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Mike O'Driscoll wrote:-
I must be inured to the term because its usage went unnoticed by me. However, if it's the right word for the story - if it's a word that a particular character would use in a given context - then I don't think writers should self-censor.
Mike, the word was in the author's bio, not in a story. Nobody is suggesting that writers should self-censor, and if you read Ali's later post she said that she herself would use the word in the right context. Ditto for Stephen Volk.
About Connolly, I think it makes an interesting change to do something like this occasionally, but only occasionally. In practical terms, it was only possible for Connolly because I had already read most of his back catalogue, and that won't happen often (e.g. I have the three latest books by Laurell K. Hamilton, but have neither the time nor desire to go through the whole Anita Blake back story of fifteen or so volumes). It's not something that is going to become a regular feature - we've only done it once before, with Gary Braunbeck - and the space devoted to the seven previous volumes was only a page and half, a fraction of the whole.