I write to provide thought-provoking entertainment that isn’t needlessly offensive nor unrealistically whitewashed. I personally am a Christian who enjoys “dark” fantasy but doesn’t care for the graphic language and sex that also tend to fill such books. Life isn’t all cotton candy and rainbows. A Christian can learn that just from the Bible’s book of Judges.
What you won’t find in my work are blasphemy, graphic sexuality, or excessive objectionable language, though I may sometimes use an expletive after careful consideration that it’s needed for the text. I also don’t mind using some words in their proper context, such as using damn in the condemnation sense.
I personally don’t curse even when in severe enough pain to warrant a morphine shot. (And yes, I’m still coherent when that happens. After the shot, too.) I’m not the only person I know like this, either, so I base my characters overall on the real people who don’t curse instead of the ones who do.
That isn’t to say none of my characters curse ever. But that’s why I provide “content advisories” for my writing.
Though I often attempt to write in a style appropriate for middle schoolers, parents may not find my oftentimes dark themes suitable to that age group. I’ve known 8 year olds who’d love what I write and 16 year olds who’d have nightmares from it.
(Youth, please listen to your parents’ advice on that, and I don’t say that to be patronizing. My mother knew what she was doing when she forbade nightmare-prone me read Goosebumps. I disobeyed. And then I got even more lovely recurring nightmares of gruesome monsters trying to kill me.)
(It’s been over a decade, and I’m still creeped out by slugs. I used to play with them.)
For all my work, I’ll post content alerts so parents can know if they want to pre-screen the work or not. Just don’t blame me if you tell your children not to read one of my stories and find them with it anyway.
-Misti Wolanski
