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Around 11 AM on June 26, 2001, six days and one hour after Andrea Yates summoned Houston police to her suburban, middle-class house and confessed that she’d drowned her children, St. Martin’s Press contracted me to write a book about the case. Simultaneously, Judge Belinda Hill of the 230th District Court in Harris County, Texas, the presiding judge on the case, placed a gag order on all involved, including cops, inv

When I last blogged in February 2015, I thought I was back to posting on a regular basis. But then … career and life happened. In some ways, saying career happened seems contradictory because in the world of book publishing we’re asked to blog. In fact, many literary agents tell us that the number of blog hits we get—as well as the number of Twitter followers and Facebook fans we have—influences publishers to buy or

“I’m the son of a serial killer.” Those were his first words to me. I stood in the foyer of a small library deep in the Hill Country of Texas. It was March 2013, and I was there to teach a class on Writing Sex & Murder: Reality vs. Fantasy. As I waited for the class to began, I watched the students enter. Most were the typical writing seminar crowd of retirees wearing their uniform of clean, com

“True crime is in the toilet.” That’s what I was told in 1997 when I signed my first true crime book contract. The speaker didn’t mean that true crime was swirling in the toilet bowl with … well … excrement. She meant it wasn’t selling, though certainly many people believe the genre is bathroom bowl worthy. Despite that toilet statement, my first true crime book hit the New York Times best-seller list. And since then

I asked a friend the other day to pray that I’d find the “right” book to write next. “I want you to write a book with purpose,” she said. I flinched. Every book I’ve written has had purpose, I think. Certainly Wasted and Breaking Point did. Wasted, the story of the murder of Regina Hartwell, allowed me to go into high schools and talk about drug and alcohol abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and physical abuse. St

I wish I saw things the way other people do. I really do. The other day, I was driving down the highway when I noticed a firewood stand on the side of the road. For most passersby, they’d simply see a man standing by the road selling wood. That’s not what I saw. Not at all. I saw a young couple buying kindling to burn the body of a man they’d murdered. In truth, there was no one there. Not a single customer. So why d

The other day I was looking at my blog stats and noticed that the post “Regina, Kim, Justin and ‘Wasted’, Again” is by far and away my most viewed post. In fact, I often sit astounded at the way Wasted, my very first true crime book, affects people, sticks with them, and causes readers and TV viewers to search for more information on Regina Hartwell, Kim LeBlanc, and Justin Thomas. Indeed, jus

A while back, I read a Tweet about 10 Things I Never Thought I’d Do as an Author. I thought that sounded interesting, so I clicked on the link only to learn that the 10 things were about self-publishing, building a website, building an audience through social media, etc. Man, that wasn’t what I’d expected, so I decided to write my own list of 10 Things I Things I Never Thought I’d Do as an Author. They are totally di

I think many of you know that I love it when you send me photos of you with my books. Today, I got one that I just had to share with you. Yep, Secret Sex Lives went to President Barack Obama’s second inauguration. I have the best friends and fans in the world!

I find that a lot of people make jokes about my true crime book Wages of Sin being featured on the Investigation Discovery TV show Deadly Sins. There are just too many “sins” there not to crack a joke or a smile. And I must admit that I smirk a bit when I say that the book is the case of the Southern Baptist killer stripper — a woman who was reared a devout Southern Baptist, became a stripper, then

I wish you’d been with me at the Texas Book Festival. I had such a grand time. Jenny Lawson, The Bloggess and the author of Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir, spoke at the Paramount Theater and had me stomping my feet with laughter. That’s not an exaggeration. If you ever have the chance to go hear Jenny, do it! I intended to race from Jenny’s session to hear Yael Kohen, author of We Killed: The

Warning: This post contains language that some readers will find offensive. As many of you know, I spend of a lot of my life in fast food restaurants. In fact, too much of my life. I like to write in them. Well, I like to write in some of them. The ones that I do like to write in perfectly balance lighting, temperature, table height, seat comfort, clientele, staff, and management. The ones that I don’t like? It

I stared at my computer screen, then out the sliding glass doors and through the dark winter leaves of the live oak trees. I’d spent the better part of the last ten years writing “true crime” books about real-life murder, sitting with the grieving friends and family of homicide victims, listening to their stories, memories, regrets, loves, and rages as they talked about the ones who had passed on too soon.  I proclai

For the past week or more, my blog has been receiving scores of page views from people searching Stephanie Martin, the killer stripper in my book Wages of Sin. For those interested parties, I want to let you know that you can find a photo album of pictures of Stephanie, as well as her co-killer Will Busenburg and their murder victim Christopher Hatton, on my Facebook author page. You can read updated information abou

I’m a little bit dumbfounded that I can get nostalgic about writing a book that hasn’t even been published, yet. But the other day I was glancing through some old files and came across a photograph of my previous office, the place where I began writing Secret Sex Lives: A Year on the Fringes of American Sexuality. As I stared at that old photo and was reminded of those first days of research, I got verkle

Dear Friends of Investigation Discovery:  I had no idea how many of you would be hitting my blog looking for additional information on Regina Hartwell, Kim LeBlanc, Justin Thomas and Wasted. I apologize for not updating this blog in anticipation of that. Rest assured that I will update it ASAP with photos and links to additional information. Unfortunately, I’m on deadline for my next book, Secret Sex Lives. In

I'm a bit stunned that typing that sentence, hitting that period at the end of it, rendered my fingers motionless. It wasn’t the end of the sentence that did it. Mixed emotions did, emotions I didn't realize I had until that moment.

Today, Kingwood, Texas, friend and fan Courtney Little posted the above photo on her Facebook page with the words, “Suzy, today I’m lunching with Celeste. Haha! I’m a little scared …” Celeste is the killer in my true crime book The Fortune Hunter. So, yes, if Courtney truly were having lunch with Celeste, she should be scared. Celeste is frightening, but she’s also very entertainin

My point, as I write this on Halloween Eve, is the ghost of Regina Hartwell. Because of Regina, I couldn’t let this book go. Regina wanted to be famous. And I felt like that as long as I pushed and promoted this book I was helping her reach her goal, even if it was after death.