It's got me thinking about how many older characters I have in my books, and how I portray them. The first thing I have to decide is what I mean by 'older'. To someone in their teens it probably means some ancient person of fifty. To me of rather more mature years, I think of older as seventy plus. So it's a fluid definition that I can interpret in my individual way.
Taking a good, hard look at my books, I realise I have lots of "older" characters if you define older as forties and fifties, but very few if you define it as sixty plus. One of the reasons for this is that most of my books have elements of adventure to them, and often my characters have to run about somewhere or avoid being shot. There are limits to the degree of physical fitness of very old characters that tends to rule them out of many of the roles my characters play.
Having said that, in Snowbird and Darius I do have a very powerful older character. Hyam D Scwanberger is the owner of the biggest shipline on Darius Orbital Station, and he has his fingers in dozens of pies. I see him as a spider in the centre of his lair, pulling in data from everywhere. In Jade my main characters are in their thirties and forties, but Kaath my main character does have an older aunt Bara. She's a key source of support for Kaath when she discovers the truth about her origins.
Looking back at my books I see I don't have that many older characters in them. Was that because I was in my twenties and thirties when I wrote them? Possibly. But I'm not anymore, I'm now of an age to know how powerful an older person can be, a person who knows their own mind and can spot falsehood, flattery, and bribery from a hundred paces away.
There's no reason why powerful older characters can't have a place in books. Elizabeth Moon has several fabulous examples in hers. I must try harder in future.
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