I'm A Dweller on the Threshold

Stephen King. John Grisham. The Joy Luck Club. Twilight. The Catcher in the Rye.

These authors and these book titles are what people call household names. Even people who don't write, who don't read a lot, or haven't in a very long time, have probably heard of or read one of the above. For the purposes of this essay, and as it relates to fiction only, I will term this as mainstream: something that nearly everyone has heard of, and a great many have actually read.

I was working with an author wh...