One of the issues that I struggle with is the level of graphic description and language that I use in my work. On the one hand, a writer wants dialect that reflects the character – who he or she is, how that person with a particular background and psyche would speak. Also, you want the reader to feel, taste and smell the situation, to be repelled or shocked or drawn in so that they leave with the feeling that they were there, that they experienced what the characters experienced.

Conversely , you don’t want to go too far with the graphic description or language. You want the reader's imagination to become involved, letting the reader take the scene to a place that allows them to believe they were there – to feel the experience at a level that is comfortable or “comfortably uncomfortable” for them – letting them release that prurient and deviant being that hides inside, and that they can only let be acknowledged in the secrets of their mind through books and dreams.

Also, as a father, and even though my children are no longer children, you don’t want you children to read your work and get the feeling that their father is that person of whom he writes. After all, you want them to still respect you and not be embarrassed by what you may put out there for public consumption.

So, there is this dilemma that, as a writer, I wrestle with every time I put words on paper. They are, after all, only words. Yet, as words, they communicate, and you want them to communicate to the reader, allowing them to see a full human being, regardless of how nice or depraved they may be, without having those words also draw into question the character of the writer.

That is my dilemma. I am sure I am not alone with this dilemma, but when I have broached this subject within a writers’ group, I get strange looks. Maybe it is because the other writers write in more “mainline” or less edgy genre. Maybe I’ll find out someday.