Writing a teen character is something I wanted to try again for a long time!

I always find something in common with my protagonist, particularly when I write in the first person.

There is no better audience for someone in love than someone in love.

He threw in the towel before we were tested. Maybe because he didn't want to be tested. Maybe because he assumed we would fail. Maybe because, at the time, he just didn't love me enough.

Songs and smells will bring you back to a moment in time more than anything else. It's amazing how much can be conjured with a few notes of a song or a solitary whiff of a room. A song you didn't even pay attention to at the time, a place that you didn't even know had a particular smell. I wonder what will someday bring back Dex and our few months together. Maybe the sound of Dido's voice. Maybe the scent of the Aveda shampoo I've been using all summer.

Which always raises the interesting question of whether redheads pursue other redheads in a narcissistic way, or simply, because they have no other choice, as nonredheads aren't interested.

Things certainly aren't the way you imagine them when you're a kid and dreaming big dreams about what your life as a grown-up will look like.