The Carus Chronicles

Just call it a penis! I have to start this post off with a disclaimer: I grew up in a small coastal community, am a biologist and have worked on fishing vessels as a government representative. I've heard every name in the book for male and female genitalia and am fairly desensitized to the wide variety of labels, including the more crass and less savory ones. But unless you plan to lick it off, why sugar coat it? A penis is a penis, after all! Maybe it's the biologist in me, but when I'm reading a sex scene, I find it amusing when the writer has seemingly gone out of the way to avoid the dreaded P and V words, or even the commonly used slang terms. Second disclaimer: These aren't so much as pet peeves, as they are points of hilarity for me. The top two labels for male and female genitalia respectively that throw me into fits of giggles are: 1. Velvet Covered Steel 2. Inner Goddess As a writer, I can appreciate how difficult writing a sex scene is, and how yo...

One of my biggest pet peeves as a reader is seeing a line where a character at some point "tastes bile." because he or she is confronted with something that grosses them out, or is so grotesque they are nauseated by the idea or sight.  It's often the ultimate expression of supreme disgust, only to be one-upped by actual vomiting. Reading this description repeatedly for one or more characters throughout a book is what really bothers me. It's not normal to constantly be tasting one's bile. Here's why: Bile is an emulsifier. It is produced in the liver, stored in the gallbladder, and released into the upper section of your small intestine (called the duodenum) to break down fats into smaller fats. It is extremely bitter tasting and the vapours from excessive bile secretion can travel to the mouth for you to taste. In order for it to do so, it has to travel through TWO sphincter muscles (the pyloric and the cardiac), which act as one-way gates, the highly ac...