'Evil Business' on the shelves

By Sam Carlson

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York infuriated one KU alumnus so much that he wrote a book, or really two books.

John Nienstedt, a 1961 University of Kansas graduate from Emporia, spends his days — when he’s not writing — leading management seminars for corporations and government agencies. A former U.S. Navy captain, he returned from service in the Gulf War and began his career as a public speaker. Then came his life as an author.

It wasn’t just the attacks that influenced his latest novel, “Evil Business,” it was the way people responded to them. Nienstedt said the event brought the words of Mahatma Gandhi, as he recalled them, to mind: The only devils in the world are those that are running around in our hearts, and that’s where the battle needs to be fought — within ourselves.

Nienstedt said he thought Americans acted as if there was some “evil force” that was after them, although the terrorists believed their actions were justified.

“I put together so much information on self-help and self-improvement that I finally decided I had to write a book,” Nienstedt said.

After he penned a pair of self-help books, he turned his focus to fiction writing. “See the Monkey: A Tale of Two Evils,” published in 2002, is the prequel to “Evil Business.” Both works center on Norman Fuller, a mediocre newspaper columnist who often encounters the “Voice of Evil,” an invisible character that exposes Fuller to various evils in society, such as greed.

One such example of evil in the book is seen when Nienstedt mentions his alma mater. One of the characters is an overly competitive KU basketball player who is willing to do anything, no matter the cost, to win. Parts of the book take place in Kansas City, where Nienstedt lived for 17 years.

“You’ve got to write about what you know about,” he said.

Nienstedt said he spent two years writing “Evil Business,” and the completion of it was only part of the satisfaction he got from writing it. He said that in fiction writing, the characters begin to take on lives of their own, and seeing how the story turns out is the most exciting part. The last bit of satisfaction depends on the reader.

Nienstedt said he is confident that readers will be entertained and kept in suspense. And to prove it, he said he tells his readers that he’ll reimburse them for the book if they figure out the ending before reaching it.

“That’s my objective, to entertain in a way that causes people to think,” he said.

— Edited by Ben Smith

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