I'll admit it: I go to Google at least once a day and do various searches on my name and book. Why? Well, because I'm a self-centered human being who wants to know what's being said about me. But I like to pass it off as ranking and research for my book. After all, some people might be searching for my book online in a few months, right?

I mean some people other than me.

Now, if I simply type in "T.L. Hines," I hit the jackpot. My site is number 1 and number 2, followed by the WL page at Amazon, and a total of more than 425,000 hits (58,000 if "TL Hines" is in quotes). "Waking Lazarus" is also a good choice. The first three hits are the home page of a Christian rock band called "Waking Lazarus" (great band name, guys), number 4 is the Kirkus Discoveries review of my book, and numbers 5-10 are all links relating to my book: Amazon, B&N, reviews, and so on.

Now then, I just know some folks are going to search for "Walking Lazarus." That's fine; we just want to make sure they find their way to the right place. Hey, we've got that covered--my recent blog entry about the tendency of people to call the book "Walking Lazarus" is the #2 hit, and an old review feed listing the book as "Walking Lazarus" is number 3. Chances are, this particular blog entry might end up on that list as well. And frankly, I'm guessing one or two more reviews might hit the web listing the book as "Walking Lazarus." I won't correct those reviews, because I think it will be important to have a few reviews link to the book with that title. As I said, if people want to call it "Walking Lazarus," I'm not horribly offended.

To dig a little deeper, I like to search for "TL Hines" in quotes, along with "Lazarus." This will give me, I hope, links to reviews of the book, referencing it as either "Waking Lazarus" or "Walking Lazarus." The top two results are mine, followed by the book's pages at both Amazon and B&N. Various reviews and crumbs of my trails on the web fill out the top 10. Hits 11-20 feature various reviews and online mentions of the book, most interesting of which is #16: a site called buch.de, which is a German book site. Hey, that's cool. I sprechen me a bit of Deutsch. Unfortunately, the book hasn't had German translation rights sold to it yet. So anyone ordering through this site better sprechen English, as well. Still: hey, the book's being sold in Germany. Kind of.

Hit #23 is a link to "Library Journal," which is an interesting article about first-time novelists in 2006. No special mention in the editorial, but what what of it? Hey, ma, I'm in "Library Journal."

In all, more than 500 links are on that list, and all of them are bread crumbs that lead to this site (hello, if this is your first visit), or other information about the book. That feels great.

Or, to my German-speaking friends: Es ist ausgezeichnet.