YOU CAN'T SAY THAT IN A COZY!

You Can’t Say That In a Cozy!

by Lois Winston

If you’re looking for a cozy mystery with no foul language, please don’t buy one of my Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries.

How’s that for a way to start off a blog post? One of the rules of cozy mystery writing is that readers can be assured of no offensive language. But I don’t write cozy mysteries, even though my publisher categorizes my books as cozies. I write humorous amateur sleuth mysteries. And I sometimes use four-letter words.

I make no apologies. I write dialogue appropriate for the characters in my books. My Mafia loan shark is not going to say, “Golly gee whiz,” or “Gosh darn it!” He’s going to let the expletives fly.

I recently received an email from a reader who was disturbed that Anastasia’s teenage sons also used a few expletives. They’re certainly not channeling Axel Foley, but teenage boys will be teenage boys, and having raised two of the species, I know that they often test their boundaries.

Anastasia doesn’t tolerate such language from her sons, and they know it. They quickly apologize. However, I thought their use of such words was necessary for a realistic portrayal of the scene. I explained this to the reader and told her I couldn’t promise that she wouldn’t come across the words that offended her in future books. My aim is not to offend my readers, but since I try to write realistic characters, and people have varying levels of tolerance for naughty words, sometimes I do wind up offending.

Network television has strict censorship rules. That’s why many movies that are broadcast will contain lots of bleeping. In the TV series Battlestar Gallactica the writers got around the censors by using the euphemistic “frack” and “fracking” to substitute for the F-word. However, a rose by any other name, as Shakespeare noted, will smell as sweet. And an F-word by any other name is not going to make people wonder why everyone on a space opera is talking about drilling for natural gas in shale rock. We all knew what all the “frack” and “fracking” meant.

I recently watched a Live from Lincoln Center tribute to Marvin Hamlish on PBS. When it came time for one of the stars to sing “Dance Ten; Looks Three” from A Chorus Line, otherwise known as the "T*** and A**" song (click the link for the lyrics if you don’t know what I’m talking about), the singer substituted various words for the T-word. They couldn’t bleep out the offensive words later because the show was being broadcast live, and apparently, no one ever thought it would be necessary to add a 7-second delay to a Live from Lincoln Center broadcast. After all, who’s going to pull a wardrobe malfunction on Live from Lincoln Center?

I found it rather strange that you can utter the A-word on PBS but not the T-word. The resulting performance was quite humorous, though, given that the lyrics ranged from “pits and a**” to “Schlitz and a**, among others.”

I’ve received other emails from readers who begged me to remove the four-letter words from my books. I’ve even seen some 1-star reviews of my books on Amazon and Goodreads solely because of my use of expletives. Some reviewers made my books sound like I was peppering every paragraph with curse words. I knew I’d used the words judiciously, so I took another look at my books to see just how often I used the words that these readers objected to. Here’s what I discovered:

Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun

Word count: 68,700 words

Number of times “F” word is used: 6

Number of times “S” word is used: 25

Death By Killer Mop Doll

Word count: 72,500 words

Number of times “F” word is used: 6

Number of times “S” word is used: 10

Revenge of the Crafty Corpse

Word count: 68,200 words

Number of times “F” word is used: 5

Number of times “S” word is used: 10

Really? People are complaining because .021% - .045% (if I’ve done my math correctly) of the words used in my books are four-letter words? I will continue to be polite to the people who  implore me to change my vulgar ways. However, I’ll still continue to use both the F-word and the S-word when scenes warrant them.

How do you feel about expletives in fiction? Do you tolerate blue language when it’s used appropriately and judiciously, or would you prefer euphemisms used no matter the circumstances?

Award-winning author Lois Winston writes the critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series featuring magazine crafts editor and reluctant amateur sleuth Anastasia Pollack. Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun, the first book in the series, received starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Booklist. Kirkus Reviews dubbed it, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” The series also includes Death By Killer Mop Doll and Crewel Intentions, an Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mini-Mystery. Revenge of the Crafty Corpse is a January 2013 release.

Lois is also published in women’s fiction, romance, romantic suspense, and non-fiction under her own name and her Emma Carlyle pen name. In addition, she’s an award-winning crafts and needlework designer and an agent with the Ashley Grayson Literary Agency. She’s also the author of the recently released Top Ten Reasons Your Novel is Rejected. Visit Lois at http://www.loiswinston.com, visit Emma at http://www.emmacarlyle.com, and visit Anastasia at the Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers character blog, www.anastasiapollack.blogspot.com.