Posts on Criminal Justice and Prison Reform

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 ...

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 👏 So if you’re a crime fiction, thriller, or true crime fan in ...

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” ...

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 ...

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 victim—federal inmate Kevin Sanders—survives … but just barely. The 2013 footage from USP Florence in Colorado begins with an Aryan ...

I’m 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! 🌸📚🏆 The NIEA is a prestigious program that celebrates independent publishing across a wide variety of ...

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 ...

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. ...

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 ...