Years ago, in my early twenties, I was convinced I’d be a successful author someday. One by one, my more literary friends got pieces published—short stories, poems—while I didn’t. Of course, it didn’t help that I wasn’t a good writer, and more importantly didn’t actually try getting anything published. But it became a minor running joke that all my friends would “get published” before I did.

So it’s with a great sense of both pride and inevitability that I can now congratulate our son, at the age of 10, now being a published author!