I must admit that the thought terrified me at first.

But I gave it some thought. For not only have I been a writer all of my life, but Eric’s lovely bookstore has played a significant role in it. My mom fell in love with him, after all, and one of the things he gave her were recommendations to books he and eventually she loved. Those of you who’ve been going to the store for decades have probably done the same.

The wind continued to whistle through the fissures in the house as I heard Eric wheeze heavily over the phone. But I still had some more pondering to do.

I then considered my post-collegiate career. One of my first jobs upon leaving college was an administrative position at the Authors Guild (and while I’m at it, hello, Roy!), a writers’ legal advocacy group many of you may know from the lawsuit they settled with Google over their book search function. During that time, I learned firsthand of the endless travails writers striving to make a living in the publishing industry face. The few who succeed invariably do so because of the efforts of independent booksellers and advocates like Eric, whose time in the trenches make them uniquely suited to winning these authors the audiences they seek and deserve.

And I had to admit: I’m one of those writers, too. I’ve mainly worked in the fields of soft journalism (read: the fun stuff), beginning my career as a music journalist, and fighting my way into the pages of SPIN, the Los Angeles Times, High Times, Hustler, the LA Weekly, and more alt-weeklies than you can count. (I will alert you of work of my own when it’s appropriate here, but I won’t hassle you too much about it. I promise.

But I know the future isn’t there, and even though Eric’s sounding funny on the other end of the phone, he knows that, too. It’s in print-on-demand, ebooks, blogging and other formats that will deliver the written word in new, interactive, hyperlinked ways that will allow for a more deeply fluid conversation between the writer and his/her audience. I realized Eric was inviting me to become a part of that future, and as I looked out my window, the storm had subsided, and the sun was peering over the downtown Los Angeles skyline.

Here, in Los Angeles, when I first came to visit a college friend in ‘91, I discovered a bookstore named AMOK which would change my life. As booksellers, they specialized in fringe topics ranging from crime to the occult to cult theology and radical politics. This perspective on information, further contoured by publishing houses such as Feral House, Autonomedia and RE/Search, would later influence content obsessions successfully monetized by rotten.com and VICE Magazine. Now that I’m older and hopefully wiser, I’m less interested in shock value than I am in New Thought and the intersections of the mythic and mystical in everyday life. There is so much that happens everyday, I believe, that shapes our lives that we do not understand. Books still have that power to marshal the facts and fantasies of our collective existence and transform this mystery towards greater illumination, and invite the reader into a deeper immersion. The emerging technologies available to writers can further aid them in developing and illuminating this everyday mystery surrounding us.

So I told Eric, “No prob, Ero. I’ll do it.”

Eric coughed up whatever was stuck in his throat, and popped back to his normal self. “Thanks, Justo!” he chirped. “I’d really appreciate it.”

And I got off the phone, hoping Eric doesn’t think to call me up so late in the night again.