When I was growing up I didn’t know any authors. My parents vocations–my father was a firefighter and my mother sold Avon and Tupperware or worked at a number of federal government jobs depending upon the year–didn’t provide a lot of opportunity for rubbing elbows with those scratching out a living by writing. To make matters worse, my elementary school didn’t even have a library. We did have a bookmobile that came around a couple of times a month. To check out a book and discover a new author I’d climb up a couple of steps into what looked like a converted Greyhound Bus and walk down a narrow aisle…