Do you enjoy stories with older characters as the main protagonists? If you’ve written one, please share an excerpt in the comments. I’m currently writing the last book in the Paradise Tryptych: the happy ever after for my Duchess of Haverford and the man she loves. It starts something like this.
Eleanor was tired of wearing black; tired of dresses with minimal trim and accessories that repeated the dismal colour. She hated the unspoken rules that restricted the types of activity a widow might enjoy. She missed her friends and her usual social round. She despised the hypocrisy that expected her to make an outward show of mourning a cruel despot who had never shown her a particle of affection or consideration, and who would have consumed every vestige of her will and destroyed all of her happiness if she had not found ways to manage him.
Above all, she was bored, bored, bored. No. That was not her predominant emotion. She would be honest with herself though she dissembled to the rest of the world. The feeling that currently ruled her life was grief, but not for Haverford.
I don’t think there could ever be too many stories about an older heroine and hero. Many of us come to romance novels at a younger age and have read them for years and years and will continue to do so. It makes us believe, and I’m sure it was true that the golden age for a woman to catch a husband was from age 17 (even 16) to gasp, 21, 22. Good grief, and yet I am sure there were reasons. Lack of natural make-up was one. Ha! I could list a few more semi humorous reasons, that sadly aren’t that funny, but not here.
So, yes! I honestly do appreciate a story for ‘older’ protagonists. An older heroine widowed or not, is just as interesting if not more when it was reality for so many more women than the relatively few debutantes lucky enough to have a season. I find both stages of life we’re talking about interesting during the Regency, as other age groups…but that’s a whole different set of questions for a different day.
You set up the little excerpt quite nicely. I’m really looking forward to reading it. Best of luck on your WIP.
Thanks, Michelle. Yes, I absolutely agree. I love writing older heroines. They have life experience and often a confidence that the younger ones haven’t had time to acquire.