by Brenda W. Clough
Google. Google every neologism. Every name. Every term you cannot define. You want examples? Oh, do I have examples for you!
A classic, but possibly NSFW. It’s political!
Another inadvertent obscenity. They meant well, but it was X-rated before they got there.
In the days before there were search engines, we had to do this the old-fashioned way. We had to be absurdly well-read, and find beta readers, editors, and copy editors who had read all the books and periodicals that we ourselves did not have time to read. These days, even if your unfortunate meaning is really obscure, it will kick up in Google. You can’t get a hundred-percent kill on this. X-rated slang lurks everywhere. All you can do is your best, and then hope that nobody with your hero’s exact name goes and murders 14 teens in a movie theater. But no, don’t name him Santorum. Listen to Inigo Montoya here. Just don’t.
The e
book version of my novel How Like a God is now available from Book View Cafe. And it is available now in an audio book edition which is read by Bronson Pinchot!
My newest novel Speak to Our Desires is out from Book View Café.
