The title comes from a Desperate Housewives episode, a program that has exemplified to great effect the idea that evil doesn’t just come in the form of dictators, suicide bombers, corrupt governments, or disasters, but rather, that evil subsists among the ordinary and the mundane. It’s an every day occurrence and it walks among us, in the suburbs and the cities, as our co-workers, friends, neighbors, and even as our own family members. Those same universal themes are at the crux of my novel, Shades of Darkness, Shades of Grace.

An episode titled, “That’s Good, That’s Bad” perfectly captures this theme as nearly everyone on Wisteria Lane is confronted with acts of malice that force decisions, just as the Pierson family debates how to deal with a former family member’s brutal and continuous assault in Shades of Darkness. Ultimately, everyone makes choices of how to approach the evil within their lives, and none are without consequence.   

For the Desperate Housewives, Lynette and Bree make the most difficult choices. When Lynette Scavo catches her boss, Nina, in an amorous embrace with a fellow co-worker, she tries to use the incident as leverage. Embarrassed, Nina asks what it will take to keep Lynette quiet. Lynette responds she wants Nina to be civil to her and her team. However, crafty Nina gets rid of the problem by firing the co-worker, Stu. Incensed, Lynette contacts Stu, letting him know that he can sue the company for sexual harassment. But her plan backfires, as the ad agency’s owner fires Nina and co-workers, fearing the company will go broke fighting the harassment suit Stu has filed. Only Lynette keeps her job, but not without the painful realization that it was her actions, righteous or misdirected, that caused this turn of events.

Bree Van De Camp’s conflict with evil comes in the form of George, the pharmacist she was engaged to. She’s discovered George is behind the injuries her therapist suffered when someone riding a bike threw him off a bridge. Now, the police are closing in on George, as they search his home for evidence in the attack. Realizing he’s backed into a corner, George checks into the hotel where Bree is hosting a fundraiser.

As the distraught George takes an overdose of pills, the police contact Bree with the news they have discovered evidence that George poisoned her late husband, Rex. Drifting in and out of consciousness, George summons Bree to his room. She tells George she can only forgive him if he admits to what he’s done. Defiant, George says that whatever he did, he did because Bree wanted him to. Then he asks her to please call an ambulance before it’s too late. Bree smiles her sweetest smile and tells him she already has. And Bree then makes her choice to sit and wait for George to die.        

One might also ask who is committing the greater evil in these scenarios, as no one walks away scot-free. What’s clear is that evil makes its presence known in ordinary lives, whether it’s on Wisteria Lane, in the Twin Cities, or across the globe. As Kay observes near the end of Shades of Darkness, “. . . goodness and evil each present us with choices, and they are never as simple as they might appear.” Lynette, Bree, and the Pierson’s are all pushed by sheer malevolence to make difficult decisions and take measures they would otherwise never consider.

Those actions do have consequences, some more daunting than others. In real life, probably more often than we would dare think, evil sometimes not only drives a minivan, it takes a seat at the dinner table.

Voter participation is always up during a presidential election year. That civic involvement, which is part of a small sub-plot in Shades of Darkness, Shades of Grace, is more important than ever.

According to an Associated Press poll released this week, voter interest is pushing voter registration upward with more than 3.5 million people joining the historic balloting. Voter registration is up across the country and among a myriad of groups - women, blacks, and young people. The Associated Press also noted that voters are flocking to the “most open election in a half-century”. While the response is much better than in the past, there is plenty of room for more voters. 

The Associated Press poll found that overall, one in 65 Americans signed up to vote in the first three months of 2008. Still, those numbers could be much higher. A main reason for the sub-plot of a politically active family was to remind readers that casting a ballot in a democracy is a privilege, not a right. A number of voting organizations can be found on the Resources page of this site. Get registered, get involved, and cast a history making vote.

Reviews are a funny thing. No author wants to get a bad one obviously, and I must say that the response to Shades of Darkness, Shades of Grace has been overwhelmingly positive. What has been so intriguing is the reviewers who have really understood and related to the story.

As we prepared to start the marketing campaign, there was some trepidation that the novel might be viewed as women’s fiction and while there is certainly nothing wrong with that, such a view could dramatically limit the target audience. While several women have given Shades tremendous reviews, three male reviewers not only gave the book their highest rating, but they related to the family dynamics changed by a contentious divorce and alcoholism, while at the same acknowledging the depth of familial bonds. All three cited personal experiences, which told me I’d succeeded. From the beginning I’d believed this was a story covering universal themes and it’s nice to be validated.

There has only been one “negative” review but any author should know they are not going to please everyone. This particular reviewer didn’t care for the dialogue or descriptive scenes, however; at the same time noted “I had a difficult time putting down Shades of Darkness, Shades of Grace“. I didn’t agree with the comments, but at the same time wondered why they continued reading.

So what’s an author to do when it comes to reviews that give vastly different opinions of your work? Savor the good ones and take the not-so-good with a very large grain (or perhaps entire shaker) of salt. Take whatever positives there still might be within a negative review, and then move on to your next project.   

I took a fiction writing class recently and when we were discussing plot, the instructor made the following observation: “What most fiction writers do is get a rough idea in mind then start writing away, seeing where the events of the story lead. It’s a good way to work, and it’s probably the way you are working now. But there are a few pitfalls with this method.”

What I found interesting about this comment (besides the inherent pitfalls in writing a story, particularly a novel with no blueprint in place) is that the best advice I’ve ever gotten from an editor was the exact opposite - to develop a calendar (preferably one based on real dates) to construct your story around. Using this method requires more work than simply writing and seeing where the piece takes you. Developing your story around a calendar requires planning, research, and organization; all elements that helped me to improve the story and my writing.

I came across the calendar concept working with Prudy Taylor Board, an editor I had learned of through one of my writing groups. While Prudy liked Shades of Darkness, she noted there was no specific timeline of years or events, and felt the story could essentially be taking place at any time. She suggested using a calendar with actual dates and specific years during which the story would be set. By taking this approach, it not only helped me plan the story better, but a historical reference of Jesse Ventura’s election as governor of Minnesota in 1998 or making note of the Aquatennial Festival held in Minneapolis each July could be woven into the narrative and enhance the authenticity of the book.

Implementing Prudy’s advice, I constructed a five-year calendar over which the story in Shades of Darkness, Shades of Grace unfolds. The calendar not only worked well as an organizational and research tool, but it also served to focus the book over a definite time period. In real life, the events that inspired Shades of Darkness occurred over a much longer period of time, making for an unwieldy time frame that dragged on too long, offered no sense of closure, and risked boring the reader. By using a specific calendar, those events could be compressed into a much shorter and intense span.

Employing a real calendar also heightened the dramatic effect of the narrative. In a crucial incident near the end of the book, Paul Pierson is arrested for domestic battery in a scheme orchestrated by his ex-wife. Threatened with spending the weekend in the county jail if bail money cannot be raised, the scene takes place over the New Year’s holiday of 2000/2001. Only by using a real calendar did I discover that if Paul were arrested on Saturday December 30, 2000 he could be looking at several days in jail. In 2001 New Year’s Day fell on a Monday, and banks would not have reopened until Tuesday, January 2. Utilizing real dates offered the dramatic dilemma of the Pierson family frantically pooling their financial resources to keep Paul from extended jail time.

The initial version of the calendar was bare bones - an outline of the main scenes that comprised the novel. From there I began writing individual scenes, building on them and incorporating the crucial details, many of which were discovered through research. Those descriptions that make a scene real might be as ordinary as the weather on Halloween or the once-in-a-lifetime occurrence of the Millennium, experiences any reader could relate to. Details should engage your reader and connect them to the characters, setting, and narrative. As an editor, Prudy taught me a great lesson - that for fiction to truly come alive requires authentic details that pull the reader into the world in which the story takes place. For me as a writer, using a calendar was the best way to accomplish this, and it’s something I continue to do as I develop ideas and plots for future projects. 

Alcoholism and its effects on one family’s history are integral to the story being told in my novel, Shades of Darkness, Shades of Grace. The Pierson family portrayed in the book has suffered the blight of alcoholism for at least four generations, with two of the children, Kay and Paul, forced to confront their dependency. The point of this subplot is to not only illustrate the character’s flaws, but to acknowledge that the problem of chemical dependency is a far-reaching and can affect anyone. But Kay and Paul’s struggles are meant to give the reader hope; hope that it is possible for addicts to reclaim their lives, finding grace or salvation in sobriety.

When Kay suspects Paul’s drinking has reached levels that point to dependency and abuse, this is not the first time those concerns have been expressed by the Pierson family. After his first wife’s death, Kay recognizes Paul’s attempts to salve his pain through alcohol. Never actually confronting him, the Pierson family believes Paul has found redemption in Pamela, and they push their fears aside. The Pierson family makes the mistake that many families confronted with chemical dependency do - they rationalize that the problem was only temporary and has been dealt with satisfactorily. But as Kay and her Mother realize Paul does have a problem, Kay recounts the Pierson family history and its path of devastation.

For Kay and her brothers, it begins with underage drinking as it does for many individuals. Underage drinking has reached epidemic status in the United States, with an estimated 10.8 million youth engaging in some level of alcohol consumption. These huge numbers of young Americans engaging in both illegal and risky behavior is behind the Surgeon General’s March 2007 report, the Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Prevent and Reduce Underage Drinking. While Jack manages to escape the ravages of alcoholism, Kay and Paul’s battles with chemical dependency as adults are not at all unusual. According to the Surgeon General’s report, 40% of adults who began drinking before age 15 experience chemical dependency problems. With almost half of adults who begin drinking as teens suffering chemical dependency related difficulties later in life, Kay and Paul are far more typical than many may realize.

The relapse that Paul suffers after three months sobriety through attending Alcoholics Anonymous is also quite common. According to a study published by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) in 1989, nearly 90% of recovering addicts are likely to relapse at least once during the first four years of their sobriety. What triggers Paul’s fall - an argument with Kay regarding his ex-wife - is not an unusual response. Two other triggers leading to high risk behavior in recovering addicts include social pressure and interpersonal temptation.

It’s this episode that pushes Kay and her family to confront Paul with the knowledge that his chemical dependency is a problem they believe A.A. alone cannot solve. Kay gives Paul insights into the severity of her own battles with alcoholism by explaining her spouse, Tim, made it clear she had a choice to make. She could choose either alcohol or her marriage, but in the latter choice Tim demanded sobriety. Kay exhorts Paul to take a chance on sobriety, the only course of action that will allow him to discover who he really is as a person, reclaim his life, and find salvation from the ravages of chemical dependency.

Is recovery easy? Hell no. No one knows better than a recovering addict that real life is littered with temptation and good intentions gone awry. So an addict may relapse more than once, may hit bottom more than once, and may even lose their life to an addiction. When a fellow addict told me this about my alcoholic brother, I thought it was the cruelest thing I’d ever heard. When my brother died from his addiction, I suddenly understood.

As tough as getting and staying clean and sober is, no one knows better than a recovering addict that the saving grace offered by sobriety, of reclaiming a broken life and turning it into to something meaningful is well worth the sacrifice to achieve it.

As an author, I’m learning a lot through the Amazon controversy. And the biggest thing is this - Amazon isn’t the only option for authors to sell books. In fact, Amazon may unwittingly be doing authors of print on demand (POD) published books a big favor because there are a lot of other sites on the Internet where we can sell our books. 

Two that are quite prominent in their own right are Barnes and Noble’s online bookstore and Books-A-Million, both of which offer all of the same services as Amazon - a cover picture, synopsis of your book, reviews, and the opportunity for readers to buy. And there are many smaller sites across the Internet such as bookhitch and Once Written where authors can promote and sell their works.

Angered by Amazon’s attitude, some authors have pulled their books from Amazon and set up shop on other sites. Perhaps the biggest favor Amazon has done authors is to shatter the fallacy that writers need Amazon to sell lots of books. The reality is that authors don’t often sell that many copies off of Amazon. Instead, authors can invest in selling their books on sites that are better targeted towards the audience they want to reach. For example, Shades of Darkness is available on all the sites listed above, and I intend to make sure these are promoted properly. One way to do that is to make sure positive reviews find their way to other sites beyond Amazon.

Another option is to get involved on author sites such as Author Nation, Nothing Binding, and Author’s Den. These provide a great opportunity to not only get the word out regarding your work, but to hear from other writers about their work, get constructive feedback, and follow the book publishing business.

Whatever a writer chooses to do one thing is certain - Amazon isn’t the only option after all, just one of many waiting to be discovered by savvy authors.

Earlier this week, a study was presented at the American Association for Cancer Research that indicates even a small amount of alcohol consumption increases the risk of breast cancer, particularly estrogen-receptor and progesterone-receptor positive breast cancer.

Since Shades of Darkness includes the topics of alcoholism and cancer, I found the correlation between even moderate drinking and an increased breast cancer risk intriguing. While previous data has suggested that consuming alcohol increases the risk of breast cancer, precise mechanisms had not been clarified.

The new study followed 184,000 postmenopausal women for an average of seven years. The study found that women who had less than one drink a day increased their risk of breast cancer by 7 percent compared to teetotalers. Women who consumed two drinks a day had a 32 percent increased risk, and those having three or more glasses of alcohol per day increased their risk to 51 percent. The risk was similar whether women consumed beer, wine, or spirits. However, the risk was seen mostly in those 70 percent of tumors classified as estrogen-receptor and progesterone-receptor positive.

Other researchers urged caution in interpreting the results, but women can learn more about breast cancer at the U.S. National Cancer Institute. Additionally, women, especially those over the age of 40 need to be sure they are getting regular mammograms. For a recovering alcoholic such as myself, discussing an increased risk due to past behavior with my physician is something I will pursue.

The debate over Amazon’s tactics requiring POD publishers to use Amazon’s POD provider BookSurge if publishers want their books to continue being sold directly on the web site has ignited a virtual firestorm on both sides of the issue.

I belong to an organization called bookhitch, whose main purpose is to connect authors and readers without a middleman. The organization asks the question, “What if Amazon had no books to sell?” Then what would they do? Amazon derives its merchandising power from selling lots of books - both traditionally published and by POD authors. In protest, many authors are removing their links to Amazon, taking their books off the site, and rallying together. But bookhitch believes it will take a concerted effort of publishers, authors, and readers to truly affect Amazon’s bottom line and force a change in policy.

Some of the major organizations that have commented on Amazon’s policy follow:

PMA (Independent Book Publishers Association):
“Amazon’s new policy “imposes a significant financial burden on tens of thousands of small and independent publishers who can least afford it. Without the opportunity to benefit from competitive pricing, small publishers risk at best an expensive and needless overhaul of their manufacturing process, and at worst, the loss of their livelihood.” - Terry Nathan, Executive Director

ASJA (American Society of Journalists and Authors):
“With these grabby, strong-arm tactics, Amazon negates all that — and the years of goodwill it has built up with writers, who ultimately will bear the brunt of any price increases in the printing of independently published books.” - Russell Wild, President

Author’s Guild:
“We suspect this maneuver by Amazon is far more about profit margin than it is about customer service or fossil fuels. The potential big losers (other than Ingram) if Amazon does impose greater discounts on the industry, are authors - since many are paid for on-demand sales based on the publisher’s gross revenues - and publishers.
“We’re reviewing the antitrust and other legal implications of Amazon’s bold move.”

SPAN (Small Publishers Association of North America): 
“It is fair to say that almost all of our publishers and authors who use POD to distribute through Amazon.com will be negatively affected by this new policy. It is because so many of our members will be adversely affected that the SPAN Board is going on record as opposing Amazon.com requiring all publishers using POD distribution through Amazon to print with BookSurge.” - Scott Flora, Executive Director

Others believe this is strictly a business decision Amazon must make in order to streamline their processes. The argument is that it costs Amazon a great deal of money to offer free shipping on books and other products, and those costs must be covered somehow. As a recently published author of a POD book, I’ll continue to monitor what Amazon does next. Any author considering POD publishing should do the same; as such decisions may greatly impact a book’s success.  

Alcoholism is a central theme in the novel for a number of reasons. As a recovering alcoholic with a lengthy family history, I know first-hand just how destructive that abuse can be. Alcoholism’s toll includes damaged relationships, lost jobs, health problems, legal consequences, financial hardship, and a host of other issues. 

Some statistics to consider during Alcohol Awareness Month:
Hazardous drinking behavior (five or more drinks in one sitting) accounts for more than half of the alcohol industry’s $155 billion market and more than 75% of the beer industry’s market.

Underage alcohol consumption is more likely to kill young people than all other drugs combined. More than 1,700 college students in the U.S. are killed every year as a result of alcohol-related injuries.

Forty percent of adults who began drinking before age 15 experience chemical dependency problems later in life.

Nearly 14 million Americans - one of every 13 adults - abuse alcohol or are alcoholic. Fewer than 25% who need treatment get it in a given year.

Some 75% of husbands or wives who abuse their spouses had been drinking prior to the attack.

Alcohol is implicated in the deaths of an estimated 85,000 Americans each year, making it the nation’s third leading cause of preventable deaths after obesity and smoking.

Drunk driving accounts for approximately 16,000 alcohol-related deaths each year, which amounts to 25% of all alcohol-related deaths.

Alcohol-related problems including illness, premature death, and crime cost the U.S. economy an estimated $185 billion a year in lost productivity and earnings.

Some of the health risks of drinking heavily include increased incidence of cancers of the liver, esophagus, throat, and larynx, as well as cirrhosis of the liver, immune system problems, brain damage, and heart disease.

If you or someone in your family suffers from alcohol-related problems, there are a number of chemical dependency organizations and groups listed on the Resources page of this site.

The Sunday Minneapolis Tribune carried an article by renowned journalist, Brad Zellar, Great Minnesota Books. While many great authors have come from Minnesota - F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Judith Guest, Garrison Keillor, and August Wilson - to name but a few, most never wrote about Minnesota specifically.

The majority of books featured in the article are of the non-fiction genre and cover an extraordinary range from the state’s varied history, spectacular natural beauty and wildlife, colorful local characters, and mythology. Where else would you find a mystery-suspense novel titled Wind Chill Factor, but one set in Minnesota?

At the end of the piece, Zellar laments that too few works of fiction take place in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, which makes me extremely glad I chose to set Shades of Darkness in my native state. The point was not just to use Minnesota as a backdrop for the novel, but to incorporate this great land as another living, breathing character within the story.