When I published Compendium, I was proudest not of the words themselves. Rather, it was the years of thinking, free writing, and fleshing out the story and characters that made those words possible. It was all of that private scaffolding that never appears on the page but lives on in my mind as the intellectual fruits of my labor. The very first spark hit me in an ordinary moment one day at the office. I was setting up a Kindle Fire device that a few of us had purchased for my then legal assista...