Drop the Habit of Dropping the F-Bomb

by Walter Knight,
author of the AMERICA'S GALACTIC FOREIGN LEGION series

In an age of shock-jocks and R-rated TV, there is a tendency by authors to succumb to cultural trends and liberally drop F-Bombs for dramatic effect, realism, and humor. Don't do it. Humor and drama are elusive creatures that cannot be caught merely by throwing an F-Bomb net over them. Humor and drama require planning and timing.

But that's how real people talk, you say? I get it. However, just because real people drop F-Bombs on the street, does not mean passersby want to hear it. I have little choice on the street about what I hear, but when I open a book and see F-Bombs carpeting the first page, I dive for cover. The book goes back on the shelf because I do not have to put up with it, or pay to be abused.

Dropping F-Bombs is a common mistake made by inexperienced authors attempting to grab readers' attention. It's not necessary. I write military science fiction, but usually the only bombs I drop are smart bombs. I'm no prude. I've been in the Army, so I know how soldiers often talk among their buddies. But F-Bombs obscure your story. F-Bombs are like sending an E-mail in all capital letters.  They annoy and hurt the eyes. I'm particular about what gets etched in my retina.

I'll tell you a story. When I came home on leave from military basic training, every other word was an F-Bomb. A girl I was sweet on asked what happened to me. Why the foul mouth? I did not even know I was raining F-Bombs. It was embarrassing.

I earned a valuable lesson, that F-Bombs are not a turn-on. Bad language limits people, hurting them socially and financially, slamming doors in their face. Unless you want to live permanently in the trailer park, clean up your mouth.

Authors want their writing to have deep meaning, to make a difference, to stand for something. We want to be proud of our work, showing off our books to family, neighbors, co-workers, and local newspaper editors. You cannot do that by leaving a trail of F-Bomb craters in your wake, from first page to last.

I consider it a personal challenge to elevate my literary skills to a level where, no matter the scene, F-Bombs are not needed. Humor can be a difficult thing, but I am not Richard Prior. I can't do what he does. Few can.

If you want drama or controversy, write a quality story. Shock your readers by not dropping the F-Bomb. Good luck. Keep writing.

Walter Knight
www.waltknight.yolasite.com

The vanity plate pictured above, featuring the fictional expletive 'Frak,' was taken from Wikipedia.org with the stated source: Date 7 July 2007, 20:42; "Adama is my copilot"; Author Rob Marquardt from Bay Area, CA, US

New Release - America's Galactic Foreign Legion Book 17

Walter Knight and James Boedeker are at again - collaborating on a new volume in the AMERICA'S GALACTIC FOREIGN LEGION series. In Book 17, things get crazier than usual as Private Randal Telk's psychosis overtakes his life...

AMERICA'S GALACTIC FOREIGN LEGION
BOOK 17 - RANDAL TELK AND THE 396 STEPS TO SEXUAL BLISS
by Walter Knight and James Boedeker
Fiction, Science Fiction, Military, Humor, Political Satire

Legionnaire Private Randal Telk falls deeper into his delusional spell as the platoon searches planet New Colorado's New Gobi Desert for his bride Elena, who was captured by the rebel group Fist & Claw. Telk's delusions revolve around the super-hot Yolanda and his various applications of the 396 Steps to Sexual Bliss - and Randal's Big Bang Theory. Meanwhile things are looking ever more dire for Elena at the hands/claws of her captors. Many try to offer Telk encouragement and advice, but it is an old Legion foe who spurs him on to do what's necessary to get his wife back. It's debatable whether he'll get there in time to save her, and only his delusions keep him sane while the way-out wackiness continues.

Available in print at Amazon, and in ebook at Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, and other online retailers where ebooks are sold!

Five-day ebook giveaway FREE EBOOK - AGFL04

Yes, some of our authors are craaaayyyyyzeeeeeeyyyy about giving away their books. For the next five days get AMERICA'S GALACTIC FOREIGN LEGION BOOK 4 for free on Kindle. Download a Kindle reading app to your electronic device for free too!

AMERICA'S GALACTIC FOREIGN LEGION
BOOK 4: DEMILITARIZED ZONE
by Walter Knight
Fiction: Science Fiction, Military, Humor, Political Satire

The New Gobi Desert on planet New Colorado is hot-hot-hot, and when Major Joey Czerinski and his platoon are ordered there to check on Arthropodan spider military activity, Czerinski finds it hard to believe the spiders are just building a swimming pool. The spider commander is a royal pain in the rear, and Czerinski's cowboy diplomacy doesn't help the situation. Tit-for-tat one-upmanship escalates the conflict, making the DMZ explosive. A juvie militia leader rises from the dust to complicate things, and with Walmart, McDonald's, and chupacabra thrown into the mix, the absurdity never stops. Czerinski handles it all with his usual politically-incorrect aplomb in this fourth installment of the giggles-and-belly-laughs military space opera.


Get it at Amazon FREE 1/5 through 1/9

Charles O'Keefe's blog tour - THE NEWFOUNDLAND VAMPIRE

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Looking back, looking forward

Well here it is 2013. We didn't blow ourselves up (of course 2013 is still young, so there's always that possibility). But at least the Mayan Calendar Doomsayers will finally have to shut up. Unless they start claiming there was some catastrophic miscalculation (Like NASA's dropping a decimal point and blitzing a Mars landing project???).

As far as publishing goes, the big six (or is it five - four?) are still trying to hold onto their pants despite an insane run-in with the DoJ. (Summary: the Department of Justice had the silly audacity to pursue a lawsuit that essentially pats Amazon on the head with open approval for undercutting publisher suggested retail pricing and whups Apple for trying to set retail pricing per publisher standards.) While we don't believe in price gouging, we do believe that the government taking sides in an open market and helping an already overly powerful retailer (read that as mega-retailer Amazon) is just wrong. Amazon has an unabashed history of using questionable means to control publishers and pricing strictly to stage its own rise to power in ebook publishing as well as retail online selling. For the DoJ to openly approve of this and assist Amazon by interfering in the retail market is wrong in so many ways, it would take another whole blog post to go into. The DoJ simply has no business stepping in unless it is a clear violation of anti-trust laws. Gas stations price-fix every day, yet there's no DoJ presence to stop that. (OK, you try to explain the sudden jump in gas prices before every holiday, or whenever there's some 'incident' half way around the world. How does that affect the price of gas already in the station's storage tanks????)

For Penumbra Publishing, the year 2012 was a mixed bag. We got to publish a lot of great new authors, but like many publishers, we saw fewer overall sales than in 2011. It is sad to think 2011 was the 'boom' year for publishing. There is no reason to think that with a flood of new self-published books, sales for anyone will improve dramatically. The current 'twenties' generation is thoroughly entrenched in technological dependence. Minute-by-minute start-stop activities like texting, web surfing, and playing silly games to pass the time are easier than sitting down and concentrating to read a book. (What? You don't play 'Angry Birds'? What's wrong with you?) Children as young as three are being handed iPads by their parents as toys - pacifiers - so the behavioral trend becomes ingrained even earlier. Children are becoming amazingly computer-literate at very young ages, but this is not necessarily a good thing. These same children may depend on the calculator function of an electronic device to figure simple math without understanding how to do it 'by hand' or 'in their head.' And why is this bad? Electricity. Electricity has made it possible for us to change our environment, add comfort and ease to our lives, and perform a lot of tasks that might otherwise be more difficult. Electricity is a wonderful utility that we take for granted, but it is not immune to disruption. And total dependency on it creates a potentially bad situation. If we found ourselves suddenly without electricity for a long period of time, would we have a clue how to survive? Electricity has softened us and given us a false sense of superiority and security.

The future is always uncertain until it becomes the present, and speculations about what might happen can prove to be wildly wrong, but looking back at the past, it's fairly easy to see what has happened. (Not necessarily easy to explain why it happened, but oh well.) Instead of looking back and lamenting 'those were the good old days,' we're going to look ahead and brave a fearless smile with the determination to make the best of whatever the future holds for us. We hope you'll do the same. HAPPY NEW YEAR!

And here's author/blogger Charles O'Keefe's take on 2012...

http://p45crok.wordpress.com/2013/01/01/2012-my-year-in-review-and-free-stuff/

Tick-Tock Tick-Tock 2012

December 21, 2012. The end of the Mayan calendar. This is the 'big day' people have been pointing to as the 'end of the world.' And now it is finally here...

Just like all the other 'end of the world' days previously predicted in the past - numerous other times religious sects have marked as 'the last days' foretold in holy writings. According to a Huffington Post article (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/20/apocalypse-predictions-182-other-days-world-supposed-to-end_n_2341088.html?ir=Comedy) there were 182 other 'end of the world' predictions.

Question is, why do people want the world as we know it to end?

Yes, there is unfairness, there is suffering, there is hunger, there is death, there is evil perpetrated by misguided and just plain cruel individuals and groups. And yes it is a wonderful flight of fancy to believe that something much better will replace what's here now. But imagining it does not make it true. No one knows what the hereafter holds for those who cross the threshold from life to death. No one has ever definitively returned to proclaim that a hereafter even exists, where the essence of a person continues on in a sentient state.

There are many individuals and groups who try to cash in on that basic ignorance and desperation that grips people who are taught from infancy to believe unquestioningly in the words of others. Most of those words are suppositions, guesses, stories told in the framework of understanding at the time to explain the why and how of how the world works. And believing the words of some 'prophet' with ulterior motives (like trying to get folks to strap on a bomb vest and blow up a building full of people in exchange for 100 virgins in heaven with Allah) may be the only way out of the dismal life many folks have right now. But of course that doesn't answer the reward quotient for the women who are forced to don said vests in hopes of protecting their families from being murdered by said 'prophets' and their lackeys. The women don't get the promises of virgins, and many may not even be tantalized with a life in heaven with Allah. So there are some illogical inequities built in to a lot of these fantasies perpetrated against people who fear to examine - yes, even doubt - the long-held traditional beliefs that seem to have no relevance today. Take for instance the Jonestown massacre in Guyana. What was the point of that? http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/mass/jonestown/index_1.html
It's just crazy people killing other people. Belief doesn't matter. Motive doesn't matter. Reason doesn't matter. End result tells the moral. These murderers are just effing crazy.

Ignorance and fear and superstition will always trump reason and fact. Why? Because it's easier to believe in something that illogically promises the impossible - especially if that impossibility can never be substantiated by any known means. That's why fairy tales and comic book superheroes are so popular and remain so even today. It's easy to glorify the impossible, but much more difficult to find real heroes who try to do the right thing, here and now, in the world of today as we know it. Let's try focusing on making things better for everyone, and stop giving credence to the nutcases and butchers and mass-murderers who steal all the glory. Let's stop predicting the end of the world and start trying to take care of it and make it a better home. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, it's the only one we've got...

10-Day Ebook Giveaway - AGFL 1 and 15

It's great to get ebooks to read for the holidays, even better when they're FREE FREE FREE.

See how it all started in the galaxy far, far away, when America's Galactic Foreign Legion pushed forward to protect planet New Colorado from encroaching alien spider invaders. AMERICA'S GALACTIC FOREIGN LEGION BOOK 1 FEELING LUCKY is FREE on Amazon Kindle for the next five days, beginning Thursday, Dec. 20, through Christmas Eve, Dec. 24!

On Christmas day, treat yourself to more absurdity and get a FREE FREE FREE Amazon Kindle download of book 15 in the series, LIEUTENANT COLUMBUS - Tuesday, Dec. 25 through Saturday, Dec. 29.

Don't have a Kindle? Download the FREE reading app to your electronic device - go to Amazon to get it!

AMERICA'S GALACTIC FOREIGN LEGION
BOOK 1: FEELING LUCKY
by Walter Knight
Fiction / Science Fiction / War-Military / Humorous

A compulsive gambler, desperate to escape the clutches of a loan shark, borrows money from a shady ATM and finds himself enlisted in America's Galactic Foreign Legion, amid a war with a spider-like alien species threatening humanity. With a little luck, maybe he'll live through it all to roll the dice another day.

Rating: Mild sexual references and language. Some graphic descriptions and violence.

AMERICA'S GALACTIC FOREIGN LEGION
BOOK 15: LIEUTENANT COLUMBUS
by Walter Knight
Fiction / Science Fiction / War-Military / Humorous

Things just keep getting loonier on planet New Colorado, where a new officer, Lieutenant Chris Columbus, claims he's the original Christopher Columbus credited with discovering America back on Old Earth in 1492. He also claims Major Lopez went back in time as General Lopez and recruited him to the Legion. Czerinski's not buying the whole time-travel thing, but that doesn't stop the Arthropodan spider commander from suspecting there's something to it. And if that isn't weird enough, another lieutenant from the past makes an appearance, as well as the Legion's most hated traitor, claiming he's being chased by vampire commandos. Welcome back to Camp Crazy with this next installment of the whacky military space opera.

Rating: Mild sexual references and language. Some graphic descriptions and violence.