My love of stories started when I was very young. Listening to my Dad's simplified version of Shakespeare at bedtime awakened my imagination. When I was six, I moved from suburban Boston to Italy with my family. Living in a two-bedroom apartment in the industrial city of Turin we didn't own a television. I spent my free time reading The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and many other juvenile fiction classics. My passion for literature really took hold during those years. We returned to the States when I was eleven, to the same house on an acre of grass and trees that we had left. The main floor of our...