So, I have an awesome scene from Magic’s Curse (Vampires of Sangue Collina book 5) writing itself in my head, lately. I love this scene so much that it has made me decide that Adam needs to be a POV character in that book, so I can include it. Because it’s a very private scene between him and his boyfriend.

Here’s the thing, though. And it’s an issue that I really have been running into from the beginning. The issue is age. One of the problems some people seem to have with Twilight is the age difference. Since Bella is a teenager and Edward is actually close to, if not over, a century. The argument being that looking seventeen doesn’t mean that he still IS seventeen. And so people have a hard time figuring out what this hundred year old guy sees in a teenage girl.

And I do get that. But, at the same time, I have similar things going on. Eli is about two hundred years older than Catie. Marcus is over a hundred years older than Dani. Nicolaus is around a THOUSAND years older than Ana. And then there’s Adam. Even Adam doesn’t know how old he is. The one thing that there is no doubt about is that there is a BC in his date of birth. His boyfriend is still mortal when they start dating. So, I now have a guy who measures his age in MILLENNIA dating a guy in his late 20’s or early 30’s.

And I worry about the squick factor. I worry that readers might have a hard time understanding how they could have anything in common. I worry, in short, that that aspect of the various romances going on might be compared to Twilight. Granted, I try to handle it a bit more realistically. Eli is almost constantly worried about the age difference. He calls himself an old man, and actually wonders what Catie sees in him, partly for that reason. I do kind of explain it as age being relative – and doubly so for people who can be expected to live forever. What’s a few centuries when you’re facing down Eternity? (Or rather, Catie explains it when Eli tries to say that he’s too old for her.)

And the thing is, the fact that these May/March-of-next-year romances are probably pretty strange is hardly ignored. William and Laura are close in age, and the girl that set them up even told William that she would never try to set him up with someone older because of them maybe not having much in common. Which in a way begs the question of what makes these couples so different. Granted, that’s very much shown with Catie and Eli. And I guess I just need to make sure to show WHY the age difference is a non-issue for the others, too. I just don’t want anyone weirded out by it.

Anyway. This is what I’ve been thinking about lately. How to show these relationships between characters whose ages are centuries or even millennia apart without it seeming weird. Without anyone going “how does he not think of her/him as a child?”

So, have any thoughts on this subject? I do want to take how this might look to future readers into consideration – while staying true to the story as I see it.