It's Boomer Lit for Me

There are times when something almost has to knock you off your feet before you realize what you've been doing for several years. It was kind of like a duh moment for me as an author.

My latest novel, Old Ways and New Days, is a coming-of-old-age story about a recent retiree who discovers that there's much more to life than work and a few family obligations. By the way, did you know that 10,000 boomers retire, or reach age 65, each day? I'm a member of the growing pajama club. 

While doing marketing and promotional research the past week, I ran across the literary sub-genre, boomer lit. Those are novels geared for baby boomers, those folks born between 1946 and 1964. 

According to a Publishing Perspectives blog post, there are 77.5 million boomers in the U.S. And they read.  A lot.

Here's a general list of genres, both nonfiction and fiction. Writer's Digest published a lengthy list of sub-genres. 

While thinking about my books, it occurred to me that four of my novels fall under the boomer lit label -- The Touch, A Long Highway, Foolish Is The Heart, and Old Ways and New Days. The protagonist and other primary characters in these books were all boomers, folks in the 40s and older.

I've also written in the young-adult genre, with Shooting Star and The Bully List. 

A story in the The Telegraph I found interesting noted that young adult-fiction gained a foothold back in the '60s with coming-of-age stories when many of the boomers were in their teens and younger. Remember S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders, from the '60s.? Or perhaps J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, from the '50s? 

 Now those teeny-boppers have all grown up to become aging boomers,  and they want stories that relate to their mature stage in life. 

In the past, I've generally referred to my novels as mainstream fiction (except for A Confidential Man, a murder mystery involving boomers). That's a broad category. From now on, it's Boomer Lit!

Until the next time....