lisa rabey writes stuff issue #11 Middle-aged heroines
Dear Internet,
My apologies for skipping the last few weeks. Week 1, I was still in vacation mode and week 2, I got married!
I spent the weekend thinking of Aubrey, my main character from my work in progress, Aubrey Jones Gets a Life. Based on the books I’ve been inhaling lately, it got me thinking about Aubrey and what I want to do with her. I want her to be different, but I’ve fallen into the same trope that seems to permeate contemporary romance: Woman’s great aunt (always the great aunt) dies and leaves her a store of some sort (almost always a bookstore) and the woman comes to terms with who she is, finds romance, and if it’s a cozy, solves the murder.
Aubrey Jones Gets a Life is about a Bay Are based tech worker who is burned out from her job. After finding out her great aunt dies, she quits her job, drives cross-country in her old Volvo to N. Michigan. Once she arrives, she discovers that her great aunt has left her her bookstore and cabin.
The only thing about Aubrey that is different than other contemporary romcoms is she’s in her early 40s and gets crippled with anxiety. Sometimes she swaps her psych meds for a finger of bourbon. She’s also buxom (size 18/20) but about 5’5”. (5’5” always seemed like a good height to me. Not too short and not too tall. I’m 5’10” and sometimes being tall is as bad as it is good.)
It’s several days after I wrote the above and I sat down and went back to Aubrey’s story. Monday night and wrote.
I cranked nearly 3,000 words in about an hour or so? I’m not sure; wasn’t keeping track of time.
I’m now up to over 10,000 words in the story or about 40 pages.
I started Aubrey’s story several times. I picked up on the most current version, read through and added more content when warranted. I worked content in from previous versions into the most current one to help flesh out the story.
I’m writing like a panster meaning I have no idea where the story is going. I have a brief idea but nothing concrete and definitely no outline. I’m not even sure Aubrey is going to get a HEA (happy ever after) or a HFN (happy for now). Of course I want her to be happy and fulfilled but what does that look like?
(An example of what I’m thinking of is Linda Holmes’ Flying Solo and Evie Drake Starts Over. Both have a bit of romance that is unconventional and the heroines are older. In Flying Solo, the heroine is 40 and her love interest lives across the country which they keep the long distance alive. (When looking up the plot for the book, part of the plot is Laurie inherits her great aunt’s estate. SEE! Tropes!))
A question I need to address.
Where is Aubrey at? She’s quit her job at CyberTech (verified the name does not, surprisingly, exist as a business. Please don’t steal it.), gone back to Northern Michigan, and getting settled in her aunt’s cabin. Right now she’s working through her first day in Michigan. I went to bed that night before I continued because it was ticking towards midnight and I planned on getting up early Tuesday morning to do a walk. (Spoiler alert: I woke up at said time and walked.)
This is the part where I think I need to outline or at least put together some kind of idea of where I’m going. It’s also about the time the love interest is introduced.
For him, I want him to be younger. By how much, not sure. This is known as a reverse age-gap romance.
Reverse age gap is where the female lead is older than the male lead. It’s a pretty big genre. Typically it’s quite drastic age difference such as the 15 year age difference in Oliva Dade’s 40-Love couple and about a 10-ish age difference in Eva Leigh’s Waiting for a Scot Like You. Considering Mr. Lisa is seven years younger than me; this type of storytelling is my jam.
Another reason it’s also my jam is it’s often impossible to find romance, or contemporary novels with older female lead who are single and not (that) bitter. I read somewhere that “older” was defined as the early 30s up to maybe 35. Most romances place the female lead early to mid-20s with the male lead either her age or a bit older. It’s not that I don’t remember my 20s, well barely, it’s that age group is not the primary readers. The average age of a romance reader is 42 with the primary age group 35 to 54. Why, then, does it feel majority of the stories out there concentrate on the sub-30s age group?
If a book does have an over 40 main female lead, she is harried and overworked as a mother. She’s in a terrible marriage or about to get divorced/widowed. Her children have left the nest and she doesn’t know about having a career. If she’s single, she’s beyond bitter about her choices in life.
I’m over 40 and I am none of those things. I cannot relate to any of this and I typically only continue on reading if the primary plot pulls me in.)
And don’t get me started on having a female lead with a mental illness and who is stable (mostly). It just doesn’t really exist.
(Aside: My murder series consists of an over 35 year old Edwardian stage actress whose coming up to her swan song. She discovers photography and by chance photographs a murder. She must solve the case before she herself gets murdered. This is a story that is not typical other than it’s a female detective. (And the time-period as well is not used that often.))
So, I have some non-tropey and tropey things so do I continue with Aubrey’s story as is or do I take her and do something new. If I do something new, then what does that look like?
No idea.
Now, there is nothing wrong with trope books. People love what they love and people write what they write.
I just want to tell stories that people love and remember.
Media
The big idea: what if censoring books only makes them more popular?
Submission update
37 submissions including 23 rejections, 2 acceptances, and 1 withdrawal.
Publication
folded, tiny wren lit, April 2023
chapbook: commercial breaks
Snippets
Nanoism was a micro-fiction journal that recently ended once it hit 1000 publications. The shtick was that each piece had to be 140 characters or less based on Twitter’s old character rule. I was never published, rejected a few times, so I’m presenting those works below.
Nanoism #1
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Nanoism #2
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Have a good week.
lisa x