Salty language and graphic scenes! The church ladies demand it!

Good evening!

I've been a member of the same fairly conservative church for more than twenty years.  Like all churches, there's a core group of women, women who started out maybe as young moms, bringing their kids together for Sunday School, baking cookies for fund raisers, entering pies for church picnic competitions, who have now gotten older.  The kids are grown and have kids of their own.  Each woman has this physical ailment and that, something they share every week at church or Bible study, or women's group, or choir practice.  In short, these women, most of whom are a decade or more older than I am, share a ton of church time doing religious stuff and talking about kids and grand kids and physical ailments.

Nothing out of the ordinary for a group of conservative church ladies.

This past summer one of the women asked me if I liked to read.  Now, it's pretty well known in the church that I "write books."  Few know what I write and even fewer have read what I've written.  (Not unlike my real life.  LOL!)  I don't advertise much in church because, well, there's salty language in my books and yes, there's premarital activity.  Anyway, this lady asked me if I liked to read and told me that she and some of the other ladies liked to pass around novels they'd enjoyed.  She asked me if I was interested in reading some.

Church ladies LOVE her.  I
wanna be her.

Now I'm no dummy.  I know that inspirational novels have grown by leaps and bounds over the last few years.  I've toyed with writing one myself, I even have a series in mind.  Thing is, I think it would be too edgy for most inspirational readers because much of what I've read has been...well...dull.  Dull for me, but what I like to read is way different from what others like, so I'm open to trying books of all kinds.  Mentally preparing myself for some Janet Oke wannabe, I told the lady, sure, I'll read a book or two.

She handed me "Lethal" by Sandra Brown.  I'm not familiar with Ms. Brown's work, but the blurb on the back seemed promising.  So I read it.

I was shocked.  I was shocked beyond words.

And oh yeah, I was DELIGHTED!

See,  far from being inspirational, "Lethal" was everything I look for in a novel...and a few things I could do without.  It was suspenseful.  It had a ton of characters.  It had a bad boy.  And, wowser, it had salty, salty, salty language.  Made me recall the days when my mom was the librarian of my grade school and every new book we got, she'd attack with a black pen, marking out the bad words.

And oh yeah, I had to constantly check the cover to make sure I was reading a book written by a woman.  Why?  Well, there was quite a bit more...oral...than most women like to put in their books.

When I finally returned the book, I gave the church lady one of my own...no longer afraid of what the Old Guard ladies of my church might think!  (In my head, I'm always Scarlett O'Hara, but, you know, nicer.)  And my church lady friend said, "If you ever want another one by Sandra Brown, just let me know.  We all just LOVE HER!"

So sure, I still have that inspirational series in my head.  Only difference is, now, I'm thinking I'm going to turn it into some sort of dark, nasty, cuss fest with tons of nudity and all sorts of shenanigans. 

Hey, why not?  The church ladies demand it!


And yes, I do believe The Church Lady would read my books, and she'd get them by clicking here!