I'm not stupid, I'm new.

“Where once she had little girls, she's been supplanted by Beyonce, Gaga, and Rhianna.”

I read that on Dateline Hollywood, she, not being the average American mom losing her tween daughters, but J-Lo, who might take Ellen’s place on American Idol, some say a much needed career move. Her last movie didn’t do well and she lost her record contract with Sony. I’m sure she’ll be fine since that kind of thing happens in show business. “The hard part is staying there.” Celebrities say that when things aren’t going well.
How does a writer keep an established audience? I’m not stupid. I’m new. I would think a writer could be over shadowed by the latest young phenom or readers could mature. It certainly seems it could happen to YA writers, as with J-Lo and little girls.
At a writer’s conference, I heard a remark about subject, content, and the “next big thing.” The speaker, a published author, said, “Whatever is going on now, in two years you’ll read about it.” My thought was to write a vampire book within the Tea Party. I’d have clan of middle aged white guys drinking blood with Viagra chasers, the women constantly tired, but always giving in to lust because, “them little devils are so damn cute.”
I could delve into YA and do a story about a young man in the hood who is an outcast because he wears his pants too high. He falls in love with the vicious gang leader’s sister who has no arms and strives to keep her pants up. My two MC’s become entwined in a love story, Romeo and Juliet, a West Side Story with hip hop music. Actually, It couldn’t be a musical because the cast would have to use one arm to keep their pants from falling to their ankles. Jazz hands could not be used in the extremely way off Broadway hit, “Pants On The Ground.”
I know. I could pen a mystery about a lawyer, who for some reason doesn’t want to sue, struggling, because it’s against his nature, a Gulf Coast story where BP’s billions are everywhere and the third-generation legal eagle won’t take advantage of all the money floating around. He loses his father and brothers and finally his wife and kids. Widowed Granny is the only one on his side. It’s not pretty.
Yea, I’m putting my ear to the ground, pedal to the metal, nose to the groin stone, or something like that. If I start writing about the presidential election now, in 2012 I’ll know if that writer was right.