OVERT TEXT AND OVER HERE: AMERICANISMS IN BRITISH BOOKS by VALERIE LAWS

'I SAID, NO PINK BITS, NO SWEARING, NO VIOLENCE, NO AMERICANISMS, NO LANGUAGE!'

Last month, I blogged about swearing. It was mostly funny, though I was making a serious point about customers/readers being ‘gatekeepers’ now in Ebookworld (good), and some of them using their reviews as weapons of moral warfare to make authors toe the line (not so good). If you’ve not read the post, pop over and check it out HERE.

Welcome back! Well this month I’m blogging about a related phenomenon. Readers pointing out and punishing author errors - or are they errors? I’ve a tootsie in both camps here, in the sense that I’m a right cleverclogs and tend to spot errors of fact, grammar, plot and procedure in other peoples’ books, although I write my own. I can’t help it. Because I do tend to notice errors, I try really really hard to avoid them in my books, especially my crime fiction. I do a lot of research and a lot of checking.

My new crime novel THE OPERATOR (BRUCE AND BENNETT CRIME THRILLER 2) has just launched, and right up to the wire I was checking with a lovely surgeon what medical staff, as opposed to ordinary bods, would call modern, non-latex surgical gloves, and making sure the correct terms were properly assigned yet clear to readers. (I didn’t tell him then that the book was about surgeons being murdered and mutilated to mimic the operations they perform...)

But there’s such a thing as being too clever for your own good, and I must plead guilty to that, hem hem. Getting it right can still be the very thing that pushes a reader’s buttons and gets them plucking back those Amazon stars like some kind of martial arts film in reverse. Some UK readers object to what they regard as ‘Americanisms.’ This is a problem for readers, and hence for writers, because willy nilly (deriv. 'will he, nill he', old English usage), many terms of US origin are over here, and here to stay. My first crime novel THE ROTTING SPOT contains a dramatic scene early on, where Erica Bruce finds a drunk Geordie lass about to give birth in a filthy alley by a night club with someone leaning over her...


'SORRY, MY WHISTLE'S CHARGING.'

Erica calls 911 on her mobile. This has been pointed out to me as a mistake several times, and one otherwise lovely, supportive reviewer deducted a star for it from an otherwise glowing review. I’m as English/Scots as anyone from near the  border can be, with reiver surnames on both sides, so I’d be unlikely to get my own emergency phone number wrong - I have, during my exciting life, called the cops, oops, I mean peelers, using 999. But in the book, I was too clever for my own good. I know that 911 does in fact work on UK mobiles, or so I’ve been assured by several sources. And Erica is a lot younger than me, and might well think of 911 first. Which is why UK mobiles have both emergency numbers, as UK youngsters hear ‘911’ more often on TV than 999.

 Another issue: using ‘CSI’ for, well, crime scene investigators in the UK instead of ‘SOCO’. I have checked, as I did before the book was published, and CSI is the correct term now, and has been for some years. It’s a better term, as some of the investigators may not be ‘officers’ - the doctor, the pathologist, various experts etc. I love the richness of UK and US English, and all the regional variations. I love hearing the American voices in my head when reading Raymond Chandler, Sara Paretsky, Anne Tyler, Robert B Parker. I don’t like it when modern US authors write cosies set in, say, Victorian England, and use modern US slang. But then they’re mostly writing for a US audience who might not realise. I just don't review them.

Misuse, or supposed misuse, of grammar generates ire in many readers. I wish I had a dollar, I mean pound, for every time I’ve seen someone laying into a writer, sometimes in vicious terms (especially in ‘comments’ below online newspaper articles), for saying eg ‘...the werewolf and me’ when according to them, it’s ‘...the werewolf and I’. Erm not always, not if it’s the object of the sentence. A little knowledge is a pain in the ass. I mean arse.

ABOVE: AN ASS, AND AN ARSE. CAN YOU TELL WHICH IS WHICH?

Nerdy, nitpicky, and nutso as I am, I dread being found out: what will eagle-eyed readers find in THE OPERATOR? What did I get wrong? I feel guiltier than any of my murderers just at the possibility. But even worse, what did I get right, that I might still be smacked upside the head (oh dear there I go again!) for? How can an author protect themselves from reader error?

'DID SOMEONE MISUSE AN APOSTROPHE?'

If I find something in a book that looks like a mistake, before telling facebook or the author about it, I get googling to find out for sure. I might learn something and often do. I’d love it if others would do the same before they release the kraken of their triumphant rage on the hapless writer. Language changes, our own UK English has borrowed terms from other languages for centuries, and always will. You see expressions like ‘shagging’ in US books these days. (Behave, Austin Powers!) Words, like ebooks, can fly to and fro at light speed, and huzzah/hurrah/hurray/yay for that!


THE OPERATOR (BRUCE AND BENNETT CRIME THRILLER 2) IS
ON KINDLE UK
KINDLE US
KINDLE IN & all Amazon platforms

THE ROTTING SPOT (A BRUCE AND BENNETT MYSTERY) IS
ON KINDLE UK
KINDLE US
KINDLE IN & all Amazon platforms (& in paperback)

MY AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE with links to my other books: UK  US

Follow me on Twitter: @ValerieLaws