It may not have seemed so at the time, but 1977 was a good year for me. I was twelve years old, and even though I didn’t realize it, I was a pre-teen sponge. I absorbed everything around me. Unbeknownst to my parents, I’d read Stephen King’s then two-year-old novel Salem’s Lot (sorry, Mom), which has simultaneously scared the bejeezus out of me and started an itch to create my own stories as a writer. That was also the year of Star Wars, which made me want to be a space cowboy. 1977 was a year of killer music, too. Though it would be a while before I could truly…