Too much profanity for a young adult fiction author? Nah…
Young adult fiction authors might save profanity for their books, but I’m a little more real than that. Because, you know, it’s how regular “young adults” talk.
Goodness, I’ve become the young adult fiction version of Pat f*cking McAfee these days. But hey, why not? McAfee’s memorable for a reason, and it’s why he’s got his own f*cking TV show. Amazing, considering how sanitized (almost) anything and everything on the Tube is these days.
I mean, for the love of God, most of his takes are on the NFL, a league known for its Marxian “It takes all of us” cult slogan. One of the few reasons I relegate myself to following the league at arm’s length, even if I’ll always tune in somewhat, especially when the Arizona Cardinals are playing, so I can be there when they ultimately win the Super Bowl.
Hey, all streaks come to an end at some point, right? Anyway, every Sunday while I’m working, I got the box scores of every game up and rolling on my laptop because curiosity always gets the best of me between Weeks 1 and 18, plus the playoffs.
It’s why you see so many Cardinals references in my work, even if The Arcane Prophecy and my entire Arcane Elemental Academy series lean more into the Arizona Coyotes (now, the Utah Mammoth) and the Diamondbacks, which is where Yote got her last name.
While you won’t see much in the way of profanity in my books since hardly any of my characters need to talk like that in dialogue unless they don’t got a clean mouth, I don’t mind swearing like a sailor here on the blog.
Let’s just be real with young adult fiction readers
For all of my fiction, be it young adult (Arcane Elemental Academy), new adult (Catenarian Chronicles), or even fiction that leads into adult territory (Beyond the Lost), I’m not here to sound fake or sanitized like I see all over the godd*mn literary world.
Seriously, all the sunshine and daisies get annoying, and make me wonder what some of these authors really sound like when they’re not driving blog traffic. I’ll never write, read, or recommend the genre, but it’s why I respect erotic fiction authors. I mean, at least they’re transparent.
A lot of what you read here, whether I’m talking about my books, characters, inspirations, or themes, are my exact thoughts in the present moment. I’ll edit for clarity and to get rid of (most) typos, but I’m not watering down my voice or sounding fake for the cameras.
Screw that; I’ll let others put on a clean facade while I keep writing like my real, unfiltered self. So, if you think I’m going way too far with profane-laced posting, your concerns fall on deaf ears.
Being human in an AI/sanitized world’s never been sweeter
As many of us steamroll toward dystopian transhumanism (and you can bet your ass I’ll have a book or two out that talks about it), remembering that we’re human’s never been bigger.
In the age of incoming digital IDs for those who fall for the scam so they can sacrifice liberty for convenience and mass surveillance thanks to technonazis like Larry Ellison, why not set yourself apart and be human AF? The day might be coming when we need more people who are 100 percent flesh and bone as opposed to doing all they can to look and talk like Darth Vader.
That said, I’ll keep the human element and take it up another notch. Not that AI isn’t useful because it definitely is. Trust me on that one. But it doesn’t mean we need to sacrifice the human soul in the process.
And you know what? I don’t think Yote Diamondback would, either, once she knows the stakes at play. And if you want a taste of what she’s facing, you can find her in Arcane Awakenings.
Yote, a pure statist in the novella, swallows her first nice, little red pill. Opening her mind up to some rather harsh and severe realities. So, d’you wanna watch a teenage statist wake the hell up?
