About two years ago– maybe a little longer– I devised a simple criteria to determine when it had become Real. I figured that on the day I wandered into Borders at the corner of Sunset & Vine, the worst individual store of all time, and found my writing therein, then I would know I had transcended.

It’s one thing to find yourself in independent bookstores across the nation, but it’s another entirely to be ground up in the crucible of capitalism and placed next to Good Housekeeping.