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Getting Ready for “Killer” Publicity

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The Serial Killer Whisperer Book CoverI’ve been busy getting ready for the release of The Serial Killer Whisperer in January.

Unless there is a pressing reason, most publishers take an entire year to prepare a book for publication after the manuscript is accepted. This can be frustrating for an author. Writers want their work in print ASAP!

Publishers use the time to design a book jacket, put together photo inserts, do final editing, and print advance copies which are then sent to book reviewers and television producers in the hope of creating a favorable pre-release “buzz.”

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Of Your Books, Which Is Your Favorite?

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Which book that you’ve written is your favorite?
It’s a question I get asked a lot. 
Answering it isn’t as easy as you might think. For an author, picking a favorite book is a little like asking a father if he loves one of his children more than the others. That’s an exaggeration, of course, but when you spend several years of your life consumed in writing a book, the finished manuscript becomes much more to its creator than ink, paper, or in today’s world, electronic text.

Another Example of The Power of One

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 If you are a regular reader of this blog or you know me personally, you realize that I believe one person can make a significant difference in our society and that all of us are obligated, in our own ways, to do something for the betterment of us all. This is one reason why I became a journalist and author. 
There is no better example of how much an individual can change our nation than Bryan Stevenson, the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, and the Harvard-educated lawyer who is the real-life hero of my fourth nonfiction book, Circumstantial Evidence: Death, Life, and Justice In a Southern Town.
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a historic ruling in (Graham v. Florida) that Bryan was instrumental in arguing. More on that later, but first, some background.

Is Solitary Confinement Cruel?

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      Is being confined indefinitely in  a solitary prison cell “cruel and unusual punishment” and does it violate a prisoner’s right to due process?

    A team of students at the University of Denver Strum School of Law and two of their professors claim the answer to both questions is yes. In 2007,  they filed a civil rights lawsuit against the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) on behalf of a familiar name: Thomas Silverstein.

Silverstein sent me this drawing after I mailed him one of my books. Several BOP officers were angry that I gave him a copy but didn't offer them one.

     Silverstein is a major character in my book, The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison, and someone I have known since 1987. That’s when I became the first and – to date — the only reporter ever allowed to interview him in prison.

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Norman Mailer, Prisons and Me

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I first read, In the Belly of the Beast by Jack Abbott when I was spending a year as a reporter inside a maximum security penitentiary doing research for my book, The Hot House: Life Inside Leaven worth Prison. If you are not familiar with the Beast book or Abbott’s story, here’s a brief review. 
The son of an Irish-American solider and Chinese prostitute, Abbott had spent nearly all of his life in jails and prisons. In 1977, he learned that Normal Mailer was writing a book about Gary Gilmore, the first prisoner to be executed in 1977 after our nation re-started the death penalty ending its short constitutional hiatus.
Mailer’s book about Gilmore, The Executioner’s Song, won the Pulitzer Prize and helped revive his career.

Prisons, Cats, and Giant Oilmen

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Oklahoma State Penitentiary cellblock

The first time I went into a prison as a reporter was in the mid- 1970s when I worked at the now closed Tulsa Tribune.  The city editor, Windsor Ridenour, assigned me to cover a meeting at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary where the pardon and parole board was convening to decide who would remain behind bars and who would be freed.

I suspect Windsor wanted me to see a rougher side of life from what I had experienced as the son of a minister, but I doubt he had any idea how that visit would ultimately impact my life. I have never forgotten my first trip into the white knuckle hell that is McAlester and that experience is what ultimately caused me to return to prison a decade later and write The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison, which recounts a year that I spent off-and-on inside a maximum security penitentiary.

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