For all my book reader friends out there, I have a question for you. Suppose the protagonist in the novel you are reading is in a car, trying to escape the villain. He/she is racing down a country road and must slam on the brakes to narrowly avoid hitting something (a dog, a dead-end sign, a stalled vehicle, etc.).

As the car careens toward the object, the protagonist screams—just like any of us would do in real life. With that in mind, what would you prefer the protagonist to scream to keep you in the realism of the moment?

A. “Fornicaaate!”

B. “Jeeperrrs!

C. “Awww shuuucks!”

D. “Fuuuck!”

I ask that because even though my novel The Silver Squad: Rebels With Wrinkles gets great reviews and is currently the #3 satire best-seller on Amazon, whenever a negative review shows up it is inevitably because they don’t like me using “bad words.” Yes, in the above situation, my character screams a loud “fuuuck!”

I mean, why is “fuck” a bad word and “fornicate” a good word?

Yeah, I know. Years ago, some pious person with a stick up his/her ass didn’t like “fuck.” Then other pious people with sticks up their ass joined in, and it became mainstream.

My favorite example was when a reviewer wrote this about one of my novels: “It is beyond me why ‘some’ authors feel they have to use vulgrity in their writings. I guess, they just don’t have an expansive voocabulary.”

Hmm. . . . I find it interesting that a reviewer who does not know how to spell accuses me of lacking vocabulary. How could that be? I know all of George Carlin’s seven dirty words—shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits—and I can use them all properly in a sentence with correct spellings! Doesn’t knowing the proper use of extra words mean an expanded vocabulary?

Every author occasionally gets bad reviews. It comes with the territory, and I try to learn from them. But I will never understand this pious obsession with declaring a select seven-or-so words “bad.”

Whether it is people killing each other over religion or getting all bent out of shape over “shit,” sometimes I find it difficult to live on a planet where people refuse to grow the fuck up and worry about what really matters in life.