Looking ahead to 2026, I’m thrilled to announce that I’ll be presenting a workshop called True Crime Uncovered at the 39th Annual Pennwriters Conference in Lancaster, PA, May 15-17, 2026! This is a particularly meaningful opportunity for me, as I first attended the conference this past spring as a debut author still finding my way in the publishing world....
Year: 2025
This weekend, my local writer’s group, the Delaware Valley chapter of Sisters in Crime, had the great pleasure of welcoming award-winning author, CNN journalist, and master storyteller John DeDakis as our guest speaker. John’s presentation, “From Journalist to Novelist (Or How I Learned to Start Making it Up),” was thoroughly entertaining, and some of us followed up with great...
How I became a #1 Amazon Bestseller in Three Categories 11/16/2025 Update, Two Weeks later … Since I wrote my original post on Nov. 2, 2025, Chained Birds added a third #1 Best Seller Amazon badge in True Crime: Organized Crime, giving me a trifecta of orange badges. For a few days, I even held that #1 ranking along...
I want to thank my friend and podcaster Cameron Santana for having me on his show, Santana True Crime, this week to celebrate the one-year anniversary of Chained Birdsβnow an Amazon Best Sellerβand to talk about my next book, The Jacklighter! You can watch our hour-plus interview on Spotify, catch some outtake shorts on YouTube, or listen to the...
This past year, I’ve had the pleasure of being a guest speaker at three local-to-me book clubs that assigned Chained Birds: A Crimemoir to their members. I can’t adequately convey what it meant to me, as a debut author, to be welcomed by these groups and treated as a guest of honor. I have finally compiled a list of...
This summer has been a whirlwind for me. After reclaiming the rights to my award-winning bookΒ Chained Birds, I took the leap into indie publishing. Itβs been a liberating experienceβone thatβs pushed me to explore new platforms and opportunities, like making my audiobook available on Spotify. Yes,Β Chained BirdsΒ is now streaming on the same platform whereΒ Taylor SwiftβsΒ chart-topping hits live. And while...
π October is right around the corner, and so is one of my favorite book festival events! Iβm thrilled to announce that on Saturday, October 4, 2025, Iβll be joining the Delaware Valley Chapter of Sisters in Crime at the 23rd Annual Collingswood Book Festival in downtown Collingswood, NJ. This vibrant, six-block celebration of books, authors, and readers promises...
π₯ Iβm overjoyed to announce that Chained Birds: A Crimemoir has been named a finalist in the 2025 Page Turner Awardsβ Book Adaptation Needed category! π This recognition is particularly meaningful because the Page Turner Awards celebrate books with cinematic potentialβan exciting prospect for any author dreaming of seeing their work adapted for the screen. π¬ The winners will...
Better late than never! Seven months after receiving this one and only editorial review for my author-narrated audiobook of Chained Birds, I am finally posting it in its entirety. I’m extremely pleased to immortalize this review by AudioBookReviewer.com, even though the reviewer wasn’t so fond of the book’s political aspect. That is the reason, I suspect, for the four-star...
I am SO jazzed to be appearing on three author panels at this year’s Killer Nashville Writers’ Conference, followed by book signings of Chained Birds after each one in the Killer Nashville Bookstore! Fun fact: all bookstore signings are open to the public π So if you’re a crime fiction, thriller, or true crime fan in Nashville next weekend,...
There’s a reason I’ve been missing in action here, on social media, and on the pickleball court this summer … I’ve been busy getting my Chained Birds rights reverted from my former publisher to re-launch it under my own imprint. That’s right, I’ve had a friendly divorce from my traditional publisher, and have now gone “indie” by re-launching my...
As part of my “Author’s Cut” re-boot of Chained Birds, I am making available to the public the video surveillance footage of the 2011 recreational cage fight at Lewisburg Prison that essentially launched this book. It’s grainy and brutal, and thankfully the victim survived and walked away on his own … still, viewer discretion is advised. The participants**, from...
This is the second of two prison stabbing videos I’ve made available to the public as part of my re-launch of Chained Birds: A Crimemoir. Like the first one, it’s grainy and brutal, and the victimβfederal inmate Kevin Sandersβsurvives … but just barely. The 2013 footage from USP Florence in Colorado begins with an Aryan Brotherhood (AB) of Texas...
Iβm thrilled to announce that Chained Birds has been recognized as a True Crime finalist in the 2025 National Indie Excellence Awards! Thank you, NIEA, for this literary honor and for adding to my Spring collection of True Crime awards! πΈππ The NIEA is a prestigious program that celebrates independent publishing across a wide variety of genres. With a...
In this whirlwind year of a book launch, conferences, and awards, I’m trying to appreciate each milestone, and that includes a new author interview posted by IndieReader Discovery Awards, which named Chained Birds its 2025 True Crime category winner. I was delighted when IndieReader reached out for the interview, and told editor Amy Edelman that I love the ideology...
One of the key benefits of attending writers’ conferences is the people you meet, and this interview with a fellow author and blogger is a lovely example of one of those spinoffs. I had the great pleasure of meeting Christina Boyd at the April Chanticleer Authors’ Conference in Bellingham, Wash., where we both won book awards. She took home...