I’m thrilled to announce my debut true crime memoir, Chained Birds, has found a home with WildBlue Press and will be published this fall! I’ve known about this since the end of last year — talk about a secret that’s hard to keep! I inked my deal just before Christmas following two weeks of dialogue with press co-founder (and...
Carla Conti
Carla Conti is a true crime journalist, storyteller, and prison reform advocate. Look for Chained Birds: A Crimemoir, her true crime memoir and exposé on federal prison abuse, corruption, and prison gang culture in 2024.
Fun fact: the new Kindle Scribe does not allow you to handwrite notes on any eBook. No scribbling in the margins or circling words or highlighting passages. The best you can do is write something inside a stickie note, where it remains hidden until you open it up with a stylus tap. This will not do. I bought the...
For purveyors and consumers of true crime and other documentaries, the film Subject is a gripping, must-see examination of everyone’s role in this burgeoning infotainment landscape. An award-winning 2022 film just released on Amazon this month, Subject features participants from a handful of nonfiction films and their wide variety of personal fallout. The outcomes range from devastating to exonerating...
I never knew what a mood board was until I decided to enter a couple of X (formerly Twitter) book pitch contests this fall. Because I love tinkering with graphics, I dove into creating my first-ever mood board for November’s #MoodPitch contest — a contest that ended up getting canceled. The volunteer contest organizers decided to pull it from...
In 2014, inmate Kevin Sanders stepped off a ConAir flight from Pennsylvania to a tarmac in Orlando, where he met an “old timer” similarly dressed in an orange jumpsuit and belly chain. The ornery felon with a sharp tongue and Southie Boston accent turned out to be the notorious Boston mobster Whitey Bulger. Kevin and Whitey were slated for...
The Washington Post’s George Will was out with an important op-ed this week that shines a spotlight on the legal loophole of “qualified immunity,” a principle that gives lawsuit protection to government workers acting in an official capacity. Will’s piece centers on a U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals decision that prevented a family from suing anyone in a...
Welcome to my digital home! This space is devoted to tidbits about my book in progress, Chained Birds: A Crimemoir, my publishing safari, anything that catches my fancy in the true crime world, and posts about prison reform and the criminal justice system — a central theme to Chain Birds’ story. So what’s Crimemoir? So glad you asked …...