Cougar’s Got Claws, or How Many Cats Years Should Your Heroine Be?
Recently I released a new short connected to my growing Dareville series, called Handle with Dare. This is the first het erotic story I have produced in a long while, which doesn’t feature a menage or other combo, anyway. What’s significant about this story is that it is an older women/young man scenario. Call it a cougar story if you wish, or a MILF romance, but at the heart of the tale is a woman in middle age who reclaims her sexuality and discovers her identity stands well on its own.
There were are number of reasons for my writing the short. Actually, I had intended for Handle to be submitted to an anthology of erotic fiction about over-40 women, but I missed the deadline. For two, the main character in this short has appeared in other Dareville novels, and if you’re familiar with them you know she hasn’t come off as entirely pleasant. I wanted to redeem her, if you will, and show she’s not really a villain, just somebody worn down by life who needs a recharge. She gets it here!
Also, I wanted to test the market for “cougar” stories. Of the genres I write, the erotic M/M is by far the best selling, with the Dareville world second. As a staff person for an ePub, I have access to sale reports of similar stories, but have not seen skyrocketing sales in the over-40 heroine genre. The best performer of the ones the house has is also an interracial (BW/WM), which is a top genre – so that skews the results a tad.
I do find it interesting, since I know a number of authors over 40 who write romance and erotica, yet their characters are either much younger or the age is blurred somewhat in the narrative. I know one author in particular who strictly writes over-40, and at times over-50 heroines, and says she sells like mad. Granted, her work is heavily sensual but not erotic, so I wonder why it is that the older the woman gets, and the younger the man gets, the more reluctant readers are to buy it.
I hope I can be proved wrong on this point. I’m close to 40 myself and I need role models. So what I would like to know from readers, particularly of erotic and romantic fiction:
- Would you read a novel about an older woman and younger man?
- What is the age, if you prefer one? Fifty? Older? Does it matter?
- Does the gap in age between the couple matter?
I’m interested in what you think. Thanks!
Leigh,
I find this an interesting question. I would never had even blinked at it but when I hit 33 or so it started to become an issue with me. Up to that point, older men were very attractive to me. The age range between 28 and 45-50… I found those men attractive. But now I’m in that age range and men that are obviously younger than me are attractive.
If I were single and looking, I’d be looking. But the squick factor of them being younger really bothers me. I mean… this 28 year old guy was eight years old when I was 16. 12 when I was 20… UGH.
That just sends me over the edge. My brain shuts down (despite what it was shouting prior to my mind adjusting to the squicky thoughts).
Honestly, I think it’s completely based on soceity and not really on genetics or anything like that. It just interferes with my own mental statement of what’s right and wrong — obviously my ID has other thoughts and my body… betrayer that it is… it certainly doesn’t care about age.
Luckily, I have the best husband in the world and am not facing any moral or other delimma’s around finding a man… because this is a tough question.
April
Leigh, I do have an idea for a cougar story in my erotic romance arsenal. (In truth, I have hundreds of ideas waiting to be plucked and tweaked and written.) In my story there is about a ten year gap. 35 year old heroine and 25 year old hero. I wanted her to be young enough to still be thinking about a remarriage and children in a realistic sense. At 35 she’s young enough to be able to consider having her own biological children and for it to be a countdown in the back of her head or on her wishlist of things she wants out of life. Yet, at 35 she’s pretty much set in her career and has her advanced degrees behind her. I thought it was a good place to put her. She meets the hero by accident one night and they just strike up a conversation and from there to a super hot and vigorous fling.
On a side note, our best friend Mikey married a woman who is ten or eleven years his senior. (She’s mine and my husband’s age ~ mid forties) And seeing the two of them together, you’d never guess there is an age difference. They are completely perfect for each other in every way. They’re so cute together. It’s a beautiful thing. I can’t imagine him with any one else, and we’ve known him since he was 19 and through many, many girlfriends. I don’t think, in the long run it has much to do with chronological age, but how young at heart you are. And I am a firm believer in never growing up.
Hope this helps some,