Too Many F#%king F#%ks

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My soon to be self-published new crime novel is about a low-level marijuana grower here in Portland, Oregon who is almost killed in a drug deal gone horribly wrong.  She subsequently manhandles, maims, and murders a staggeringly large number of people in an effort to figure out who set her up.  It's filled with graphic violence, torture, excessive illegal drug use, and, yes, even a (tasteful) male mouth-rape scene.

There may have been a time when such things were shocking, but these days, crime readers have been primed to expect and accept the most disturbing (not to mention disgusting) situations imaginable.  Hell, even prime time television is showing torture and male mouth-rape these days (C.S.I., The Shield... etc.)  But you know what mainstream television and modern crime novels are not showing?  Profanity.

If you've ever spent any time hanging out with real criminals, you noticed rather quickly that they f#%king swear all the m#th%rf#%cking c#%$ksu#$ing time.  It seems like most crime novelists (and crime TV show writers) spend all their "research" time hanging out with cops and lawyers.  Given that I spent most of my slightly wayward youth trying to avoid cops and lawyers, I took another route to my research.  I hung out with honest-to-God criminals.

And you know what?  They swear like a m#$therf#%king #$%@&#$%s prolapsed @$%@#$ Tijuana donkey @#$#@@$% Cincinnati soft-serve @#%#$##@ #@$ #$^#^# SpongeBob Squarepants.

So when I wrote my soon to be self-published crime novel, I went ahead and left in the profanity in an effort to be "authentic."  And the #%$@$$@$% hell if I'm gonna take it out...

...Except, I am going to take it out.  Or at least 80% of it (there really is a pantload of cussin' in there).

It was actually my sister who got me to see the light with her wise words: "There's too much profanity in your novel."  If it had been anyone else, I probably would have dismissed the criticism and kept on #$%#$%, but not only is my sister a huge crime fiction fan, but she... Well, she's my sister.  So I went back through the manuscript and underlined every word of profanity, only to find that conjugations of the (ever conjugal) word f#%k appear at a rate of over four per page.  And that's just f#%k.  You should have seen how many times I used #$^&#%%#$%.

Rereading the book with non-#%$#%^*$ eyes, I can see that all this f#%king is just too much.  It's a case where the "truth" (i.e., the verbal practices of real drug dealers) fails as fiction.  It's too $%#$^# monotonous.

So, long story long, I'm taking out at least 80% of the profanity.  Not because the publishing house "Man" is making me, but because my sister told me to.  And she's right.

You got a f#%king problem with that?