Like many folks my age, I first read Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz in undergrad, when Coldplay was still a new band on the scene, and The Terminator himself had just been elected governor of California. For many of us, Miller's "non-religious thoughts on Christian spirituality," set in the familiar Pacific Northwest I called home, was a rite of passage.

So you can imagine my excitement when, some 10 years later, I stumbled upon a BookPage review that set my new, debut book, Called: My Journey to C. S. Lewis's House and Back Again, alongside Miller's latest work, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy.