Tag

Wages of Sin

The True Crime Toilet

“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
Read More

The Taint Of True Crime

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
Read More

“Deadly Sins”/”Wages of Sin”

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
Read More
Secret Sex Lives by Suzy Spencer

Pensive? Happy? Or Just “Secret Sex Lives”?

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
Read More

Stephanie Martin and “Wages of Sin”

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
Read More

Mixed Emotions & Gratitude for “Wages of Sin”

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.
Read More
The Fortune Hunter

“With a Little Help from My Friends”

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
Read More

The Big News

As many of you know, the making of the sex book has been a long and trying process.  I started the book in December 2004.  For the next year and a half, I researched, reported, wrote, rewrote, rewrote, and rewrote the book’s proposal.  The research continued through 2007.  During those years, I traveled from Texas to New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey to California, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico to Florida, Jama
Read More