As a writer I’ve been told more than once it’s best to write what you know, so many of the scenes in the Rory’s Choice novels come from events that actually happened to me in my teenage years.

One of my favorite ones in book two, Rory Choice: Consequences, is the scene where Jake lets Rory drive his Jeep.

“You can drive a clutch, right?”

Not really is what she should have said, but I hadn’t said that either years ago when the young man I’d been crushing on for months asked me if I wanted to drive his Mustang. Though the boy never did come to see me as anything more than a friend, he did let me drive his Mustang enough times that I learned how to drive a manual transmission without killing it at every stop. Sadly, it took many, MANY driving lessons for me to accomplish that. I can still see his gritted smiles through all the hurks and jerks I did to his beloved Mustang with fondness. I love that memory so much it was wonderful to discover I had a reason to use it in Rory’s story.