This is my last chance this year for this post: Banned Books Week is Oct. 1-7 in 2023.

There are a million things to post about and comment about and write articles about on the topic of BANNED BOOKS. And most of them have been done ad infinitum.

What I hadn’t seen a lot of was commentary about the good effects of having a book banned somewhere, and that is the extensive and FREE publicity that leads, every year, to these books being given a kick in the name-recognition department. Which results in SALES!

People who read about Holden Caulfield when they were in high school may go drag it out and make it available to their own teens, even though it is old, well, just because. Because it being banned in some Texas small town somehow makes it more important.

It’s the PRINCIPLE of the thing!

Because it might backfire. Publicity can do that. And I’m aware of the fragility of the civility of the mob.

While hoping, in some small way, to cash in on it!

We obscure writers will do (almost) anything to abandon obscurity.

THERE ARE GOOD REASONS TO BAN PRIDE’S CHILDREN: PURGATORY AND PRIDE’S CHILDREN: NETHERWORLD.

AND THERE WILL BE GOOD REASONS TO BAN PRIDE’S CHILDREN: LIMBO WHEN I FINISH WRITING THE WIGGLY THING.

I loved Jane Eyre when I was a teen – but some things slipped past me in the heat of the story that I didn’t understand until years later.

As an adult, I’ve always assumed that writing PG-13 was EXACTLY that, expressing adult ideas in such away that those who were adults and informed about such matters as sex would understand that, and that the teens who were attracted to the story of the governess who eventually married the Lord of the Manor but had to go through a few bumps first would be able to not notice some of the themes that were being discussed:

Child abuse – by relatives and authorities

The problems with inheritance laws

Society’s disapproval of a man traveling with a woman companion when they were not married

Bigamy

Deceit resulting in seducing a young woman into that bigamy

…

Because I had no experience to connect them to: I had the good luck to be a loved and wanted oldest child in a warm and loving extended family.

The adult reader with a database of experience in their hear will understand what is going on without having to be bludgeoned by it, but a younger reader – a teen – will see the results of these themes without having the gory details made graphic.

But make no mistake – these themes are present:

Abortion

Bigamy

Massive amounts of deceit

Principles – and how to bend or break them

A complete disregard for the emotional needs of children

Divorce

Infidelity

Scandalous behavior by celebrities and those attracted to them

Lack of consent in sexual matters

Sex

…

Pride’s children

It will take you some time, and a careful reading, to locate and absorb all this in what I advertise as THE GREAT AMERICAN LOVE STORY.

And it’s there because these are all parts of life, and I haven’t skipped many of those in describing the lives and misadventures of my three main characters, and that rarity in mainstream fiction: the DISABLED main character who doesn’t conveniently disappear, die by illness, suicide, or miraculously get well and become ‘normal.’

I DESERVE to be BANNED.

And I would like my FREE PUBLICITY for being a bad girl writer (and concomitant SALES) for having written a salacious description of real life – in PG-13 format – which might let a teen have the same exposure to adult topics as, say, Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights or Pride and Prejudice or To Kill a Mockingbird or Gone with the Wind any other NON-banned books. (Or have some of these also been banned? I didn’t check.)

Worse: I believe this is exactly the way children SHOULD be exposed to adult themes: by getting a GOOD STORY and finding out about NATURAL CONSEQUENCES of ADULT BEHAVIOR without necessarily having to go through the gritty details.

After all, they’re getting it in AT LEAST this much detail from their lives, their friends, and their families – even if they don’t realize it all yet.

If it comes up and requires your participation, please vote for my books to be banned.

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