Write What You Know?

A friend was told she shouldn't write for teenagers as she didn't live with any. But she was a mother of teens, now grown, and a teen herself, not so very long ago. Why shouldn't she set her tales in the teen-hoods she knew for today's teens to read? After all, we're not a different breed; we're not even history. We're just the same people growing in different worlds.

That, of course, led to my wondering about historical fiction - not that my teen-hood is history yet. Some authors build on fam...