Reply to Comment

It's about the kids, man!

ARealGirl and I believe this series can get a lot of kids to fall in love with reading. Not the kids that like Twilight or Harry Potter, those kids are already dialed-in. We're talking about a story that entertains scifi gearheads, striaght-out nerds, and kids into sports and athletics. It's the latter group that goes largely underserved in YA literature. There are some good sports-fiction YA writers out there (like Mike Lupica), but in my opinion these stories are too PC and watered-down, at least for the kind of kids I used to hang out with when I played football and wrestled.

The GFL series is intended to be gritty and real. Just because you're 13 doesn't mean you can't handle the truth, so to speak.

Language, however, is a great barrier to this. If the books are full of my normal cursing, that can keep them out of libraries, schools, and tick off parents who are working hard to raise their kids with certain moral values.

Me keeping in the language is not worth the lost opportunities of getting kids into reading.