Tagged by Annika @  http://noirbettie.com/blog/

10 Signs a Novel Might Be Written By Me

1.  Takes place in a small (fictional) town in Western Washington State.  (Although every town is different.)

2.  The bitchiest girl in the story is a blonde.

3.  MC has a young mother who actually looks young enough to be MC's older sister, and the MC's father is out of the picture for good.

4.  Most of the MC's friends live with one or none of their biological parents, and dads are sort of like sasquatch.  (Not big and hairy.  Just creatures one suspects might not really exist because one never sees them.)

5.  MC has brown hair and hazel eyes.  (This is a total accident!  I had pull up an old draft just now to learn this; I thought Carah had green eyes.)

6.  A friend pressures the MC into attending a school dance or party, which then turns out to be a better time than expected.

7.  MC is either an only child or the youngest in the family.

8.  MC has music tastes that are not quite the norm for someone his/her age in these contemporary times.

9.  MC will cry and puke at least once in the course of the story (but not necessarily at the same time).

10.  Love.  There is always love.

Hilariously, these were true of my teenage life, with the exception of #7. (I'm the oldest.  I grew up with one sister who is 5 years younger than me.  When I turned 18, my mom remarried, so I have a stepsister who is 9 years younger and a stepbrother who is 12 years younger.)  But I wouldn't say my life resembles my stories or vice versa.  And I wouldn't say the stories resemble each other either!

Oh, and the towns I lived in weren't fictional, and not all of them were small.  

It is actually a goal of mine to try to write a protag whose dad lives with her.  That's what I'm thinking for my next story.  Dad won't be a major character (I'm assuming), but he'll be around.  And I want to write older parents, too.  Parents who are in their 40s because they waited to have kids.