Cussing and the Western Novel

   I don't indulge much. A mild four-letter one slips through now and then, but I am not one of your constant cussers. Recently, however, I did take the Lord's name in vain twice and also threw a fly swatter at the television set..
   The words and the swatter were aimed at a fellow identified as one of the Florida jury that turned loose a woman who killed her baby daughter. Everybody in America knows she is guilty, but there he was, carefully explaining all the reasoning behind the verdict when I chunked the swatter and turned off the TV.
   I've known many talented cussers. My Uncle Maurice, however, was the one I most admired. He was a tall, laughing farmer who cussed in delight as well as anger. In accusation and in forgiveness. He was darned good at it.
   I was just a kid when I overheard him tell another uncle, "Why that was forty years a – goddamned – go."
See where I'm going with this? He realized as he was completing the sentence that he had forgotten to cuss. So he slipped it in BETWEEN SYLLABLES!
   Cussing has always been a problem in western genre books. Publishers banned it long ago along with sex and common sense. Readers have sort of given up on westerns. I've asked myself more than once why I keep on writing them.
   Now we have e-books and it is possible to go around all that. Now a writer can publish his or her own work and make it available through Amazon Kindle and the other e-book publishers. A guy named John Locke is the current star and has sold bushels of e-books, including westerns, that would probably never have been published through the old gatekeepers.
   In my western novels I've just left out profanity completely because it has never seemed to me that my stories need it. I've also left out the silly substitutes. I think they're just fine without it, and I like to think that anybody can read one of them without trauma.
   As to why I write them, it's because I need them. In fact, we all need those characters, the word-as-bond people who worked hard, raised their families, and took care of each other. Writing and reading about them might help us to regain ourselves.