How I became a #1 Amazon Bestseller I’m still processing this: Chained Birds just earned TWOย #1 Best Seller Amazon badges this week! And fun fact: even though I’ve ranked #1 in two categories simultaneously, Amazon will only display one badge at a time on my retail page. (Amazon keeps alternating between the two ๐) Technically, this means I can...
Carla Conti
Carla Conti is a former journalist and the award-winning author of Chained Birds: A Crimemoir. Her true crime debut won multiple 2025 national book awards, including 1st Place in True Crime from the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, Winner in True Crime from the Indie Reader Discovery Awards, Silver in True Crime from the Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY), Finalist in True Crime from the National Indie Excellence Awards, and a 1st Place Nellie Bly Journalism award from the Chanticleer International Book Awards. Carla is at work on her next true crime book, The Jacklighter, scheduled for release in 2026. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, who supports her true crime habit.
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 bookย Chained Birds, I took the leap into indie publishing. Itโs been a liberating experienceโone thatโs pushed me to explore new platforms and opportunities, like making my audiobook available on Spotify. Yes,ย Chained Birdsย is now streaming on the same platform whereย Taylor Swiftโsย chart-topping hits live. And while...
๐ October is right around the corner, and so is one of my favorite book festival events! Iโm thrilled to announce that on Saturday, October 4, 2025, Iโll 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...
๐ฅ Iโm overjoyed to announce that Chained Birds: A Crimemoir has been named a finalist in the 2025 Page Turner Awardsโ Book Adaptation Needed category! ๐ This recognition is particularly meaningful because the Page Turner Awards celebrate books with cinematic potentialโan exciting prospect for any author dreaming of seeing their work adapted for the screen. ๐ฌ 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 ๐ 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 victimโfederal inmate Kevin Sandersโsurvives … but just barely. The 2013 footage from USP Florence in Colorado begins with an Aryan Brotherhood (AB) of Texas...
Iโm 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! ๐ธ๐๐ 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...
Drumroll please … introducing my very first (and possibly only, ever) handcrafted book trailer for CHAINED BIRDS: A True Crime Memoir. (Note this book was retitled Chained Birds: A Crimemoir during my summer 2025 re-launch under my own imprint.) This labor of love was requested by the Next Generation Indie Book Awards for their upcoming awards gala, to be...
Oh, how I love my indie book award programs! Chained Birds has won another True Crime literary honor, this time taking the 2025 True Crime top prize in the Indie Reader Discovery Awards, announced today. I’m not sharing this award with anyone, and there are no True Crime finalists to congratulate โ it’s just little ole’ me getting the...
I just got the wonderful news that Chained Birds: A True-Crime Memoir captured the Silver Medal in the True Crime category of the 2025 Independent Publisher Book Awards, aka the IPPY awards! ๐ This is the second true crime book award for Chained Birds this month ๐ญ๐ญ๐ญ I’d like to congratulate all the IPPY winners in the contest’s 100+...