Write what you know

For fourteen years I've claimed I didn't want to write about the beauty industry (Something I've been involved with, in every possible way, from styling to manufacturing, teaching, performance, management, and promotion.  In fact, in ways you would never imagine.) Then one day last week, I realized I'd been doing just that...writing what I knew...hey, I do not have personal experience with everything I write, but my background has influenced my writing in many ways.
I was trying to update my author bio because the ones out there are so lame. In the process, I examined my past and thought about where my stories take place, and wondered why so many contained threads of theories about genetic influences. Then I had my "Ah ha" moment.
Without writing my autobiography here, let me briefly explain...
My stories take place in varied locales. (From the age of three until I married at twenty-one, I was an Air Force brat living and traveling throughout the US and Europe.) I became interested in genealogy and the genetic tracing of my ancestry. (My first interest in DNA surfaced when I was my husband's study buddy while he was pursuing his microbiology degree and I my English degree.) The interest in DNA fostered my future in many ways. But what matters is the theme reappears in so many of my stories and so do places I lived or visited.
My interest genealogy sparked my fiction writing skills, although it was later in life. After discovering one specific relative on my husband's side of the family, something spurred me to imagine in detail what her life may have been like. The Story of Amelia is incomplete, but someday I hope to publish the book about the girl who started my career in writing, a dream I considered since I was in middle school.
Are you writing what you know?
Final disclaimer: I am still happily married, a mother of five, a grandmother, a pet owner, and live a quiet life in sunny Florida. I have a very active, creative mind, though.