I got some more great piercer feedback. This one is a message from a new Facebook friend:

Elayne,

I have read The Piercing Bible a few times, and I refer to it often. I think it's a really great asset to the industry, it's very important for people curious about piercing to be educated, and be able to tell the difference between a professional piercer and a hack!

I wish it would've been around earlier though, my mom was looking through it and joked that she wished she could have bought me that book back when I was a teenager sticking safety pins in my lips! Haha.

I'm really glad I've had your book handy during my apprenticeship, I don't think it's possible to be a good piercer without being an informed piercee. Thank you so much for writing it!

-Madeline

Madeline,

Thanks so much for all of the great feedback; I really appreciate it! I wish it had been around sooner too. It took about five years to write it!

Are you familiar with Pain Magazine? I write a monthly column for the magazine. It is called "Ask Angel" and I answer questions from piercers. You can find archives on their website here:
http://www.painmag.com/archives.php
my article is always on page 16.

If you have any questions that aren't answered in my book, feel free to send me a message.

Take care,
Elayne

Thanks Elayne!
I read your column all the time in my shop actually, we have a subscription. But thanks for the link to the archive!

One thing I would like to ask you is, about how long do you apprentice your aspiring piercers? I'm on an approximate two-year schedule but I'm going to cover basic, surface, genital and microdermals. I had to be shop bitch for a few months before I got started.

Thanks so much for answering my questions! Hopefully one day I'll get to meet you in person at an APP convention!

M.

My reply:

Hi again,

My apprentices learned on the approximately a two-year time frame, too. I have always paid my apprentices as employees and I have had several work for me as employees for over 10 years.

And I can count all of the apprentices I fully trained since the 1980s on my hands and still have a few fingers left over!
Hope to meet you too!

Elayne