One of the things I enjoy as a reader is to picture the characters from the imagination of the author. It’s something I’ve done from an early age. I imagined Smiler’s empathy with the cheetah in The Runaways by Victor Canning and of how Charlotte discovers the comforts of her own world after seeing life through the eyes of Clare in Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer. Understanding the complexities of these struggles through the mind of the author creates a situation that places the books somewhere between fiction and reality. How much of the author’s own experiences shaped their characters?…