When Jancee Dunn’s mom got her first tattoo, she wasn’t fucking around. “[She got] a big black raven on her wrist,” Dunn said. “It doesn't go with her pink sweaters."

I was part of the small but dedicated crowd that filed into Greenpoint's Word Bookstore Tuesday night for a launch party celebrating Dunn's new book, Why Is My Mom Getting a Tattoo? And Other Questions I Wish I Never Had to Answer.

A journalist and former MTV VJ, Dunn’s last book focused on her adventures as an interviewer of "the absurdly famous." Her current volume focuses on her own quirky parents, as well as on how she herself, a self-described "aging hipster," is negotiating the idea of growing up.

Word’s Kelly Amabile introduced Dunn, reminding us to each take a temporary tattoo if we hadn't. Dunn then read a passage telling of how her parents constantly send her newspaper clippings with headlines like "the hidden dangers lurking in the bathroom sink," "beating back nature's funny intruders" and "childless women more likely to get breast cancer."

On the topic of her own journey towards adulthood, she was amiably self-deprecating. "Working at MTV," she said, "you just pick an age and stay there. I was getting wrinkly but I didn't notice. I just kept on introducing videos."

Dunn spoke with fans even more intimately when signing books. Rocking my new anchor tattoo, I approached. What had inspired her to write books in the first place? "It's fear," she said, looking me straight in the eye. "I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to write for a living anymore." Although this sounded absurd coming from such an accomplished woman, we both knew its inarguable truth. Whether just starting out or highly published and praised, a scribe can, and should, take nothing for granted.