From Chapter 12 – As you read the book, you’ll notice I invented my own swear word – chud. (If Red Dwarf has ‘smeg’ and Battlestar Galactica can use ‘frack,’ I wanted my chud!) I originally had this scene to explain how the brothers came to use this silly word. In the final edits, I realized it wasn’t necessary to give you readers the whys … but if you’re curious, here you go!

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The new moon left a particularly dark night. So far away from civilization’s lights, the stars shone brighter than either of the boys had seen in some time. “Man,” said Jackson, “it’s dark as chud out here! It’s amazing how many stars we can see!”

“Y’know,” said Wick, “you boys sure do say chud a lot. What is up with that exactly? It’s weird.”

Jam let a chuckle slip out. “Our mom hated swearing. Used to get on our case something fierce. She made us promise to never swear, but you know how tough that is.”

“But it’s Mom,” added Jackson, “so we did our best.”

“We convinced her that if it wasn’t a real swear word, it’d be okay.”

“We tried frick and frack and smeg and smug, but none of those caught on. They just didn’t feel right. Plus, to her ears, they sounded a bit too much like cuss words.”

“Eventually,” Jam continued, “we settled on chud, after seeing that movie.”

“What movie?” asked Nasty.

“Ummm, C.H.U.D. Ya know, Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers. That old, cheesy horror movie from the mid-80s.”

“Oh. Okay. Musta missed that one.”

“Ya didn’t miss much,” said Jam. “It was an awful movie! But it got us our swear word.”