Monday, March 15, 2010

My Smutty Mouth

I write YA books, which generally have two features that distinguish them from books for adults.

1) the MC is a teenager.

2) there's NO SEX OR PROFANITY. Or, if there is, it's rare and toned-down.

I'm pretty cognizant of these things when I write, or when I post things online. I don't want to have my plans for literary world domination derailed by a viral YouTube post of me drunk, half-naked, painted blue, and screaming obscenities at a collection of nuns, cops, and large-eyed orphan children.

So it's a good thing that wasn't caught on video.

Uh, I mean -- so it's a good thing I'd never do that. *

* they weren't real nuns.

You therefore can imagine my surprise this weekend when I tried to update my Amazon profile and received an error message stating that "Amazon does not allow profanity in their user profiles."

At first, I thought I'd made some sort of Freudian slip. In the early 1990s, whenever I'd write something about a "floppy disk," I had an obsessive fear that I'd accidentally replace the "s" in "disk" with a "c."

Stick your floppy disk in here.

Is your floppy disk full?

Beware of spreading viruses with your floppy disk.

So, I re-read my entry carefully, trying to spot my typo:

My first novel, MINDER, comes out in June 2010. It's YA-fantasy/paranormal-romance. If you like YA-fan-par-rom, check it out! I'll have fun stuff and giveaways on www.ganzfield.com soon, too.

All I can figure is that "YA-fan-par-rom" is an obscure freakiness, like a fetish for clowns or something. But I don't know. So, if you DO know what I wrote that triggered Amazon's profanity censors, please post a comment.*

* or send me an email, if it's too graphic to describe publicly or involves something truly kinky, like a bizarre attraction to Civil War re-enactors.

8 comments:

Disgruntled Bear said...

I had to read the "floppy DISK" part of that post five times before I hit publish, just to be sure I'd typed the right word.

Jenny said...

Hey, kate. I tried to search for you on Amazon to check it out, and couldn't find you under your name or under Ganzfield. Hmm. Must go try Minder...hmm. Didn't find it there, either. Are you under a pen name? If your profile is down while you figure this out, can you just replace the freaky perversion with 'if you like that/this...'? Hmpf. wanted to see your stuff there!

Disgruntled Bear said...

Amazon lists me as:

Kate "The Disgruntled Bear"

Strangely enough, they gave me a badge indicating that this is my "real name."

You can find my most recent review under Connie Willis' BLACKOUT, and click on my icon from there.
This link may or may not work:

http://www.amazon.com/Blackout-Connie-Willis/product-reviews/0553803190/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_helpful?ie=UTF8&coliid=&showViewpoints=1&colid=&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

Disgruntled Bear said...

And Minder's listing will first appear on Amazon around the first of June.

fairyhedgehog said...

That's very odd. I wonder what set the censor off.

Brenda St John Brown said...

I have no idea what could have set off Amazon's filter, but I laughed out loud reading your post. If it's fit to print, look forward to the reveal.

Annie said...

"Minder? I don't even know her!"

And you're just lucky our college years predated the era of cell phone video...come to think of it, we're both lucky on that count!

Disgruntled Bear said...

Hi Annie!
I still consider the Yale Songbook to be one of my finest written works, and I've put the YPMB into my official bio on the Ganzfield website.

And I'm also grateful for the fact that tattoos weren't popular yet, or I'd have blue Y permanently on my hip.