AUTHOR COMMENT: PC or not PC, that is the question

An interesting comment from one reader.

I’ve used ‘coloured’ instead of ‘black’ to describe some of my characters. My bad, I honestly thought I was being PC.  Seriously though, thanks for the correction - I want to get my books right. I know that I can never please everyone all of the time, but I try my best and I will make mistakes.  Hence the caveat at the beginning of all my books!

In my view, the world seems to have gone a bit PC mad; I really don’t know what you can or can’t say sometimes.  Is there a PC manual out there? (Rhetorical question, I don’t really want one!)

However, this does cause a few problems when I’m writing a character, especially a nasty piece of work like Mamba (see ‘Z – London’), where I want to be as edgy as possible. But, I certainly don’t want to insult or offend anyone or cause a controversy – it’s not easy!  For example, is it acceptable for Mamba to use the ‘N’ word because he is black or is it simply taboo altogether? I would personally never dream of using it in real life (or want to or need to for that matter), and as I have no idea of the answer, I just don’t go there.  The same could be said for religions. 

As for being an 80’s throwback, that’s me in a nutshell, can’t you tell from the 80’s references in the books? I just haven’t moved with the times!