Newsletters

Greetings friends,

One thing I’ve learned of late: promoting a newly-published book requires considerable energy.

There I was, on the verge of turning 71 and locked into a pretty steady groove that included a lot of reading, a lot of baseball-watching on television, an occasional movie, a daily 4-mile walk, time with my family, and infrequent social outings with a few close friends.

Then, beginning on August 6, the date of my book’s publication, I found myself having to venture pretty far outside my comfort zone, and having to do a lot of things I wasn’t accustomed to doing.

Probably, the changes did me good.

It’s been fun promoting my book. A big bonus is that it’s afforded me opportunities to reconnect with a lot of old friends – including some in the western New York area who I’ve known since I was nine years old!

A day after my birthday, I drove up to North Tonawanda—which is where I moved with my family just prior to the start of my fourth grade year. I stayed there for an entire week. While in N.T., I appeared at a couple of very well-attended author events; made promotional appearances on a couple of television programs, one that airs in Buffalo and another that airs in Rochester; participated in an interview with former North Tonawanda mayor Art Pappas for his radio program, called Northtown News; spent time with friends; and visited some of my old haunts (a few of which still actually exist!). Like I said, all very enjoyable. And, if I’m being honest, a bit tiring, too.

Here in Columbus, I attended a sold-out author event at Gramercy Books in Bexley; participated in the Local Authors Book Festival at the Bexley Public Library; appeared as the featured guest on two very popular true crime podcasts, one called Crossing the Line with M. William Phelps and the other called True Murder (hosted by Dan Zupansky); made arrangements for a number of other public and media appearances; and even fielded an overture from a well-known filmmaker who’s expressed interest in perhaps turning my story into a documentary.

So, as the moment nears when it’ll be time to make the transition from summer to fall, I’m feeling optimistic, energized, and more grateful than I can say for all the support I’ve received.

If you haven’t yet ordered my book and still have an interest in doing so, please visit my website (www.jeffreysmalldon.com). There, you’ll find that you’re just a click away from being able to secure a copy of That Beast Was Not Me from Amazon, Black Lyon Publishing, or Barnes & Noble.

On another subject, I’m excited to announce the launch of my new YouTube channel. It’s the place where I’ll archive videos of some of my in-person and on-air appearances—and where, if I’m feeling adventurous at some point, I might even post some entirely original content (stay tuned). Here’s the link to my channel.

In my previous newsletters, I’ve included capsule reviews from a number of well-known writers who’ve read That Beast Was Not Me. Here’s another one. This time, the review is from New York Times bestselling author Pete Earley, whose books include The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison, Prophet of Death, and The Serial Killer Whisperer.

“Jeffrey Smalldon spent 50 years staring into the abyss and returned with incredible revelations about the minds and motives of serial killers, mass murderers, and all sorts of other evil men who move and live among us. That Beast Was Not Me might make it difficult for you to sleep at night because of its troubling insights, and because you’ll be eager to find out what’s coming on the next page. Only a skilled psychologist could coax the worst killers to talk so candidly and then pen such an intriguing memoir about his experiences—and that description fits Dr. Smalldon perfectly.”

• On the day immediately following my sold-out author event at Gramercy Books, Indian Hills, the sub-division where I’ve lived since 1990, held an outdoor author event/book signing for me that drew a large crowd and featured lots of great questions from members of the audience.
• Just days after the Indian Hills event, I made the trip up to North Tonawanda (see above), which I still refer to as my hometown. It’s located midway between Buffalo and Niagara Falls, about ten miles from each, and it’s where I spent most of my formative years.

I had a fabulous week in the old stomping grounds. Two author events, one at the North Tonawanda Public Library and the other at the North Tonawanda History Museum, each drew crowds of more than 100 people.

• Here’s a link to my 8/19 presentation at the North Tonawanda Public Library.
• Here’s a link to my 8/20 appearance on the television program Good Day Rochester..
• And here’s a link to my 8/21 appearance on the television program Daytime Buffalo.

After my presentation at the library in North Tonawanda, I had the pleasure of meeting and having my picture taken with the city’s current mayor, Austin Tylec (see below). Later that week, Mayor Tylec attended my presentation at the local history museum. Below the photograph of the mayor and me, I’ve included a few pictures that document the History Museum event.

• Since my return to Columbus, I’ve not only participated in the Local Authors Book Festival, I’ve made plans to attend the Fairfield County Book Festival on November 9.
• On September 20, I’ll be attending an author event/book signing in Granville, Ohio, sponsored by the Granville Arts Council.
• On October 13, the Barnes & Noble bookstore at the Polaris Fashion Center will be hosting an author event/book signing for me at 2:00.
• As mentioned above, I was Dan Zupansky’s featured guest for a recent episode of his popular podcast, called True Murder. Here’s the link to that episode.

A lot of other promotional activities are currently in the works. Once they’re finalized, I’ll report them on my website and include them in future issues of this newsletter.

Again, thank you for your support as I continue trying to spread the word about the publication of That Beast Was Not Me.

Here’s what I’ve been reading lately:

Initially, I was drawn to this book because it centered around the case of Shawn Grate, a rapist and serial killer whose five [known] murders occurred in three different Ohio counties—between the years 2006 and 2016. (Grate’s arrest occurred a year following the date of my retirement.) In 2018, he was sentenced to death for two of the murders. Later, he pled guilty to the other three.

I wish I could recommend this book—but I really can’t. Its lead author is former Ashland County police detective Kim Mager, who spent many hours interviewing Grate and managed to extract from him a good deal of the information that ultimately served as the foundation for the State’s case against him. Presumably, she was a dogged, effective interviewer (though it’s worth noting that she thought nothing of engaging in all sorts of dishonest, frankly manipulative interviewing strategies—the kind that are legal and, for better or worse, condoned by most law enforcement agencies, whose members, of course, covet confessions above almost all else).

While I don’t question Mager’s dedication or determination, I found her book’s consistently self-congratulatory tone irritating. In fact, downright grating [sorry].

You get an early idea of what’s to come when, on the book’s eighth page, Mager likens herself to a “real-life Clarice Starling” and suggests that Shawn Grate was Ashland County’s “version…of Hannibal Lector.” Neither comparison holds up to even the most casual scrutiny.

In reality, Grate was an opportunistic killer with deep-seated “mommy issues.” He tended to select particularly vulnerable victims, many of them down on their luck and struggling to survive. They were women who he managed to manipulate by employing his carefully curated nice-guy persona. Sometimes he and his victims would read Bible verses together; other times they’d fantasize about the vastly improved futures that awaited them down the road; often they’d squat together in abandoned houses; and sometimes they’d even convince others that they were involved in a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship.

Grate, who, like many other serial killers, loved reaching out to representatives of the media, was prone to talking about himself as a good guy with a big heart who basically intervened to save his victims from the squalid, degrading lives they were living.

An Ashland County jury saw things differently and decided he should die.

Back when he was using the surname Valentine, Gary Lachman played bass for the New Wave band Blondie. In fact, he was responsible for contributing songs like “X-Offender”—the band’s first single—and “(I’m Always Touched by Your) Presence, Dear.” Along with other members of Blondie, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006.

Since the mid-1990s, Lachman’s been a full-time writer. Most of his many books have dealt with consciousness, mysticism, and “the occult,” broadly defined. Among the figures he’s written about are P.D. Ouspensky, Rudolf Steiner, Carl Jung, Madame Blavatsky—and Colin Wilson.

At the ripe old age of 24, Colin Wilson was lauded by some critics as the rightful inheritor of Jean-Paul Sartre’s mantle as the king of existentialism. An autodidact who began writing about science when he was 14 and stopped attending school about two years later, Wilson had just published The Outsider (1956), his classic study of alienation in the works of modern writers like Camus, Sartre, Hesse, Dostoyevsky, Nijinsky, and many others. The book has never gone out of print.

In 2016, Lachman, a long-time Wilson student and admirer, published this combined biography and critical study. He set out to grapple with Wilson’s ideas, the same ones that led Wilson—who could never be bothered with trying to portray himself as being any less brilliant than he felt certain he was—to say of himself, when he was still a young man, “I know I have come further than any of my contemporaries. I would be a fool if I didn’t know it, and a coward if I was afraid to say so.”

Wilson, who died in 2013 after publishing more than 100 books on an astonishing range of subjects including crime, philosophy, “booze,” classical music, sexuality, modern literature, and mysticism, was a fascinating, always provocative thinker. Lachman’s sprawling intellectual biography is worthy of its subject. I highly recommend it.

(On a personal note, Wilson invited my wife and me to visit him at his home in Cornwall, England in 1995. He prepared us a delicious duck dinner, imbibed copious amounts of wine, and entertained us as only he could. He was a legendary talker, capable of speaking in perfectly formed paragraphs for hours on end about the many subjects that engaged his imagination and intellect. It’s what he did that night.)

In the name of full disclosure, I should confess at the outset that I’m a Sandy Denny super-fan. With the groundbreaking trad-folk-pop band Fairport Convention and then during her years as a solo artist, she wrote and recorded some extraordinarily moving and haunting songs, among them “Who Knows Where the Time Goes?” “Fotheringay,” “No End,” “Next Time Around,” “One More Chance,” “Listen, Listen,” “Solo, “Like An Old-Fashioned Waltz,” and “Before It Gets Dark.”

And in case you weren’t aware of it, that’s her dueting with Robert Plant on “Battle of Evermore,” from the landmark Led Zeppelin IV recording.

Tragically, by the mid-1970s Denny was addicted to alcohol and showing unmistakable signs of Bipolar Disorder (“manic-depression”). She died in April 1978 from head injuries suffered as a result of multiple falls, at least one of them down a flight of the stairs. She was just 31 at the time of her death.

Mick Houghton’s sturdy biography often reads like an oral history. He spoke with many of the people who knew Denny during her years knocking around the London club scene during the mid-1960s, people like Linda Thompson, Richard Thompson, John Renbourn, Martin Carthy, Iain Matthews, Dave Swarbrick, Ralph McTell, John Martyn, and the man who would become her husband, the Australian musician Trevor Lucas.

He doesn’t try to minimize Denny’s flaws, or to make it sound like she was any easier to deal with than she was in real life. But key to understanding her personality—and the trajectory of her career—are adjectives like these that he uses to describe her while chronicling her early years on the performing circuit: mischievous, shy, insecure, nervous, competitive, and wild. He notes, too, that she was prone to being a “drama queen.”

Legend, cult figure, underappreciated—at least in the U.S.—vocalist and songwriter. Denny was/is all those things. Houghton’s biography goes a long way toward bringing to vivid, heartbreaking life the story of one of the most gifted female singers of the second half of the twentieth century.

This is an extraordinary little book—and I don’t personally know anyone except me who’s read it.

Peter McKenzie was a fifteen-year-old high school student in 1961. That’s the year when Bob Dylan—who’d arrived in NYC that January, accompanied by two friends who’d driven with him from Chicago—developed a habit of crashing at the apartment of McKenzie’s parents, Mac and Eve, on W. 28th Street, just off Fifth Avenue. Mac and Eve had met Dylan for the first time at Gerde’s Folk City in Greenwich Village. Dylan was impressed when he learned that Mac had a long history as a union leader and labor organizer.

The book’s casual, at times even artless style contributes to its air of authenticity. McKenzie relates an extraordinary series of anecdotes involving Dylan, who was only nineteen years old at the time. A sponge for all kinds of different music, Dylan was especially influenced by older performers like Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, John Lee Hooker, Cisco Houston, Dave Van Ronk, Leadbelly, Paul Robeson, and, of course, Woody Guthrie

When Dylan began to sleep on the couch in the McKenzie’s apartment, Eve, Peter’s mother, would typically leave him a $.50 daily allowance. It was meant to cover food and other essentials. It didn’t take long before Eve told others that Dylan was “the one to watch” among the many young performers who were seeking to make their mark on the Greenwich Village folk scene. Ironically, the McKenzie’s apartment was just down the street from the series of buildings known as Tin Pan Alley—where so many of the songs that Dylan tended to dismiss as lightweight fluff had been written during the earlier decades of the twentieth century.

Peter, who came to view Dylan as the big brother he never had, knew that the often-rumpled-looking visitor in his family’s apartment possessed “natural off the chart intelligence.” He also came to value Dylan for his kindness, generosity, and willingness to act in the role as Peter’s mentor.

I highly recommend this book to anyone with even a passing interest in how Dylan spent his time during those months in 1961 when he was, for the first time, having to adjust to life in the big city—and when he began networking with some of the people who recognized his gargantuan talent and led him to John Hammond and Albert Grossman, the architects of his earliest successes as a recording artist.

I’d only been in practice a couple of years when I was retained as a psychological expert by defense counsel in a death penalty case where the defendant was charged with the execution-type slayings of two teenagers behind the restaurant where they worked.

The defendant was a scary-looking guy. Not only had he already served a lengthy prison sentence for another violent offense, he had the appearance of someone who had been carved out of granite. He was super-muscular and he seldom if ever smiled or “lightened up,” at least in my company. I was young and pretty inexperienced, but I was still smart enough to know that I needed to tread carefully in my manner of interacting with him.

After he was found guilty at trial of two counts of aggravated murder (and a whole slew of related charges), it was time to move on to the penalty or “mitigation” phase, where the jury would hear evidence and determine whether to recommend a sentence of life in prison or death.

Initially, his attorneys decided against calling me as a witness. They’d reasoned that the results of my psychological assessment—which I’d shared with them—couldn’t possibly help their client.

Then, however, the defendant chose to exercise his right to deliver an unsworn statement to the jury. He decided to use that statement to damn to hell the jury members who had found him guilty as charged. Desperate to come up with some means of “rehabilitating” their client in the eyes of the jury, his attorneys called me and instructed me to make a beeline for the courthouse. They reasoned that maybe I could help the jury to understand why someone in the defendant’s position would have chosen to engage in such extravagantly self-defeating behavior.

At a certain juncture during my testimony, one of the defense attorneys showed me a photograph of the defendant, taken when he was an adorable-looking youngster of about three—and, much to my surprise, I got choked up when the attorneys asked me if I’d ever seen the picture before (I had). At the time, I had a couple young children of my own, and I think I was suddenly overcome by the thought of the extraordinary tragedy of that smiling little boy growing up to become a cold-blooded killer.

As it turned out, the jury decided not to recommend death—which shocked everyone.

The next time a pair of defense attorneys approached the judge who presided over that case and requested that I be appointed to serve as an expert on another death penalty case, the judge, who I liked and respected, cracked a smile and said, “I’m fine with appointing Smalldon—but only if you’ll promise me that he won’t cry this time.”

I never again got choked up while testifying at a death penalty sentencing hearing. However, I didn’t feel embarrassed by the fact that it happened during my testimony in that particular case. Seeing the photograph of that playful-looking little boy made me confront, in a particularly vivid way, the tragedy of the defendant’s life, and the tragedy of the deaths he’d caused.

As I write this, I’m remembering Amy Winehouse and her classic “October Song” — about loss and rebirth. See you next month, just in time for Halloween.

-Jeff

P.S. This month, I’m going to recommend just one song to those of you who are music-lovers. Last month, I recommended a great cut from Neil Sturgeon’s work with his most recent band, The Infomaniacs. Now, I want to encourage anyone who’s a fan of great rock and roll—and who revels in rock trivia—to check out the cut “Always in the Now” from Sturgeon’s former band, called The Goldenhour. Here’s the link to the YouTube version of the song that includes the lyrics. Turn the volume up to high. At around 3:58, you’ll hear Sturgeon’s thrilling shout-out to his influences. Trust me: it’ll take your breath away. Check it out. If you love rock and roll, you won’t be sorry.