In his first novel, the Billings author depicted a serial killer in Red Lodge. In his second, "The Dead Whisper On," a woman receives contact from the voice of her father, who died of cancer.
Both books were written from a faith-based perspective and published by a Christian publishing house. Both were written before Hines, who is 41, was diagnosed in early May with lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph nodes.
Hines reacted like a writer.
He cranked up an online diary, the Lymphoma Files On Tap, a flippant, somewhat-sarcastic online journal of his medical odyssey.
Hines, whose novels are published under the name "TL Hines," has kept a blog on the Internet since 2003 and owes a measure of his literary success to the Web site because a publisher found his work on the Internet after his first novel had been rejected by more than 80 literary agents. Since his original blog focused on reading, writing and pop culture, Hines created another section on his Web site to blog about his cancer.
Hines introduced the new blog with an entry titled "My New Pal Lymphoma," then offered a "Reader's Digest Condensed Version" primer on what the diagnosis meant.
After describing lymphoma as a cancer of the lymphatic system, the lymph nodes, spleen and bone marrow, he injects a shot of humor.
"Cliff Clavin Fun Fact: There are about 30 different kinds of lymphoma, give or take a few."
One category is related to Hodgkin's disease. The rest, about two dozen, are called Non-Hodgkins Lymphomas. Each type of lymphoma has a different prognosis.
Hines is a "non-Hodger," diagnosed with Grade 1 follicular lymphoma, a slow-growing, but deadly form of the disease.
He has no outward symptoms of the lymphoma. The enlarged lymph nodes were uncovered during a routine CT scan to check out elevated liver enzymes. Ironically, his liver was fine.
The wry tone of his online journal doesn't surprise friends.
"I tend to be very sarcastic," Hines said. "That's the only way I'm going to know how to handle this as well. It's a little shocking for people when I make light of it, make a joke about it. But it's just another part of my life, and I make fun of every other part of my life."
The humor starts with the headings on each blog entry.
One, titled "They Call It a PET Scan, But I never Saw Any Dogs," covers the cross-sectional imaging known as a PET scan, or positron emission tomography, which allows doctors to look at organ and tissue function.
Along with the humor, his writing captures the unnerving tension of waiting for test results and soldiering on despite devastating news. Hines consciously decided not to edit his copy for the lymphoma files.
"I wanted to kind of keep that raw feeling to it," he said. "I wanted to roll with it off the top of my head and leave it that way."
His wife, Nancy, the communications director for Billings Public Schools, describes her husband as a "total Mac geek," joined at the hip to his computer. The couple founded H2O Advertising in Billings in 1995, a company they later merged with Wendt Advertising.
Because blogging is such a comfortable mode of communication for him, she wasn't surprised that he turned to it as a way to react to his diagnosis. The online journal has proved to be an easy way to update relatives and friends, but "difficult news" still warrants
phone calls.
"When we've had more serious information to deliver, like when we found out it was in his bone marrow, we called our family," she said.
Since then, the family has encountered a series of hurdles. At one point, Hines lost out on an opportunity to take part in a clinical trial, and they learned the lymphoma involved his bone marrow.
"We have had, at almost every critical juncture, not good news," she said.
In the blog, Hines sometimes makes light of the mortality rates.
"A significant number of people live 10, 20 or more years with this disease. I'm all for being a significant number of people," he wrote at one point.
The blog also skims over the toughest issue for him, the effect of his illness on their
9-year-old daughter, Jillian. Almost as soon as he heard the diagnosis, he wondered whether he would see his daughter reach her teenage years.
"Our faith is a huge part of our lives," Nancy Hines said.
To cope with the uncertainty, she has tried to keep her mind and body occupied.
"When I go to church and worship starts, sometimes I'm a puddle on the floor," she said.
Hines, who took a medical leave from his job at Wendt Advertising, has treated researching his illness like a full-time job.
"I'm a little obsessive-compulsive, and I have a broadband connection and that's a dangerous combination," he said.
Before talking to the first cancer specialist, he made the mistake of Googling survival rates.
"The search results will scare you more than the disease itself," he said.
After months researching clinical trials and reading medical journals, Hines, who graduated from the University of Montana with an English degree, has become the consummate well-informed patient who sounds as if he has a medical degree when he discusses treatment options. Those options have ranged from watch and wait for symptoms, to entering experimental clinical trials.
His wife describes him as a "creative thinker," who thinks outside the box. After getting turned down for the clinical trial, he found a way to receive the same treatment on his own.
During the last week in September, five months after the initial diagnosis, he started the first stage of his radioimmunotherapy in Missoula.
In the treatment, antibodies carrying radioactive particles are injected into the bloodstream. The antibodies seek out and latch on to proteins found on the lymphoma cells to deliver a lethal dose of radiation to the cancerous cells.
After repeating the initial treatment with a second, far larger dose of radioactive particles, he will spend up to two weeks in semi-isolation. It will take three to six months to gauge the treatment's effectiveness.
Since the cancer was diagnosed in May, the couple has also flip-flopped through some of the classic stages of grief, starting with shock and denial. On the Internet, Hines investigated every other disease involving swollen lymph nodes. For a while, they clung to the notion that Cat-Scratch Disease, a bacterial disease, might have caused the swollen lymph nodes.
Now Hines finds some solace in the cancer's typically slow growth and in the breakthrough treatments that have come in the last decade.
"For a long time, I thought I'm never going to be able to lie in bed at night and not just sit and think about lymphoma for an hour before I drift off to sleep," he said.
"I rarely do that anymore. It's acceptance from the point of view I have it and I have to deal with it. It's certainly not acceptance from the point of I'm willing to just let it go and not fight it."
By pushing the envelope on his treatment he hopes for a complete remission for a significant length of time. He has already become involved in online lymphoma advocacy groups.
The diagnosis has changed nearly everything in their lives, his wife said. It has also prompted them to reorganize their priorities, trying not to waste time on trivial matters.
She mentions the classic story of the guy who walks out the door and gets hit by a bus.
"The opportunity is, we know that the bus is coming," she said. "The guy who walks out the door tomorrow, doesn't. So that orders your priorities in your day."
At this point, Hines has no intention of turning his online journal into a book.
"There are a lot of memoirs about cancer. I don't know that the world needs another one," he said.
He is close to sending his third book, "Creep Club," to his publisher. It's a supernatural thriller about a man who spies on people from the private spaces of public buildings. When the main character is linked to a string of murders, he hides from both the law and from other creepy types.
Hines intends to finish the novel during the week or two after treatment when he will remain in semi-isolation at his parents' home in the Flathead Valley, where he grew up. During his time in isolation, his parents will head for their winter home in Arizona.
"It's kind of like a reverse fallout shelter because I'm the source of radiation," he joked.
The radiation dissipates relatively quickly after the treatment.
Lymphoma may one day figure in one of his future novels. But his wife would be surprised if he approached the subject in a predictable way. She joked about the disease showing up as a fictional character, perhaps as an alien with the name Lymphada.
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