NUCLEAR FICTION NEWSLETTER, ISSUE 7

Would you read a novel if you thought the heroine might die at the end?

Fantasy Black Hole

Hi, my valued Substack followers and subscribers. I have a question for you. Would you want to read a novel that includes dark humor and good sex scenes, even if you knew the heroine might die in the end?

  I am writing my third novel, and am really enjoying myself. I can feel that my writing craft is improving. I decided to write a novel about a woman who is approximately my age. I am 72, and have discovered that not only are boomers major consumers of women’s/book club fiction, but also are a huge cohort of fiction writers. Not only is my writing giving me pleasure, but for the first time in many years, I am adding more than one or two new friends to my social community. Anyone who studies aging at all knows that loneliness is the enemy of continued vitality, and even survival.

The heroine of my first novel (Fission: A Novel of Atomic Heartbreak, SheWrites Press, January 2026) is based on my mother. We meet Doris when she marries at age nineteen and follow her for about ten years. In my second novel, Boundaries, the protagonist is a psychologist in her thirties, navigating burnout, her biological clock, and her guilty passion for a narcissistic lover. Although a lot of my own fiction reading is for entertainment and escape, I don’t see too many new novels that have a point of view from an older woman. If they do, she is usually a Miss Marple sleuth or some kind of zany grandmother.

I wanted not only to tackle some of the emotions that come with age, but also my future concerns about becoming disabled and dying. My challenge is to make the reader love Julia, a 70-year-old physician who discovers her breast cancer has returned, and to be willing to go along with her on her journey through illness. On finding out that she has a metastasis to her liver:

Julia saw herself standing just inside the cancer rabbit’s burrow. She was staring into a black tunnel at her feet, knowing she would shortly step off the edge. Hopefully her fall would be a magical balloon descent rather than a brutal plunge to splat at the bottom. 

I am only about a third of the way through the first draft, but I created a blurb for my author website. It reads:

Julia was successfully treated for breast cancer seven years ago, but as a physician, she knows that cancer cells can lurk, floating around the bloodstream until a napping immune system allows them to take root. During a Hawaiian vacation to celebrate retirement with her lover, she discovers new lumps. Determined to stay vital, she splurges on a necklace of golden pearls.

​Julia endures a string of tests and treatments. She is not fooled by TV ads that mask drug side effects with gauzy scenes of women living their best lives. Her boyfriend ghosts her but she finds solace with a fellow cancer survivor who has desired her since their residency years. She explores the black hole of  her astrophysicist son’s mind and bonds with her prickly daughter-in-law, who is going through IVF.

​Metastasis by metastasis, cancer dims Julia’s hopes. Her self-centered sister nags her to try an endless stream of bogus remedies. She gets a hospice counselor fired after he claims that an atheist cannot have a good death. In the end, Julia learns what is most important in life and what she hopes to leave behind for the people she loves.

My book marketing mentor (@LaineyCameron) cautioned me on my blurb for Fission that I should avoid mentioning an extramarital affair, since many readers do not want to buy a book if the heroine is unfaithful. That surprised me (what about Miranda July’s bestseller?), but Lainey is quite savvy. I worry even more that readers will pass on a book that includes metastatic breast cancer (or MBC as the jaunty pharma ads call it, while claiming that women are Living Their Best Lives). I’d love to hear your comments, although I am not going to be deterred from writing on!