on the line for the gang.”
Hoag is the co-author of Peace in the Hood: Working with Gang Members to End the Violence, a book on turning former gang members into community peacekeepers that is being used as a text in three universities. She also covered gangs many times during her career as a journalist. The genesis for Skin of Tattoos came from her interviews with gang members deported from Los Angeles to El Salvador in the early 2000s.
“The spread of gangs was an odd yet fascinating consequence of the civil war in El Salvador, which caused a huge migration of Salvadorans to the United States, many to L.A. where they encountered gangs and formed their own as protection,” Hoag says. “Years later, the United States started deporting these young men to El Salvador, a country most had left as small children. Some hardly spoke Spanish. Many simply formed new gangs in El Salvador. Gang violence is now sadly a huge threat in that country.”
Says Kirkus Reviews -- “Hoag is a talented writer, summoning Mags’ world on the page with remarkable empathy and detail…A well-crafted, engaging novel about an ex-con trying to break free…surprisingly nuanced and wholly enjoyable. Readers will become quickly invested.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Christina Hoag is the author of Skin of Tattoos, a literary thriller set in L.A.’s gang underworld (Martin Brown Publishers, August 2016) and Girl on the Brink, a romantic thriller for young adults about teen dating violence (Fire and Ice YA/Melange Books, August 2016). She is a former reporter for the Associated Press and Miami Herald and worked as a correspondent in Latin America writing for major media outlets including Time, Business Week, Financial Times, the Houston Chronicle and The New York Times. She is the co-author of Peace in the Hood: Working with Gang Members to End the Violence, a groundbreaking book on gang intervention (Turner Publishing, 2014). She lives in Los Angeles. Visit her website: www.christinahoag.com.
Christina Hoag is the author of Skin of Tattoos, a literary thriller set in L.A.’s gang underworld (Martin Brown Publishers, August 2016) and Girl on the Brink, a romantic thriller for young adults about teen dating violence (Fire and Ice YA/Melange Books, August 2016). She is a former reporter for the Associated Press and Miami Herald and worked as a correspondent in Latin America writing for major media outlets including Time, Business Week, Financial Times, the Houston Chronicle and The New York Times. She is the co-author of Peace in the Hood: Working with Gang Members to End the Violence, a groundbreaking book on gang intervention (Turner Publishing, 2014). She lives in Los Angeles. Visit her website: www.christinahoag.com.
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