Yesterday, I stumbled across the first "outsider" review posted for Waking Lazarus at Blogcritics.org, written by Ms. Violet Nesdoly. This being the first review of my first novel, I was a bit nervous as I read, dreading I might see suggestions that the book would make fine toilet paper.

Thankfully, the review didn't mention toilet paper once; in fact, it was quite positive and insightful. That's what actually made it nice--Ms. Nesdoly obviously "got" a lot of what I'd hoped was going on in the book--even when it came to how the faith elements were handled:

Although her dependence on prayer [referring to Rachel, a character in the book] and hearing the internal voice she thinks of as the voice of God...seemed somewhat slight and subjective theologically, I appreciated Hines' attempt to spell out Christian experience in understandable non-jargon language.

Yes, this was indeed my approach, so guilty as charged. (And that's also a topic for discussion, because I think it's at the crux of every fiction writer's struggle: how do you get people from diverse viewpoints to buy into/identify with the themes and questions in your story? I'll be spending a bit more time on that in a post later this week.)

For now, though, it's all about me, me, me and the review of Waking Lazarus. Did you catch the part about "confidence with language and storytelling skill"? I did. About 100 times. I also caught "intrigued from start to finish," "cutting a new swath," and especially "quite an accomplishment (that) will no doubt make a big splash when it's released this summer."

I certainly hope Ms. Nesdoly is an accurate predictor of the future.