My parents were avid readers who took me to the public library before I was old enough to sign my name to a library card. I've always been trying to figure things out. How did newspaper people fit type into narrow columns? Who wrote all those books on the library shelves? As a teenager, I started making up stories out of boredom during summer vacation. After college, I worked on a newspaper and developed the discipline to sit down and write whether I felt like it just then or not. But ultimately I love the creative challenge of making up stories, and writing fiction provides an opportuni more...