The 2025 Newsletter Archives are Now Open If you’ve been following my journey here on the blog, you know that the “story behind the story” is often just as gripping as what’s on the page. Between my awards, the #1 bestseller badges, and regaining my publishing rights for Chained Birds, 2025 has been a whirlwind. But there’s a whole side of...
Month: December 2025
(This article has been updated with new details and images from its original September 2024 publication.) My true crime memoir, Chained Birds, chronicles the ten-year journey of federal inmate Kevin Sanders as he fought to survive the blood-soaked Special Management Unit at Lewisburg Prison. While the book serves as an exposé of that now-shuttered experimental program, it also reveals...
Award-winning author Carla Conti recaps 2025 milestones, from eight true crime book awards to THE JACKLIGHTER Kickstarter teaser.
This is an end-of-year video wrap-up about my book, CHAINED BIRDS, appearing on my new YouTube channel … every video’s theme is about the high cost of truth. For a long time, the only price I thought I’d pay was the ten years I spent writing it. I was wrong. The story—a true-crime memoir centered on my attorney-friend Scott...
Despite my best intentions not to create more work for myself, I just launched a YouTube channel to host videos that are too damn large for this WordPress blog. I didn’t really want to get into making videos (I should be writing 🙄), but I had no choice, because my new videos are just too many megabytes. And you...
What a way to end the year 🥳 I’m delighted to share that Chained Birds has been named Best Crimemoir of 2025 by AudioBookReviewer! Honestly, I’d forgotten I had even entered into the awards program, so when I received the news, it felt like an unexpected gift to cap off this incredible year. And fun fact: my book was...