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Saturday, July 6, 2013

IS BOOMER LIT THE NEW BIG THING?

 
 
Sandra, my best friend, always surprises me in where she goes mentally and physically.

Some time back she emailed me that Boomer Lit will be the

next BIG THING
 
and that I wrote one of its first books years ago.

BOOMER LIT?

Those who were born with the bomb are now a huge chunk of the population with disposable income ...

and who still do that quaint thing called ...

READING.

From ABOUT SCHMIDT to REDS 2 (retired spies dealing badly with mortality and being shelved by life)

to SKYFALL (the weathered James Bond and the haunted M dealing with regrets and mortality) ...

Recent movies are directing their attention to those facing grim questions and seeking relief and entertainment.

Baby Boomer novels address

“coming of old age” issues

just as Young Adult novels
are concerned with just coming of age.

The word “age,” or “aging,” used to scare marketers
intent on targeting the young,
but no more.

With a huge and growing market of some 70 million boomers — technically, all those born
between 1946 and 1964 —

As I've written above, Hollywood was the first to notice the change in its audience.

You can probably think of even more movies ... such as  
HOPE SPRINGS or THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL.

BOOMER LIT is a moving feast that can accommodate all kinds of sub-genres,

from light comedy to tragedy, from romance to thrillers, and more.

Which brings us back to Sandra ...

She points to Samuel McCord, the eternal 50 year old,
dealing with increasing physical pains,
the loss of old friends, a broken marriage,
and the loss of his childhood faith in God ...

against a backdrop of supernatural horror and natural disaster:


To look at me you might think me nothing more than a freshly-minted fifty year old man with a taste for black Stetsons.  You’d be wrong on two counts.  I was at least two hundred and five years old.  And I was a monster.  I caught myself listening for the angry villagers with torches in their hands.  This was certainly the night for it.

          As if to deny the monster that I was, I closed my eyes and tried to focus on the scents and sounds of the three gifts from my wife for whom my club was named.  I opened my eyes and smiled sad.  Her gifts still remained though she had left me seven years ago.

          Seven years.  It seemed a lifetime.  An empty, lonely lifetime.

          The good thing about having lived the life I had was that I'd had two hundred years to get used to things going badly.  And they always did, humans being what they were.  Yet, I survived.  The bitter voice of my loneliness asked me why I bothered.  I had no answers.  Just questions.  Questions in the dark.  Story of my life.

          When they came for me tonight, would I struggle?  I made a face.  I knew I would.  Not just out of reflex.  Too many innocents depended upon me being there to stand between them and the hungry wolves.

          And then, there was my hope and my need.

          There is a need in Man, even such a man as me, to see himself.  Fortunately, not in mirrors, for I am denied that.  No, not in mirrors, but in the words of others.  A bridge of words between the solitary confinement of one mind to another.  It is the link to the common spirit within us all.

          I lost that link.  I lost Meilori.  I lost my light.  And I could no longer see my way clear.  I walked by hope alone.  Hope that one day around some dark corner, I would find Meilori waiting for me, having forgiven me when I could no longer forgive myself.
 
What do you think? Is BOOMER LIT the next trend?
 

11 comments:

  1. Oh my GOSH, Roland! Seriously, we need to talk. I think you're tinkering around in my head somehow. Maybe someone at Meilori's is helping?

    Both my wip's feature 50 year old mc's! And the one I've been working on tonight is having to face her past. Ha!

    If Boomer Lit is the next big thing, then I say Bring It!

    And I just made it in-1964. Woohoo :) Hope you got to enjoy your day off and are managing to have a good weekend. It's still raining buckets!

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  2. Well, I do have both coming of old age and coming of age covered in my upcoming book, so you might have a point.
    Really looking forward to Reds II!

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  3. Words Crafter:
    No day off yet. I work Saturday and Sunday solo. Well, the lab tech is on first call, but she went to the movies with her children with work lab work needing to be done. Sigh. This is a broken world filled with broken people.

    I hate driving in rain - especially at night! Boomer Lit is still new so this is the time to stand apart from the crowd while the crowd is still somewhat small!

    Great minds run in the same circle they say. :-)

    Alex:
    That would be Sandra that has a point. :-) I surely do not want to take the credit from a feisty lady like her!!

    Let me know if my meager blog spotlight would be of use to your new book, and I'll be there.

    I'm really looking forward to Reds2 as well!!

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  4. I think she's right. And you're right. And I'm going to get to work right now on a 60-year-old pulp hero! I do have Mercer, though; he's been around for a couple millennia...

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  5. Milo:
    I've always wondered about Edward of TWILIGHT. He was over a hundred. What drew him to a sullen, angst-filled whiny 15 year old. It had pedophile vibes to it for me. Besides her, what would they talk about?

    Your Mercer is an intriguing character. Sandra was just wool-gathering. :-)

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  6. If Boomer Lit were nostalgic, that'd be great. I'd love to write a novel set in the 60s and 70s.

    But aging issues? Jeez, who wants to read about dealing with arthritis and ungrateful grandkids, not to mention catheters and chemotherapy and adult diapers? You can get all you want of that in the regular AARP magazine.

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  7. As long as it's a good story, it doesn't matter the age of the MCs. A person in their later years has experience to draw from, and after 50, I've heard women don't take any guff, so that bodes well for interesting movies. Love Mirren in the trailer.

    Sandra sounds like a wise one. And yeah, what does an older guy talk about with a young feckless female? (Twilight)Not much, I would guess, I don't think conversation is the object.

    PS - somehow Bruce Willis never gets old either, he's gotten better.

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  8. Steven:
    It's all how you tell a story and what you focus on. Take THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA by Hemingway or THE WILD BUNCH in the other extreme! :-) Think what older readers want to daydream about and give it to them.

    D.G.:
    Like you, I believe people in their later years have experience to draw from and become more interesting and more perceptive often.

    Yes, Mirren has steel wrapped in velvet in that trailer, doesn't she?

    Bruce Willis is the new Sean Connery, who for decades never seemed to grow old. :-)

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  9. ...so very interesting, Roland. I adored those flicks, am looking forward to Red 2, and yet never realized the significance.

    Boomer Lit is further than a distant relative to the project I've been working on, but does however, have me thinking...which of course always leads to doodling. And from there... ;)

    Great post, Roland. Thanks for keeping us storytellers in the loop.

    El

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  10. Elliot:
    Yes, I'm looking forward to REDS 2 as well! It's Sandra trying to keep us all in the loop! :-) Thanks for visiting, Roland

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  11. Huh. I'd never really given it much thought, but I HOPE Boomer Lit is the next big thing. The book I just published predominantly features people in their fifties.

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