Newsletters

Happy belated Thanksgiving!

I’m always relieved when the season’s first serious snowfall has yet to occur by the time Thanksgiving rolls around. As someone who grew up in North Tonawanda, New York, just ten miles from Buffalo, I tend to freeze in snow-readiness mode, beginning in mid-November and continuing until April.

I have vivid memories of Thanksgivings past when severe weather intervened to complicate my plans for the holiday: an entire night spent at O’Hare, trying in vain to fall asleep on the rock-hard floor; hours upon hours spent stranded on the snow-clogged highways between northern Indiana and western New York. The list goes on. But this year Thanksgiving is now in the rearview mirror, and as yet there have been no major snowstorms, at least in Columbus (of course the same can’t be said of Buffalo). I’m thankful for that. Knock on wood.

I have lots of other things to feel thankful for, too. In mid-2023, I couldn’t have predicted that Black Lyon Publishing would offer me a contract to publish my first book in August of this year. And I couldn’t have predicted the number of readers who would contact me to say how much they enjoyed reading That Beast Was Not Me.

I’m grateful for my many readers, especially the ones who took time out from their busy schedules to post a positive review on Amazon or Goodreads.

Based on all the positive book-related things that have occurred during the past three months, I’m eager to find out what the new year will bring. Currently, I’m scheduled to appear as a guest on several true crime-related podcasts (I’ve appeared on four of those already); I have tentative plans to appear at a couple of upcoming book fairs; and I have a number of author appearances scheduled in the coming months.

Please check out my new “Free Chapter” promotion. You can take advantage of it by going to my website (www.jeffreysmalldon.com) and clicking on the “Free Chapter” button that appears on the masthead. All you need to do is click and sign up for my newsletter; then you’ll automatically be given access to the free chapter. This same promotion will also be added to the show notes for each of the podcasts where I’ve appeared as a guest. Here’s a link to the promotion.

Something else for you to check out: This past August, I was interviewed by host Chelsea Lovell for the television program Daytime Buffalo. Four edited clips from that interview will be posted on Facebook/Instagram in the coming weeks. Look for those as they appear in December and January—and please, share the clips with those people who comprise your on-line community. Here are the four clips in case you’d like to watch them now. They’re now available on my YouTube channel.

So, a lot’s been happening—and there’s a lot more planned for the coming weeks and months.

Two thoughts to close this first section of my newsletter:

Please consider giving That Beast Was Not Me as a Christmas present this year. Just think: images of Manson, Bundy, Gacy, and all the others popping up from beneath your tree. What could possibly go wrong?

(Remember, the book is a memoir first and a true crime book second—so you needn’t be concerned about a gratuitous focus on the actual crimes that were committed by the irreparably damaged human beings who populate the book’s pages.)

Second, if you belong to a book club that’s based in central Ohio, I hope you’ll consider selecting my book as one of your featured titles and then inviting me to appear as a guest at one of your meetings. Those kinds of appearances are among my favorite things to do.

It’s now been a little over three months since my book’s official launch. I’m continuing to enjoy the ride, particularly because Beast is my first book, and because everything related to the publication/post-publication experience is entirely new to me.

To date, I’ve appeared as a guest on multiple podcasts; I’ve been a guest on numerous television and radio programs; I’ve been featured in a number of print news articles; I’ve been a participating author at several book fairs; and I’ve appeared at numerous author events, some in central Ohio and some in western New York where I grew up.

Perhaps you’re aware that I set a goal of having a hundred Amazon reviews by the end of October. I fell short—by a lot, actually, but that’s OK. Perhaps the goal was unrealistic to begin with. Mainly, I was hoping to reach my goal because I’d been told, repeatedly, that reviews on Amazon can help boost a book’s position in the marketplace.

I’m still hoping that if you enjoyed reading Beast (or at least found it interesting), you’ll take a few minutes and post a positive Amazon review. Every review helps.

I should add that I know people who’ve had their reviews rejected by Amazon—for reasons that seem preposterous at best. For example, one friend reported being told by Amazon that his review couldn’t be posted because his account “[had] not met the minimum eligibility requirements to write a review.” Apparently determined to add insult to injury, the Amazon-ghost who lives in my friend’s computer then suggested to him that he might want to visit Amazon’s “Community Guidelines” if his goal was to better understand why his review had been rejected. None of it made an iota of sense.

Maybe someone on my subscriber list understands these things. I don’t. However, at least worth noting is the fact that several other people have told me that after first having their review rejected, they were allowed to post the unaltered review the second time they tried. To all of you wanting to post a positive review and encountering these [ridiculous] difficulties, thanks for your patience and persistence. I appreciate you!

Here’s an updated summary of news related to my book:

• On November 9, I participated in a book fair sponsored by the Fairfield County District Library. For me, the highlight of the entire day might have been meeting and having my picture taken with Jenn Kempton, another of the participating authors. Jenn happens to be a voracious reader of true crime. I gather from what she said—or what her friend said—that she saw That Beast Was Not Me featured on a television program. She seemed eager to meet me, and she asked me if I’d inscribe her copy of my book, then pose with her for a photograph. Needless to say, I was delighted to do both. Here’s the photograph, taken as the day’s events were coming to a close:

• In mid-November, I was interviewed for an episode of the crime-related podcast called Truth and Shadow, hosted by BT Wallace. According to BT, my episode will drop early on the morning of December 12.

• I’m one of the featured interviewees on an episode of the Investigation Discovery series (passcode:TtsFr33), Before They Kill Again, that aired on December 1. The episode centers around the case of Ohio serial sniper/killer Thomas Lee Dillon. An entire chapter of my book—called “The Sniper”—is devoted to that fascinating case, on which I served as the defense’s psychological expert. Check out the episode and decide for yourself whether you think Dillon was responsible for more murders than the five he pled guilty to in 1993.

• Plans are underway for my upcoming appearance on the true crime podcast Murder Unscripted, hosted by Ed Hydock and Melissa Spivey. At this point, it seems likely that the episode featuring my interview will air shortly after the first of the year.

• On January 16, I’ll be appearing at an author event hosted by the Grandview Heights Public Library in Columbus, Ohio. A book sale and signing will follow my presentation.

Lately, I’ve been reading all sorts of interesting stuff, some of it centering around subjects I’m reasonably familiar with (for example the career and oeuvre of singer, songwriter, and guitar virtuoso Richard Thompson, late of Fairport Convention), some of it centering around subjects I thought I knew something about but really didn’t (Dorothy Parker, specifically her long sojourn in Hollywood),some of it featuring a fascinating but long-past chapter in modern American history (i.e., the goings-on in underground Manhattan during the mid-1960s), and some of it scratching my ever-present itch for well-executed, well-researched true crime narratives.

Over and over again, English scholar Gail Crowther has proven herself to be a capable and intrepid excavator of news about the lives and literary legacies of such luminaries as Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton.

With her latest book, she turns her attention to the several decades that the writer Dorothy Parker, she of the famously acid tongue and lacerating wit, spent on the west coast of the United States, in and around Hollywood. Most people—myself included—associate Parker with the famous Algonquin Round Table in New York City. But by the time Parker moved her base of operations to Hollywood, first in the late-1920s and then, for a much longer period of time, in the mid-1930s, she’d grown to loathe the fact that most people were stuck on the association between her and the Round Table.

She was a poet, an essayist, a short story writer, a reviewer, a writer of movie scripts, and a would-be novelist whose efforts in that last department never bore much fruit. By turns exasperating, restless, awe-inspiring, and funny, she was also a chronically grumpy alcoholic, seldom satisfied either with herself or with the people around her. Crowther does her justice in this excellent, illuminating analysis of a lengthy chapter of Parker’s life that lots of people don’t even know about.

In the 1980s, my wife and I saw Richard Thompson perform countless times, in one instance twice on the same night. On one occasion, he delivered a two-pronged treat that remains a highlight of my concert-going career. First, he covered former bandmate Sandy Denny’s classic “John the Gun,” the only one of her songs he’s ever performed live; and then, as an encore, he delivered for an audience member who requested that he perform the Fairport Convention standard, “Meet on the Ledge,” which he wrote when he was nineteen.

Thompson fans are well-acquainted with his puckish sense of humor and deft touch as a songwriter. They’re aware, too, of his extraordinary talents as a guitarist (Rolling Stone magazine named him one of the greatest rock guitarists of all time).

I’d been waiting for Thompson to publish a memoir for quite some time. This one, which first appeared in 2021, was well worth the wait. It’s an utterly unpretentious, frequently quite funny account of Thompson’s origins as a musician and songwriter, his thrilling tenure with the groundbreaking Fairport, and his early work as a solo artist.

It’s hard to imagine the whole “folk rock” era without first acknowledging the role played by Fairport Convention. Thompson’s memoir is a crucial record of one of the most exciting and boundary-obliterating chapters in the history of modern music.

I ordered this book through Abebooks. It was first published in 1966. I learned of it when I read that it was part of photographer Diane Arbus’s personal library at the time of her suicide in 1971—the year of my high school graduation.

No one who knows me even a little will be surprised to learn that I’m a fan of Arbus’s photography, which features strippers, transvestites, carnival performers, nudists, people with dwarfism, and members of all sorts of marginalized communities. I came late to her work, but once I discovered it I found it hard to look away.

She was an adventurer on the streets of New York City. A regular visitor to Hubert’s Museum in Times Square and a superfan of the 1932 Tod Browning movie Freaks, she shot pictures of famous NYC eccentrics like Moondog, Lady Olga, and Woogie the snake handler, and she sought out places that were havens for people who had difficulty fitting in elsewhere.

The sub-title of this volume tells you most of what you need to know about the book’s contents. If you need to know a bit more, you can check out the flap inside the book’s front cover: “A perverse romp through sweet forbidden areas with suggestions for locating, satiating, degrading, and possibly coming out alive….Some of the joys include clues for finding everything from pastry whips and leather bagels to gay corpses, purple masses, midget orgies, dirty X-rays,and battery-operated sex machines.” The book also contains “a city-wide guide featuring the very best places to make out in…from bars and hangouts to laundromats, bridges and orchid-growing societies.”

So, a little something for everyone. By any imaginable barometer, it’s a subversive guide. If you’re looking for a kinky, nostalgic trip to corners of Manhattan that probably didn’t make it to the pages of most popular tourism guides in 1966, it might be just what you’re looking for. Apparently, it was just what Arbus was looking for, too.

Before reading this book, I knew nothing about the extraordinary story surrounding the1993 kidnapping and murder of 16-year-old Rayna Rison in LaPorte, Indiana (just down the road from my alma mater, Valparaiso University). I won’t give much away about the case details, or about the many reasons why readers might come away from the Rison story feeling even more cynical about the criminal justice system than they were at the outset.

Instead, I’ll urge you to read the book. And I’ll say this about the book’s author, Hillel Levin: he’s compulsive and a stickler for detail. There are times when his narrative bogs down a little because it’s so jam-packed with the details of his granular analysis. Maybe it’s just me, but sometimes I found it a little hard to keep up as Levin was analyzing the many witness accounts; trying to explain what vehicle was where when (for what reason); reporting the ever-changing alibis of the duo—a sex offender and his wife, the victim’s own sister–who many case observers thought were the most likely perpetrators of the crime and subsequent cover-up (with assists from some of their friends); explaining how local politics infected nearly every aspect of the case; and reporting on the circumstances that led to the [wrongful?] arrest and conviction of the victim’s former boyfriend—twenty years after the crime was committed.

You might want to avoid this book if you’re interested in a breezy, fast-paced true crime narrative. But if you’re looking for something deeper and much more detailed, and ultimately a lot more satisfying, and if you’re able to tolerate a certain amount of confusion along the way, I recommend Levin’s book. It’s a truly immersive experience—which seems about right for a book that bears the title Submerged.

Last month I wrote about my very first exchange of letters with Charles Manson—in March 1975, when I was a senior in college.

Manson’s second letter—the first proper letter he wrote me—could hardly have been any more different than the note he scrawled in response to my initial overture. I’d responded to his testy first note by explaining to him that I was a college student, interested in his case and especially curious about the way he and the members of his “family” had been depicted in the popular press. He seemed to appreciate my willingness to reveal some personal information about myself. I reach that conclusion because the letter he wrote me next was notably more familiar—and a lot less hostile—than his first note.

Below are a few excerpts from that letter. I include them here because they served as my personal introduction to the kind of rhetoric Manson used to attract his followers and bind them to him.

He wrote, in part:

“The media is only a cover over the truth as the money sells a picture to the minds of people – Take all you heard of me & think of it as backwards. Our side of the family was never told….That beast was not me – but it’s what everyone wants me to be so they make me up to be a reflection of their fears lies and bullshit. I aint got the time to run it to you on paper with words & they hide me so I can;t clean it up….You’re my kid my son my love….They will put you thru all they put me thru & a million heart aches later you wake up in the basement & find the truth is hated hid and kept from the children. You are Nixon, a reflection of your mom, money….

You are everything you see – you are Christ child when left open to be free. Your ownself is all. This may sound mad to you. I can’t explain on paper. There ain’t no one all is one. I’m your eyes your ears & hands….To know you is where it’s at. You are what’s happening. Your world is new. Step from your past & be free. All you need is love for you – you – your own center – sit & be –yourself all – young and free….Clean all thoughts of past out of your mind & start a garden wherever you walk….Be reborn as your own mom dad god and all….Never let nothing enter you as doubts or negative….I can’t wright it – I could tell you but them are just words & you are behind all words. You are the new world. Easy, Charles Manson.”

I’m sending my very best wishes to you and yours this holiday season.

–Jeff

P.S. I like ending each of my newsletters with a couple of song recommendations. I realize that some readers might not share my love of popular music. These suggestions are for the ones who do.
I came late to singer/songwriter John Fullbright. He’s a phenomenal talent. Check out the song “Stars” from his most recent recording, The Liar. I’m struck by its aching beauty every time I listen to it.

And here’s another one. You want a window on things going on at our southern border? Take a listen to “Sally Was a Cop,” off Chuck Prophet’s most recent recording (with ?Qiensave?), Wake the Dead. Prophet co-wrote the song with his close friend and long-time collaborator, the great Alejandro Escovedo, who’s been performing it for years. Enjoy!