Writing can be a lonely pursuit.  Talking to your friends and family about your work in progress is nice, and I did plenty of that, but they don’t really understand what you’re going through and eventually—although they would never say so—they get tired of hearing it. A couple of years ago I was at a spot in my writing career where I had published a few books and had made several connections with other authors at conferences and online. But I longed to connect with writers in my own backyard. To that end, I joined a local writers group, the Pocono Liars Club, which met at my local library. This…