She is married, has four grown daughters, two grandsons and two granddaughters. She also shares her homes with a mischievous black lab and an antique cat. I write Young Adult novels, perhaps because I have strong memories of my own adolescence. It's an easy step for me to walk into the lives of my characters and feel at home. A child hesitating on the border of adulthood is like a newly emerging character in a story.
Many possibilities open up.
At this age, kids waffle back and forth between infancy and maturity which lends an air of suspense. Teenagers lives are filled with events that effect their future lives, each one filled with story possibilities. My first attempts at public writing began in high school with a couple of plays I wrote for my class to produce in front of the whole school. These went over very well, as I recall. We tried to turn one into a movie using my father's eight millimeter home movie camera and two flood-lights.