Support the Light Up the Shadows Book Tour

What “Light Up the Shadows” Means

Light Up the Shadows is a call to bring accountability into the light with clarity, transparency, structure, and love. When you see wrong, step up and stand out, but do it with care. It can be easier to attack, but that does not always yield the right results. Stepping up and calling out with love, with honor, with patience, and with strategy allows more to be brought into the light.

It stands on four lines: clarity over comfort, transparency over secrecy, structure over spin, and love over anger.

Supporting this tour is how that message reaches people who need it. Every dollar helps put the book in the hands of someone navigating a hard situation, keeps the tour on the road city by city, and lets me sit with people who are carrying a story they have kept quiet, so what I lived through can help someone else.

Learn About Light Up the Shadows →

What this is

This summer I am taking Calling Out the Shadows on the road: 35 cities across 12 states, from California to Florida, by car, over about 42 days. 999 documented hours went into writing and editing the book, and 999 more will go into carrying it on the road.

It is less about bookstores and signings than what happens beside them. Part of what this raise does is put copies in the hands of people who could use them. Part of it is showing, in the open, how a tour like this is built. And part of it is sitting with anyone who is carrying a story they have never said out loud.

See the Full Route & All 35 Cities →

The book

Calling Out the Shadows: A Father’s Stand Against the Current came out in June 2026. It is the documented account of one father’s decision to respond to chaos with clarity, to meet secrecy with transparency, and to choose love over anger for his daughter’s sake.

It is not a book about revenge. It is intended to be a blueprint for anyone in high-conflict custody, broken communication, or the quiet erosion of truth in a family. It reads as a memoir and a practical guide, in plain first person, and it traces a decade of patterns: communication shutdowns, denied access, rewritten histories, and a system that rewarded avoidance over accountability. Through all of it, one father documented every exchange, built a daily archive of messages for his daughter, and would not let the record be erased.

The book follows 58 chapters, each built on five anchors: a title, an opening thought, a first sentence, a pull quote, and a closing thought. You can skim it or read it deeply. It stands on four lines: clarity over comfort, transparency over secrecy, structure over spin, love over anger.

Inside the ten appendices

Beyond the story, ten appendices offer practical resources:

• 24 deflective and evasive communication patterns, identified and defined.
• An A-to-Z reference of observed behavioral traits.
• A framework for building court-ready motions and documentation with the help of software.
• Structured protocols for preparing your records and requests.
• Guidance on filing bar complaints and lowering the risk that can come with it.
• A nonprofit concept for structured co-parenting support.
• A restricted-language framework of 2,150 terms held out of the narrative for legal protection, platform compliance, and a steady voice.

Formats and release

The paperback and hardcover run 504 pages. The ebook runs 587 pages. The audiobook runs 14 hours and 9 minutes, recorded and narrated in my own voice. The Skimmer’s Edition ebook is 78 pages. The full book came out in June 2026 in paperback, hardcover, ebook, audiobook, and the Skimmer’s Edition, and a large print edition follows in two volumes.

Why I am asking

I wrote it through the hardest year of my life. It was a year of health issues, hospitalizations, bedrest and recovery, a year that forced ten different surgeries, three of them emergency ones and two critical. It was also a year that kept me at a distance from my daughter. Coming back from those surgeries cost me the ability to work the way I once did.

The book, this tour, and reaching out to share what I have carried are how I am working my way back. Back to my health. Back to my own two feet. And back, in the right way, to my daughter. Along the road I hope to hand the book to people who could use it, and to sit with anyone carrying a story they have kept to themselves, so that what I lived through can help someone else on a similar road.

Health has limited how much I can work, so I cannot carry this alone the way I wish I could. That is why I am asking for help, to carry it for me and to carry it for others too.

The Light Up the Shadows Book Tour

A week after the large print edition is released, and one year and one week after the first word was written, I take to the road. The Light Up the Shadows Book Tour is scheduled to run 41 and a half days, with stops in 35 cities across 12 states over 999 hours.

It is less about bookstores and signings than what happens beside them. I am focusing the bulk of my time to steward, connect, and bring ideas, options, and strategies, to the people who could use them and to the people who work with others as well.

For anyone in a high conflict situation with an ex wife or an ex husband, and the hard messages that come with it: a way to take a step back, take a breath, gather the right information before answering, and choose the words that make it right instead of only being right in the moment.

For anyone who wants some ideas and protective elements in order to tell a story of their own that perhaps they have been worried to tell and sharing ways to protect it, so that story can stand scrutiny.

For authors putting together a book and a book tour, ideas and foundational strategies that have substance, proof, and evidence over the excess of book marketers claiming to have all the answers and none of the experience.

And this is also for working my way back to my daughter.

What reviewers say

BookLife, from Publishers Weekly, calls it “a precise, emotive memoir of effort, resilience, and connection, with a welcome emphasis on the practical.”

The Midwest Book Review says it is “well written, organized and presented,” and recommended it for personal and library collections.

IndieReader rated it 4.4 and named it IR Approved, in a review by Nicci Attfield.

Ways to help

With any of these, you can add your name or keep it private, whichever you prefer. Ko-fi sends an email receipt and charges zero fee on tips. Stripe is private and goes straight to the road; your card statement shows the page name. GoFundMe sends an email receipt and funds the mission.

Gift cards for the road, sent to my email, are a simple way to help: Love’s for gas and road stops, Choice Hotels for a night’s lodging, Starbucks for coffee, and Panera for a meal and a place to write.

A book ordered direct with a signed inscription, and non-money help like sharing a tour stop or connecting me with a bookstore or host in your city, are just as welcome. Reach out through the contact page to arrange any of these.

Where it goes

The road: lodging, gas, food, tolls. Staying road-ready: maintenance, medical, laundry. The mission: books to give away, market tables, printing. Getting the word out: press and some advertising.

Press and connect

Press and city hosts are welcome. Reach me through the contact page and I will follow up.

Thank you for helping to get the book and the message out that much more.