My Helpful Friend has been keeping an eye on the Guardian, which I couldn't do while I was at Worldcon; she sent me a link to a wonderful post about a 93-year-old debut novelist. Here's a paragraph about writer Lorna Page and her first book:

"Suddenly prosperous on the advance and sales of A Dangerous Weakness, a feminist thriller set in the Alps, Page has traded her one-bedroom flat in Surrey for a big, detached country house, and invited contemporaries to move in."

Aside from the humanitarian aspects of her good fortune (the friends she invited to live with her are not nearly so prosperous) the two things that stand out for me are that she wrote the book at the age of 90, and she got it published because her daughter-in-law found it and insisted it was good enough to publish. This blows two stereotypes out of the water: the doddering elderly person, and the antagonistic mother-in-law.

Totally cool story!

Correction Notice: It appears that this story is, in fact, inaccurate. The Guardian posted a clarification that Lorna Page actually self-published the book through AuthorHouse, which does not pay advances and charges authors a fee. Writer Beware had a good write-up on the situation.