Stories have traditionally been rather fond of getting people married, promoted or otherwise safely sorted out and then leaving them to it.
They get their happy ever after.
Real life tends to be more happy for now.
The wedding happens, the children grow up, jobs change, relationships change, parents get older and houses somehow accumulate an extraordinary number of things nobody remembers buying. Then, just when life appears to have settled into something vaguely predictable, something changes again.
Which is excellent news if you’re looking for a story.
People fall in love at fifty. They change careers at sixty. They move house, make new friends, lose old ones, start businesses, take up hobbies, uncover family secrets and occasionally find themselves investigating a murder when they really only popped out for milk.
And by then, they have history.
A character in her fifties doesn’t arrive on page one without baggage. There may be an ex-husband somewhere, children who have opinions, parents who need looking after, a career that hasn’t gone quite to plan or a kitchen cupboard containing something she has been meaning to throw away since 2004.
She also knows things she didn’t know at twenty-five.
She has watched people come and go. She has made mistakes and, with any luck, learnt from some of them. She is better at recognising when something doesn’t feel right, when somebody isn’t telling the truth or when she herself is about to make a spectacularly bad decision.
Whether she acts on any of this hard-earned wisdom is another matter entirely.
At Candyfloss Press, many of our characters happen to be older because we like what happens when people with a bit of life behind them encounter something they weren’t expecting.
Lucy Rae arrives at Paradise Park with redundancy money and no particularly convincing plan for what comes next. Judy Carter buys a dilapidated house in Margate after her son leaves home and discovers that the man next door is considerably less human than he first appears. Ron and Eva Ashcroft have already had careers, adventures and a long marriage before murder starts interfering with their social life.
None of them has finished living.
They’ve simply reached the next bit.
And that’s usually where our stories begin.