I’m writing in that liminal lull between the celebration of the year just past and the celebration of the year to come. I’m grateful for video calls, which were science fiction in my youth. Now they are a boon to remote grandmothers like me, who watch children in their Christmas pajamas play with the new toys we sent.
And I’m grateful for our two-person show here at Baubo, the imprint where my partner Graham and I publish blogs, newsletters and books. We accomplished a lot this year: twelve newsletters and 24 blogs (including twelve essays from guest writers); plus we edited and published my second novel, Vampires of a Certain Age. On top of that, we re-edited my story collection, The Erotic Pandemic Ball, for reissue in the New Year.
Our publishing plans for 2024 are even more ambitious. Next up will be a book on writing, The Well-Seasoned Romance. I’m organizing my essays for a collection to be called What to Expect When You’re Sixty: Adventures in the Secretly Wonderful Decade. And the draft sequel to my first novel (Brilliant Charming Bastard), which is called The Palace of Wisdom, is on the list to edit and publish in the coming year. All these books are in service to a larger purpose, one I’ve written about in my online Manifesto:
To write past midlife is a fun revolution: a creative way to thumb our noses at the dominant narrative. We write vivid characters who share our complexity: humans who have lived much, desired much, and experienced much. This is our voice. This is our opportunity to let others in on the “secret” that women past midlife are vibrant and alive.
My upcoming book, The Well-Seasoned Romance, with its subtitle How to Write and Sell Your Late-Life Love Story, will be a direct invitation to push back on gendered ageism with our creative voices. I hope you will consider being a Beta reader for that book when the time comes. And I very much hope you will write your own story, drawing on that magical combination of memory and imagination that makes the work of older writers so rich.
You may already have participated in my free, self-paced writing workshops. For 2024, I’m considering teaching online workshops in conjunction with publishing The Well-Seasoned Romance. I’ve taught romance writing in the past for budding Writers of a Certain Age, and participants enjoyed their introduction to the fun revolution.
If you are considering New Year’s resolutions, I’ll share an invitation, again from my Manifesto:
What we do as we write and push back on stereotypes is part of the larger struggle for equality. As we push back on gendered ageism, let us support our Sisters of a Certain Age who also face ableism, racism, homophobia, fatphobia and antisemitism.
Let’s be brave and fearless and sexy, let’s find our voices, take our paths, strut our stuff. Let us be each other’s biggest fans. Let us read books by and for older women. Let us write fearlessly, read joyfully, and love passionately.
If not now, when?
If not us, who?
Wishing you a fabulous New Year. Keep the pen moving (or the keys clicking) in 2024!
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