Now, my reading is varied and I read many different genres and nonfiction about a variety of topics. As a boomer, I like stories about grownup people with mature storylines. Stories that appeal to 40, 50, 60-year- old women readers is sometimes referred to as Boomer Lit.
When I started soliciting stories for A Shaker of Margaritas: Hot Flash Mommas, one of the requirements was that the protagonist had to be in her forties. The younger boomers are in their late forties and even older boomers can relate to stories featuring a more mature woman. Face it, the seventy-six million boomers are probably not that interested in a teenage girl or twenty-something character whose idea of a crisis is a zit on her face before a big date.
I didn’t actually label Hot Flash Mommas as Boomer Lit because the age of the protagonist falls outside of boomers. Women in their early forties are not boomers and I didn’t want them to think the stories were too “old” for them. Heaven forbid, that anyone younger than forty now thinks of us boomers as “seniors.”
In the next Shaker anthology, Cougars on the Prowl, the woman will be a boomer. While this book, too, could correctly be labeled “Boomer Lit” we have to consider that if the woman is a “cougar” the man may be a Gen Xer. I’m looking forward to what creative writers will do with this topic. One thing I know, for a story to be accepted, it must have substance, because that’s what we boomers like to read. Guidelines will be posted at www.mozarkpress.com by January.
copyright (c) November 2010 L. S. Fisher
http://boomerobics.blogspot.com/
