How Much of Real Life Do Authors Put Into Their Work with Christina McDonald

As an author, a big part of my writing process is distilling things from my life into the fictional worlds I create. All of my books include these little peaks into my life; my characters are built from what I see and hear, things people do, unique characteristics I notice, like a flick of the hair or a love of Bocelli or a loathing for the grate of a nail file.

Do No Harm, however, is my most personal book yet. While the plot and the characters are entirely from my imagination, much of the story is emotionally authentic to me as its author.

 

The most strikingly personal aspect of Do No Harm is the central theme around the opioid epidemic. Dr. Emma Sweeney, my protagonist, has a brother who’s struggled with addiction most of her life, and this is true for me as well. I’ve spent most of my life watching my brother’s addiction to opioids, and this is why I’ve known for a while that I wanted to set a book against the backdrop of the opioid epidemic.

 

But there are other moments in Do No Harm that emotionally connect me to the story as well. Some are funny, some horrifying, some sad. Whatever the emotion, I’ve mined it to bring Do No Harm to life.

 

Fun and personal facts about Do No Harm:

1. Bit-O-Honey – One day while I was writing, I randomly started craving Bit-O-Honey, the old-fashioned honey-flavored taffy. My mom used to buy it for my sisters and me as a treat when we went on road trips. So I had one of my characters eating it thinking about his childhood, as I was thinking about mine.

 

2. Skamania - The town of Skamania, where Do No Harm is set, is based on the Cascades Chinook Native American word sk'mániak, which means ‘swift waters’. Since a lot of the book is centered around a warehouse that’s perched on the edge of a waterfall, I thought it fit nicely.

 

3. Snoqualmie Falls - Skamania is loosely based around the real-life town of Snoqualmie, which is located about 45 minutes from Seattle, which is where I’m from. Like Skamania, the town is named after its real-life waterfall, Snoqualmie Falls.

 

4. Pimple squish – one of the cute things Josh, who’s just five, says in the early chapters of the book, is he calls cuddles ‘pimple squishes’. It’s when Emma, his mommy, cuddles up tight on one side and Nate, his daddy, cuddles up tight on the other, and they scootch in with the Josh in between. My oldest son, who’s now 12, coined the term. He loved pimple squishes and used to beg for them every night.

 

5. Josh’s dreams – After Josh finds out he has leukemia, has starts crying because he’s afraid of being buried. In the way children think, he believes he’ll be buried alive, and he won’t be able to breathe. I wrote this scene the very morning after my youngest son, who was about Josh’s age when I was writing this book, had this exact dream. He dreamt he’d died and been buried beneath the Eiffel Tower in Paris and he couldn’t breathe because mud covered him. All he could do was lie there and look up and see everyone walking over him like he didn’t exist. It broke my heart, so I wrote that scene for Josh because I imagined how scary it would be for a child getting a diagnosis like his.

 

6. Sucking pointer and pinky fingers – Most kids suck their thumb, but my youngest, who’s now seven, sucked his pointer and pinkie fingers until he was five, the same age as Josh is in Do No Harm. I thought it was adorable and unique, so I decided to give this endearing habit to Josh.

 

7. Chili - At the beginning Emma returns home after a particularly challenging day at work to find her husband has prepared dinner for her. I wanted to set the scene for their life together; one where she feels loved, accepted. Something that evokes family and belonging, so I had her husband cooking chili. My mom used to make it a lot when I was a kid, so it’s always felt like one of those classic family comfort foods.

 

8. CAR T-cell immunotherapy - The cost of Josh’s CAR T-cell therapy, the immunotherapy treatment he needs to save his life, really does cost between $400,000-$500,000, and most insurances don’t cover it. So you can see why any parent would be so desperate in this situation. How do you put a cost on a child’s life?

 

Including little pieces of myself in my stories is important to me because it helps strengthen the connection between myself as the author and the written words on the page. This connection breathes life and emotion into my books, and I hope readers feel this emotion as they read Do No Harm.

 

Written by: Christina McDonald

About the book:
Emma loves her life. She’s the mother of a precocious kindergartener, married to her soulmate—a loyal and loving police detective—and has a rewarding career as a doctor at the local hospital.

But everything comes crashing down when her son, Josh, is diagnosed with a rare form of cancer.

Determined to save him, Emma makes the risky decision to sell opioids to fund the life-saving treatment he needs. But when somebody ends up dead, a lethal game of cat and mouse ensues, her own husband leading the chase. With her son’s life hanging in the balance, Emma is dragged into the dark world of drugs, lies, and murder. Will the truth catch up to her before she can save Josh?

A timely and moving exploration of a town gripped by the opioid epidemic, and featuring Christina McDonald’s signature “complex, emotionally intense” (Publishers Weekly) prose, Do No Harm examines whether the ends ever justify the means...even for a desperate mother.