STOP THE PRESSES!

Photo from creative commons STOP THE PRESSES!

I've always wanted to say that.

And this is sort of serious, too. I might have alienated a whole country.

A WHOLE COUNTRY!

Here's what happened:

My book, Givin' Up The Ghost, is done except for some final edits. Okay final, final, final edits, but it's pretty much done. Two years in the making. Some of you are already familiar with it, but basically, my MC is an American girl living in England.

Photo by Gwen GardnerNow, we do speak the same language, I mean, it's our mother tongue, right? But sometimes, not so much. Over there, "knocking up" means to go visit someone, not making someone pregnant. The "loo" is the bathroom. A "torch" is a flashlight.

And then they have signs like the one on the right. I couldn't help myself, I had to take the picture. As far as I know, we don't have anything like that here in the United States.

But do you see what I mean? You'd think we were speaking the same language.

I was doing some research the other day, just trying to look up British slang words that people might use in England. You know, like "arse" and "bloody hell." And what did I find?! One of my characters name was another word for "vagina" or "female genitals."

What?!

Photo by Gwen GardnerOf course I had to consult an expert on this, so I emailed Claire Hennessy from the blog Crazy California Claire, who is British - I mean she owns her own red phone box (like the one at the left), so you don't get more British than that. She was able to confirm my research results, and added that in the UK, the offensive word (rhymes with Canny and is another word for rear end in the US) was actually quite rude!

I'm so glad I didn't publish the book yet, because I do plan to release it on Amazon UK as well as Amazon US.  I would have hated offending anyone and getting banned from Amazon UK as well as a country that I love!

I will have to rename the character, which shouldn't be too bad - just "find" and "replace."

But here's the sort of funny part - the character is a nineteenth century ghost madam who owned her own brothel in life! I find that hilarious.


Has anything like this ever happened to you?