Today's Friday Video is all about sexually active senior citizens, but I had an email about it about a half hour ago that led to an interesting conversation. Meike wrote:
The desire for more mature characters in erotic romance fiction is becoming more important to me as I become one of them. It gets a little tiring to always read about these beautiful young bodies having this amazing sex. I would love to hear about the amazing sex us softer oldies are having. Sure, I read to escape, but I also like to feel a part of a story, feel like I can fully relate to the character. Hopefully authors will realize the babyboomers are ready for mature erotica.
I wrote back and asked, “Here's a question: do you like mature erotica that features older protagonists, or do you also have some interest in older heroines and younger men? Ellora's Cave did a series recently that was termed “cougar” lit – all about older women and younger men. Would that interest you, or do you want older protagonists together?”
Meike responded:
Wow, I love the questions, thank you. I like both characters to be mature, but I also do enjoy “cougar” stories. However, I prefer those stories to be within a realistic age range, preferably less than 10 years and definitely less than 15 years. Looking back now, my 40's were a great time of awakening for me as a woman, but now into my 50's I'm having to adjust and accept different life limitations. I would love to read stories of people (couples) dealing with those issues of life. I recently read Joey Hill's “Afterlife”( A | BN | K | S ) and loved how the couple dealt with their 13 year age difference. However, I was quite surprised when it stated that she was 43 & he 30. It was hard for me to imagine a 30 yr old man having that type of maturity. It would have been more interesting to me and more real if the characters had been older. Yes, I would definitely love to read erotica about people in their 40's, 50's and 60's – life (and sex) doesn't end at 30.
So, time for Good Shit vs. Shit to Avoid! Several readers in the video comments mentioned Major Pettigrew's Last Stand ( A | BN | K | S ) by Helen Simonson, and while it is a secondary and not primary romance, I loved the story of Harry and Victoria in Jennifer Crusie's Trust Me On This ( A | BN | K | S ).
The thing with GS vs STA columns is that merely knowing the book is out there isn't enough – most readers want to have some recommendation for or against a book, so if you know a book is good, or not so good, and features protagonists over 40, please share! Note: I don't necessarily define “senior citizen” as “over 40” but the most-often-seen age range for heroes and heroines is 20s-30s, with a few in their 40s showing up here and there. But what about romances where both are older? As Meike said so aptly, life and sex don't end at 30. (I should hope not – I left 30 awhile ago!)
Thanks, Lynne!
@Rona—Agreed! I don’t want older heroines in a May-December story. Let’s have those George Clooney heroes!! Maybe it’s because I’m a teacher and the idea of a forty-year old woman with a much younger guy is too ewwww for me.
Exactly, Rona!
Rona,
DO you have the same “eeeew” reaction to older man younger gal? This has been culturally accepted for years. So why the grief with older woman younger man? Or are both ‘ewww’?
I’m pleading Friday afternoon burnout for the typos in that comment I just made, also for the suggestion that the main character is having a secondary romance with his mother. Uh, NO. His mother is having a romance—with the all grown up bad boy from her high school days, who still knows how to be bad. Sheesh.
http://goo.gl/FwqJI
My favorite “older” characters are Aral Vorkosigan and Cordelia Naismith in Lois McMaster Bujold novella Shards of Honor (which is now published in Cordelia’s Honor with the second story of Aral and Cordelia Barrayar). The main characters are 34 and 44 respectively at the beginning of their story. One of my favorite parts of the story has Cordelia is when a psychologist is analyzing their love as a possible cover for espionage Cordelia comments wryly “One doesn’t expect a 34 year to fall in love like an adolescent. Quite a gift at my age” The psychologist responds (missing the irony) “A middle age career officer is hardly the stuff of romance.”
Bujold also wrote more mature characters in The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls (though these are technically not romances as the driving plot is about things other than the relationship, the relationships are wonderful).
Enjoy!
Harlequin used to have a line called ‘Next’ which featured ‘older’ heroines. My favorite were Stevi Mittman’s books. They’re mysteries with romance and are really funny. Here’s a link to her website- http://stevimittman.com/july_w… It looks like you can still buy them.
Also Nora Roberts ‘Black Rose’ was the 2nd in her ‘In the Garden Trilogy’ and is about the mother of two grown sons finding love the second time around.
This is also a topic near and dear to my heart, Lynne. I love writing over-40 characters because that is what I know. I’m too far away from my twenties to write those kids with any authority at all. Love, love, love your book One for the Road as well as Sandy James’s book Turning Thirty-Twelve. Yes, there is an audience for our books—I’m convinced it will grow as we Boomers age. Yay for love and sex at any age, but particularly when we’re aged like fine wine.
Thanks for this topic, Sarah. We need to be talking about expanding romantic novels of all genres into the ages of the people who are buying and reading them.
Sandy, Turning Thirty-Twelve was a fun and romantic book, so if you won’t pimp it, I will! Love and sex do not belong to the young…it’s still alive and well at all ages!
It is discouraging to be rejected because your characters are “too old.” Contemporary romance means “romance today” to me, and it’s not the exclusive territory of twenty-somethings. Passion and sex and love happen at every age!
Candice Hern has a “Merry Widows” historical series that might be considered for this topic. I have only read the first in the series but “In the Thrill of the Night” is still one of my favorite romances ever and I am not a huge historical romance reader.
As I get *ahem* older, I too like a good romance with a heroine my age. Hollywood Girls Club and Secrets of The Hollywood Girls Club both have 30+ characters. (Yes guilty of pimping my own books.)
For 40+ I recently really enjoyed Lynne Marshall’s One for the Road. A really fun book with a wonderful mid 40’s heroine.
I, too am a fan of Lynne Marshall’s ONE FOR THE ROAD. I love this book – it had everything, a lovely romance, a fun mystery, and a cast of secondary characters that were a total hoot!
I, too am writing older characters but not really paying attention to that fact…my hero is in his 40s (okay, he’s a demon/fae/human tribred) and the heroine? We never do learn her age. Maybe that’s easier in the paranormal world, to skip over some of those details? Don’t know.
But, yeah. If you haven’t read ONE FOR THE ROAD – you really should.
Just saying!
Age is just a state of mind. Lynne’s One For The Road’s characters are the perfect age.
I think one reason there are not more younger heroines is for the same reason there are not more heroines who don’t want kids. Romance heroines seem to be required to want children -maybe lots of ‘em?
Any I don’t read a lot of erotica but I do have some older women romances to recommend.
First off I love Georgette Heyer so I highly recommend False Colors. When this book was reviewed by Dear Author I sugguested that the mother was debatably the primary heroine, as the book is equally about her. She is 42 years old.
When I was younger I read the Mitford books by Jan Karon. The books about an Episcopal priest Father Tim who is in his early sixties and falls in love over the first two books with his next-door who is in her mid-to late fifties. (Don’t remember the exact ages.) They get married and their romance spans the first six or so books. While there are no explicit scenes. It is discussed more than once that they enjoy the physical aspects of their relationship (particularly in the third book, which starts off right after they marry. Given that he is a priest they wait until they get married.) There are religious aspects which may not be everyone’s cup of tea but there is so much else in the story that I think its accessible to many readers.
Thanks Mom on the Run – the Sharon Sala book is available as an ebook!
I love older heroines and heroes. People who’ve actually experienced life and still risk it all for love. There is some true conflict both internal and external. Really when you’re 18 and meeting your billionaire boyfriend what’s the worry? You’re 18! What questions could you possibly have?
Lynne Marshall’s One for the Road was one of my top picks from last year. Great hero, fantastic and fiesty heroine who both have baggage and conflicts to overcome that make sense to my life, kids, ex’s, career revival and the fact that there is a HEA at the end just makes a woman happy.
Loved Nora Robert’s from the Garden series, too, and several others. Thanks for the topic.
I think the proposal scene in False Colors with the mother and her long time admirer has to be the funniest proposal on record. And his reactions to it in the scenes afterward are equally hilarious. I’ll admit, False Colors is not one of my favorite Heyer’s overall but those scenes make it work for me—when I need a pick me up, I’ll go and reread them for the laugh. And you just couldn’t get those particular laughs with a younger couple.
I will have to check some of these out. I did enjoy Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, although I wouldn’t have categorized it as a romance novel – although it’s clearly both a romance and a novel.
I think maybe the reason I haven’t been looking for romances with heroines who are my age is that I tend to enjoy romances with big drama and misunderstandings and lots of oh-noes-how-will-this-ever-work-out? and when grown-up characters act like ding-bats I don’t greatly respect them. No more ‘let’s have sex to get it out of our systems’ and no more ‘I’ll be better off lying about how I really feel’ and none of this ‘but I daren’t risk my friendship’ business that I generally adore, and under no circumstances would I accept the ‘I refuse to consider getting married for a host of nonsensical reasons’ shenanigans from people who are old enough to know better. I’m totally willing to give it a chance, but I like a generous serving of crazy sauce with my romance, and I’m not sure you can serve that with…um…aged meat? a well-seasoned dish? I think if I were any good with metaphors I could get something out of properly hung game birds, but whatever, you know what I mean.
Marne Davis Kellogg’s Kick Keswick series, while not romances, does have romantic elements and features a late 50s/early 60s “kick”-ass heroine. Raised in the Oklahoma oil fields, Kick ran off during a college trip to London. 30-some years later she’s got a home in London and is retired from running an exclusive auction house. She’s a jewelry expert, an expert jewelry forger, a master baker, and accomplished thief (she only steals from rich people who don’t deserve their great stuff.) She has a second life in the French countryside and takes undercover assignments from Buckingham Palace. Kick doesn’t look 30, doesn’t try to dress or act 30, and has very normal body confidence issues when it’s time to get jiggy. And she does get jiggy.
When my best friend’s mom was dying of breast cancer, one of her biggest wishes was to get to read the latest Kick Keswick book. I think she did.
Seriously, these books are more than fun. First one is http://www.amazon.com/Brilliant-Kick-Keswick-Mysteries-1/dp/0312303475/ref=pd_sim_b_6” rel=“nofollow”>Brilliant.
“Jane Austen in Boca” is very lighthearted romance that reimagines “Pride and Prejudice” taking place in a senior community in Florida. The names are all different, but you’ll have no trouble recognizing Elizabeth, Jane, Darcy, even Mr. Collins is there. Very funny. Of course there’s an HEA.
Love Bujold’s books. I almost mentioned Shard of Honor when I mentioned Primary Inversion by Asaro above. I love SFR, but I know it’s not as popular a subgenre as some others. Still…great books, wonderful, intelligent characters and talented writing. What else do you need?
I cannot wait for this movie! I’ve been waiting since I saw a trailer for it last November before I saw Descendants. This is a MUST see for me.
I do have that eww factor with older men and younger women for example Hugh Hefner and his “girlfriends”. Ewww and while George Clooney’s current GF is at least in her thirties, I still think, “18 years? Really? You could have fathered her George.” Of course, that is just me, but I get tired of that cliche relationship of the older “experienced” man and the young “innocent” female who signs over her life to him. Ugh.
Glad to hear you are an equal opportunity ‘eeeeewwwww-er’, Maria lol.
I have seen the previews for The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel too and will definitely see it. Of course I’ll have to go to my favorite small indie theater to find it!
On the m/m side – and this trope is RARE in m/m fiction – ZAMaxfield’s Family Unit has two men in their late forties/early fifties (?), one of whom is a grandfather. And that story is HAWT!
I remembered another one – Marrying Mom by Olivia Goldsmith. I guess it’s more women’s fiction than romance, but it has romances a plenty in it and it’s fun, iirc. Not super heavy – it’s by the author of the 1st Wives Club. The heroine is 40 yo and successful – her mother is moving back to NY from Florida, after being widowed, with the express desire to “help” her grown children get their lives together. So the grown children conspire to marry her off, so she’ll be too distracted to run their lives. Hilarity ensues. The romances (with both the mom and the 40 yo daughter) are light, the characters are pretty stereotyped, but it’s a fun romp, beach type book.
I just skimmed through all the comments and I don’t think anyone else has mentioned Trisha Ashley. Quite a lot of her books have heroines in their forties or at least late thirties, most of whom either have grown children or are hoping for a “last-chance” baby. The heroines tend to be quirky (several of them are authors, so if you don’t like authors writing stories about authors she might not be for you) and the books are all light, fun reads. She has published recently but I prefer her older books: The Generous Gardener, The Urge to Jump, Every Woman for Herself, and Singled Out. They can be a little hard to find, but try your library and secondhand book shops.
Thanks for the mention above, Beachlover!
I’d like to add that in addition to “A New Lu” and “Icing On The Cake” the heroines in my novels “Crossing the Line” and “Love On The Line” are also 43 and 45. Life doesn’t end at 40 0r 50. Im my experience it doesn’t even slow down. So why shouldn’t our reading selection include that marvelous truth!
Laura Parker Castoro
On Facebook as Laura Parker Castoro Book
http://www.lauracastoro.com
The first book I ever wrote, In Hot Water, features a forty-something heroine. I hope to rewrite it and publish sometime, because I felt certain that this type of story was needed, and now I think so even more.
BTW, I’d also recommend “One for the Road” and “Soul in His Eyes”!