The blog is going to be relatively short. I’m working on a book, and when a story is actually moving along, it’s difficult to turn it off and do something else.

But first, an update on the next Beau book. I reported earlier that the baby would be named Fool’s Errand. Nope. Turns out my publisher’s marketing team gave that one a thumbs down. Beaumont #27 is now called The Taken Ones, and I’m currently at 29.51%, but who’s counting?

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming—triggering words. Believe me, this has nothing to do with Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.

My own personal triggering word happens to be prolific. I write books—lots of them. Whenever I’m being introduced in public, the person doing so will often refer to me as “prolific.”

That word, when used in reference, to writers of books generally implies that the books are somewhat second rate and somehow pop out of the author’s head with the same ease as toast pops out of a toaster. Believe me, the process isn’t at all that simple!

For me, however, the word prolific carries a whole lot of emotional baggage that has nothing at all to do with writing books.

Seven-some decades ago, my older sister, still a teenager, was about to get married, and she and her soon-to-be husband needed to have several sessions of premarital counseling which were administered by the newly-arrived minister at the Warren Community Church and his equally newly-arrived wife.

I believe I’ve mentioned on numerous occasions that there were seven kids in our family. There were other families in Bisbee that had that many kids. The Angeleris did, but they were Catholic. Everybody understood why there were some many Angeleris. The Petersons did, too, but they were Mormons. Then there were the Busks, who happened to be Congregationalists. What in the world was going on there?

At one of the premarital sessions, the minister’s wife turned to my sister and said, “Your mother is so prolific. Hasn’t she ever heard of birth control?”

Had the woman had nerve enough to ask that question to our mother face, Evie would have been only too happy to explain which failed birth control system each of us was.

But when I’m out in public and someone introduces me as being “prolific,” I have to unpack all that family history before I can step up to the mic and start talking.

Other people have other deeply emotional reactions to various words that may seem entirely ordinary to anybody else. This week I had an interesting set of email exchanges with a woman whose husband died of suicide brought on by PTSD after a long career in law enforcement. After retiring, there were too many things he simply could not unsee.

The woman had recently read one of my books in which a character who, when looking down the barrel of Alzheimer’s, takes things in his own hands by walking in front of a speeding vehicle.

Her triggering phrase? “Commit suicide.” In her mind, those two words imply involvement in a criminal activity, as in committing a crime, and they devalue the pain and emotional damage being dealt with by the loved ones who are left behind.

I asked my correspondent what terminology she would suggest. She told me that as a survivor of a suicide victim, she would rather people say that someone “completed suicide.” And that makes sense. When someone is unsuccessful at taking their own life, we don’t say that person “committed attempted suicide.”

So I’m passing this along to my blog readers in case one or more of their acquaintances are also dealing with this painful issue.

And just for the record, if we happen to meet up in person, don’t you dare call me PROLIFIC!