I enjoy writing about mature women, so imagine my delight to find a reference to an emerging genre called Baby Boomer Lit on the blog of Mary Keeley from Books and Such Literary agency. I followed her link to Claude Nougat’s blog at http://claudenougat.blogspot.com.au/ and was delighted to find reference to over 70 million baby boomers – my target readers. Claude has also set up a Good Reads group dedicated to this genre – http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/81261-baby-boomer-novels-a-new-genre.

It is interesting to look at the number of movies which have been produced lately featuring older characters. Nougat notes About Schmidt (maybe not so recent), The Marigold Hotel,and The Descendants. There has also been The Quartet, The Performance, the beautiful French movie And If We All Lived Together and, more recently Amor.

Authors I love who have taken up the challenge to write about more mature protagonists are Liz Byrski (who has also written an excellent non-fiction book called Women and Aging), Joanne Trollope, Hilary Boyd, Marcia Willis and Sandra Antonelli who has completed her PhD on exactly this topic (would love to read it, Sandra) to name but a few.

Life for older women presents similar and different challenges to their younger counterparts. They still look for a HEA, but theirs may include stepchildren – even teenage stepchildren – and ex partners with their attendant issues. The author can also explore those issues which only emerge with years. Issues such as aging and death of parents, retrenchment, retirement, downsizing, grown children, grandchildren, widowhood and the empty nest syndrome.