Posts on Criminal Justice and Prison Reform

Yesterday, an email landed in my inbox that made me do a little happy dance 🎉. BestThrillers.com, the site that named Chained Birds a Finalist in its 2024 Best Thriller contest, has posted its editorial review of The Jacklighter. Their bottom line: “A powerful and compulsive true crime epic that demands a screen adaptation.” 🥹 The reviewer ...

The wait is almost over: preorders for The Jacklighter are officially live in ebook, hardcover, and paperback, with delivery arriving right on launch day, October 27, 2026. (If audio is more your speed, the author-narrated audiobook is coming Q1 2027—I’ll share details as soon as it’s ready.) And in the “pinch me” column: The Jacklighter briefly ...

I already gushed about this in my last post, but I wanted to give Around Ambler its own proper spotlight, because a feature like this doesn’t come along every day 🎉 If you missed it: Around Ambler, my local news site covering Ambler, Blue Bell, Fort Washington, Maple Glen, and Lower Gwynedd, ran a feature on ...

It’s official: THE JACKLIGHTER: Murder, Betrayal, and Justice in Pennsylvania’s Endless Mountains launches October 27, 2026, the Tuesday before Halloween. Plus I have four bookstore signings and one library event on the calendar so far 🎃 I’ve known about the launch date for a while, but thought I would make a joint announcement of the pub ...

Something Shifted This Week For years, I’ve been researching, reporting, and writing The Jacklighter, a narrative true crime book about the 1976 murder of Montrose attorney Martin Dillon and the decades-long quest for justice that followed. (Set for publication this fall.) For 30 years, I’ve kept boxes of newspaper clippings in my basement. Decades ago, I ...

🗣️ Listen to this short post and full excerpt, narrated by the author (23 min): New excerpts from THE JACKLIGHTER mark 50 years since a Pennsylvania attorney was murdered in the woods. In a perfect world, The Jacklighter would have been published on June 2, 2026, exactly 50 years to the day that Martin Dillon walked into ...

One of the highlights of this year’s Pennwriters Conference in Lancaster, PA, was recording a special podcast episode for the BookSpeak Network. I was thrilled to sit down with podcaster Tory Gates—author, broadcaster, and host of The Brown Posey Press Show—for an all-Pennwriters edition of the podcast. Tory is a veteran of nearly four decades ...

The 39th Annual Pennwriters Conference — Lancaster, PA | May 15–17, 2026 There’s something about a roomful of writers that recharges me every time. The 39th Annual Pennwriters Conference, themed The Writer’s Path, brought a swarm of authors, poets, and storytellers to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, for three days of workshops, craft conversations, and a Lord of the ...