Charlotte Howard
British author Charlotte Howard, was born in Oman and spent much of the first part of her life flitting between Oman, Scotland, and England. Now settled in Somerset, Charlotte lives with her husband, two children, and growing menagerie of pets.
Her career as a writer began at an early age, with a poem being featured in an anthology for the East Midlands. Since then Charlotte has written many short stories and poems, and finally wrote her first full-length piece of fiction in 2010.
During what little spare time she has, Charlotte enjoys reading and writing (of course), spending time with her family, and watching action movies whilst eating curry and drinking tea.
Charlotte is an active member of Yeovil Creative Writers
Guest Blog
Thanks for hosting. Today I’m going to blog about older heroines, inspiration for them, and why we need to read about them more often.
The Black Door revolves around the life of Imogen Pearce – a recently divorced, mum of four, fast approaching forty. She looks in the mirror and sees everything stretched and sagging. Sound familiar? And that is why I wrote about an older woman.
After writing Seven Dirty Words, I was contacted by a reader who wanted to read about a more realistic heroine – someone who wasn’t young, skinny, and beautiful. I looked in the mirror and saw an exhausted working mum who was a far cry from a flawless size 8. Imogen was born.
I’m not the first person to have written about an older heroine though. There are plenty of books out there with a main character over the age of 35, but they rarely hit the headlines. I can name a few contemporary / erotic romances that have gone viral and are very well-known and the majority of them are written about a young, skinny, rich, beautiful woman falling for a gorgeous, powerful, rich man. Why?
In my opinion it’s all about escapism – we don’t want to read about ourselves. We want to lose ourselves in a fantasy land where we attract the best men or fight dragons or journey to new worlds.
Much like in The Black Door, older heroines have to fight with a younger generation to make it through to the readers. They have to risk losing their leading men to a model-esque twig.
Does that mean that older heroines aren’t sexy and beautiful? Hell no! Just because we’ve got extra limbs in the form of children, just because we’re not perky and toned, doesn’t mean that we are used-up and has-beens. Like a fine wine, we mature to perfection as we age.
And no, we don’t have to have older men as our heroes either. We are as entitled to a younger man as anyone else. There are novels out there that are based on an older woman / younger man relationship, and the sex is hot, hot, HOT! Remember – the older we get, the more experience we have.
Okay, so in The Black Door, Cal is in his forties, so older than Imogen. Still, if she’d wanted a younger man, she could have had him. Alex Tremaine is the younger man, although his sexual preferences are a bit dubious. The Twiglets think he fancies Imogen, Imogen thinks he might be gay, but that’s up to the readers to decide.
I certainly enjoyed writing about an older heroine. I found it easier to empathise with her struggles and lack of confidence than with younger characters. I’m not exactly old, 29 with experience is how I like to age myself. Still a baby in comparison to some heroines really. Yet I have that experience. I have kids, I’ve been through rough relationships, and I wear my stripes with pride.
That’s the point of The Black Door; to prove that older women are sexy. Exhausted and dragged down, we can still attract our perfect partner, and at the end of the day looks aren’t everything. Everyone deserves their Happy Ever After, or at least a Happy For Now.
The Black Door by Charlotte Howard
Imogen Pearce is a single mum of four children and fast approaching 40, she works at Ryedale Incorporated where she has to battle a younger and smarter generation to get to where she wants to go. If that means taking on the account of Cherry and Sean Rubin’s adult shop, then she will. But what happens when Imogen discovers the private club that they run at the back? And what happens when she realizes she knows quite a few members?
Excerpt
Men. All the bloody same.
My mind traced back to the day I had given up on one-sided monogamous relationships.
The children were at school or work, and the sun was beating down. It was a glorious day, and I had decided to go home for lunch, rather than spend it in a stuffy office.
I pulled up outside the house and a fleeting thought passed through my mind when I saw Connor’s car sitting in the driveway. My husband of eighteen years had had the same idea.
I crept into the house, hoping to surprise him. But, it turned out that his idea had involved a slutty bottle-blonde.
I wanted to blame the events that followed on a red mist descending over me. The truth is that in the time it took for my mind to register that some tart was riding my husband in what I later found out was known as reverse cowgirl, my mind had calculated the necessary response.
The skank lost a good handful of bleached hair, roots and all. I allowed her to gather her clothes and watched as she tugged her pants on whilst running out of the house. If nothing else, the neighbours got a good show.
Connor yelled at me. But his words were drowned out by the blood pumping in my ears. I marched back up the stairs and into his little study. Opening the window, I saw Miss Slut stood in the middle of the road, screeching obscenities at me. I looked at the Ferrari in our driveway and smiled.
I think his Xbox enjoyed its first and final flying lesson as it sailed out of the window. The fact that it landed in the bonnet of his prized mid-life crisis proved that Karma does exist.
Connor. Holly.
I made a mental note of the two names at the top of my imaginary hit list.
I blinked and I was back in the boardroom.
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