Posts on Chained Birds Book

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 Birds—now an Amazon Best Seller—and to talk about my next book, The Jacklighter! You can watch our hour-plus interview on Spotify, catch some outtake shorts on YouTube, or ...

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 ...