Some mysteries are buried deep, but they never truly disappear. For the past year, Iโve been immersed in the cold, hard details of a case that’s haunted me since I first started researching it three decades ago. Bringing The Jacklighter to life has been an exercise in reconstructionโsifting through old boxes of evidence, documents, and now thousands of pages...
Carla Conti
Carla Conti is a journalist and the award-winning author of Chained Birds: A Crimemoir. Her next true crime book, The Jacklighter, is set for release in 2026. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, who supports her true crime habit.
I’m still pinching myself. When I launched the Kickstarter campaign for The Jacklighter: Murder, Betrayal, and Justice in Pennsylvania’s Endless Mountains, I hoped for the best and prepared for the worst. But my Backer Besties came through and fully funded (and then some!) my first Kickstarter campaign ๐ญ๐ญ๐ญ To every single backer who pledged, shared the campaign, cheered me...
An Invitation From Across the Pond When UK true crime podcaster Tom Clarke of Caught Up In Crimeย reached out to interview me aboutย Chained Birds, I said yes immediately. Tom has a gift for getting to the heart of a story, and we took a deep dive into how I gained access to a whistleblower inside one of Americaโs most...
I’ve done more than a dozen podcast interviews about Chained Birds, and I say that with deep gratitude. But this one is different. This one stopped me in my tracks … and that was before I saw Tom Clarke’s video intro to his cinematic-for-the-ear episode called “The Snowball.” Caught Up in Crime is the brainchild of Tom Clarke, a...
Last week I had the pleasure of joining the legendary Ron Chepesiuk for a full hour on his award-nominated show, Crime Beatโand it was the best conversation I’ve had about The Jacklighter so far. We covered a lot of ground: how I first stumbled onto this story nearly 30 years ago in my husband’s hometown of Montrose, Pennsylvania; why...
What happened to the couple in this photo? This week, I found a photo I forgot I had. Itโs a 3ยฝ-inch-square, faded color snapshot of a glorious 1968 wedding partyโnearly 20 people posed on a sunlit lawn in Binghamton, NY, the bride stunning in white lace and a full veil, the groom beaming beside her. Two flower girls in...
๐ง Win CHAINED BIRDS on Spotify โ Plus Get a Free eBook Just for Sharing! I’ve always wanted to do this. ๐ As an indie author who loves connecting with readers, I’ve dreamed of running contests and giveaways โ not just as a one-time thing, but as an ongoing way to celebrate my books and build excitement for what’s...
To add to this month’s publishing news for indie authors … Just when I thought February couldn’t get any better for Chained Birds โ after celebrating the book’s availability in ALL formats on Bookshop.org โ Spotify dropped a game-changing feature called PageMatch that’s giving Amazon’s whispersync a run for its money ๐ Introducing PageMatch: Your Reading-Listening Superpower ๐ง๐ If...
And Every Purchase Supports Local Bookstores! ๐ โค๏ธ Happy Valentine’s Day, Book Lovers! In celebration of indie authors and local bookstores, I have a shout-out for Bookstore.org, which announced some big publishing news last week about bringing eBooks to their platform. And I noticed that my award-winning debut, Chained Birds: A Crimemoir, was an immediate beneficiary. Bookshop.org Has Partnered...
It’s Day 3 of THE JACKLIGHTER’s pre-launch phase on Kickstarter, and I’m thrilled to report that things are already off to a promising start. ๐ As of this writing, The Jacklighter is trending #6 out of 206 projects in Kickstarter’s “most popular upcoming nonfiction” publishing categoryโand I have my fabulous first 11 followers to thank for that early momentum....
The Wait Is OverโTHE JACKLIGHTER Is Now LIVE on Kickstarter! Itโs happening. ๐ After months of R&D, THE JACKLIGHTER: Murder, Betrayal, and Justice in Pennsylvaniaโs Endless Mountains is finally live on Kickstarter, the crowdfunding platform for creatives. This is a FOLLOW Phase … Backing with Pledges & Rewards Comes Next Month! This project, my second true crime book, is...
The 2025 Newsletter Archives are Now Open If youโve 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, andย regaining my publishing rights forย Chained Birds, 2025 has been a whirlwind. But thereโs a whole side of...
(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 exposรฉ 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 โฆ every videoโs 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 storyโa 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 ๐), but I had no choice, because my new videos are just too many megabytes. And you...
What a way to end the year ๐ฅณ 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...
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....
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 Birdsโnow an Amazon Best Sellerโand 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 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...