Don’t Forget to Season It: Romance Stories for People in Their Fifties

          Illustration by Laurie Lail

Written by Laurie Lail

So, I just published a romantic comedy/self discovery novel on amazon called The Power of a Love Song, and the protagonist is in her fifties. This was completely organic because I’m in my fifties.

Now, when I started the manuscript, I was in college and had just turned fifty. I was in writing classes where most of my classmates were significantly younger than myself. Anyway, one day I’m having lunch with a group of young women, and I started talking about the manuscript, and explaining that the “leading lady” was fifty-five. These women had loved my short story about a young woman, who’d become pregnant, her lover wanted no part of it, and she had to figure out what she wanted to do, but as I talked about this story, they began to squint and squirm. Finally, it was brought to my attention, by a well-meaning young woman, that the main characters in romance novels, meaning the two who fall for each other, and more importantly, get it on, are usually no older than thirty-ish.

I explained that though my age choice was not the norm, love stories with people in their fifties have been written before, and they’ve sold. Since I am a woman in her fifties, I felt qualified to speak for my people and say that we are capable of not only enjoying romance and getting it on, but we can still have the fireworks we had at “thirty-ish.”

These young women had seen me in the throws of a hot flash. They had seen me looking for my reading glasses that were perched on my head. They had seen my flip-phone, and worst of all, there mothers were my age. They smiled politely, not buying a word of it.

Before publishing my story, I decided I better research this market. Now, in truth, I haven’t found too many protagonists older than their early forties. Now, of course there are the “looking back” romances where the protagonist is now in her fifties, sometimes even older, but the romantic story takes place in the protagonist’s “youth.”

So, are baby-boomers denying their own romantic capabilities by not demanding stories where fifty-somethings are finding love? Do romance novels were the lovers in there fifties have a place in this market?

As a matter of fact, yes. There is a market, baby-boomers know what they want, and the market is growing. It is called “seasoned romance.” As it turns out, one third of all romance readers are over 45.

Anyone in this age group knows that there are some differences in mature-romance, and so it is with seasoned romance stories. These readers certainly don’t mind sexy scenes thrown in, but they also want something deeper than many romance novels written for the young. There needs to be more of a “side story” with struggles, meaningful moments, and discoveries. Like those of us more experienced with life, stories in seasoned romance novels understand that love does not stand alone; it’s tangled up with beliefs, memories, dreams and conflicts. Its success is part of a journey.

Many books with seasoned protagonists are a part of a series that spell it out for the reader, such as the “Mid-Life Love” series by Whitney G., the “Never Too Late” series by Donna McDonald, the “Silver Night Romance Collection” by Allyson R. Abbott, and the “Late Bloomers” series by Betsy Talbot, but strangely, many of the photos used for some of the covers of these books are of people who look thirty-something tops. I’ll rant about that in another post.

If you are looking for some seasoned romance, here are few titles that might interest you, but there are many more out there, and more to come.

The Unexpected Waltz by Kim Wright

Whiskey and Serendipity by Josie Kirr

This Old Café By Marci Boudreaux

The Good Sister by Maggie Christensen 

Never a Dull Moment by Donna McDonald

Out of the Box Awakening By Jennifer Theriot

When Love Calls by Sharon C. Cooper (One of the few I stumbled across with an African American love story)

Dream Catcher by Maggie Christensen (Native American Protagonist)

Sex and the Widow Miles by Nan Reinhardt

Long walk, Short Pier by Linda Rettstatt

And of course, my book, The Power of a Love Song by Laurie Lail

The Power of a Love Song

Hello All,

            I really enjoy short stories because when a story pops into my head, short stories allow me to create and complete something with a limited amount of time. I do sometimes need a little instant gratification. However, like reading a good book, or working on an enjoyable project, sometimes getting there is 75% of the fun. So, I also like to write novel length stories.

These stories are sometimes months of work in progress. It becomes something I pull up as a way to entertain myself should I find an hour or more of free time in the morning or evening. This doesn’t happen much, but when it does, I’m usually ready with something to add because even though I have limited time to work on the manuscript, I have plenty of moments to think about what might happen within the story. How many hours a week do I find myself sitting in traffic, waiting on appointments, waiting on a meeting to start—how many hours a week do we all spend waiting.

I think these forced breaks help with the creation of a story. Though I enjoy typing away as the story unfolds itself, I think having to step back and think about the events of the story, the characterizations, the many roads the story could go down, and the time line and placement of the stories information is really helpful at crafting what I want. What I want is a story that entertains, perhaps moves or uplifts, and one that closely resembles actual human interactions—I want it to feel real.

Of course following the creation process comes the work of editing the story. For me, this process can go on forever, and at some point I have say “Enough!” Revision can be both wonderful and grueling. Sometimes I have to kill lines that I carefully molded and really liked, but they didn’t really work in the story. Then there is that paragraph that didn’t flow or move with the story in a way you’d have liked, but with the revision of the paragraph before it, it now becomes easy to tweak and helps the story move on beautifully and naturally. And sometimes in the revision nuances of the story change because they just have to, and it’s both strange that I didn’t notice it while writing the story and a wonderful surprise.

I have recently completed this process with a story called “The Power of a Love Song.” I’m posting the “book blurb” and the link to find the book on amazon. I will be offering the eBook for free for a short period. When I pick the dates, I’ll let y’all know.

Blurb—

Alison Evans, an organized, focused, and in control woman, living in Charlotte North Carolina, is loosing it. Since her husband of almost twenty-eight-years left her for a younger woman, Alison has spent the last two weeks cooped-up in her house, seldom getting out of bed, or answering her phone, or even walking her beloved dog, Monkey. She’s been going over the events of her life, trying to figure out where she went wrong. There’s the failed marriage, the separation agreement her husband is trying to force on her, and her longstanding anger towards her mother. Woven into her life’s history are the memories of the young man she once loved, Brian. They keep elbowing their way into her mind, but the memories of Brian are tangled in the secret she’s kept for her mother, one that has shown up to burn in her chest again. And when her mother calls from Miami to invite everyone to her wedding, only a year after the death of Alison’s father, the anger in Alison begins to boil over.

            Alison’s business partner, Roman, and her oldest friend, Maggie, rally around her to go to Miami and confront her past with her mother, but when Brian, still as handsome and kind as ever, shows up in town on his way to her mother’s wedding, Alison can’t seem to control all of the emotions swimming inside of her. She can’t seem to regain the level-headed behavior she’d come to rely on and has recently been having an occasional meltdown, and even though Brian has shown up at the absolute worst time possible, she can’t stop thinking about his raspy voice, his easy-going demeanor, and wanting to kiss him.

Can her friends get her to Miami in one piece? Can she finally sort out the past with her mother? Can she construct a new life from simple things like understanding, forgiveness, trust, laughter, and the power of a love song?

Sometimes, when your past comes after you, “loosing it” might be the best thing that can happen.

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=node%3D154606011&field-keywords=Laurie+Lail