Monday, June 27, 2016

On Writing, Publishing, Making Money, and “Making a Murderer”

Photo by Brenda VanCuick
I was searching the web to see if Prometheus Books had posted any type of announcement about my forthcoming book, Convicting Avery: The Bizarre Laws and Broken System behind "Making a Murderer".  But before I could find anything, I came across a website called Reddit.  (At least I think it’s a website; it really just seemed to be a string of comments.)  There was a discussion of my recent Wisconsin Law Journal article about how the Denny rule prevented Jerry Buting and Dean Strang from putting on a third-party defense at Steven Avery’s trial.  Most people in the thread liked my article.  And so did a guy or gal who wrote “not a bad column.”  (Given there is a lot of bad writing out there, I’ll take that as praise.)  However, he or she also wrote “$$$” and indicated that the dollar signs “were a criticism over the fact that a random lawyer out of Kenosha with no ties to the case is writing a book with ‘Making a Murderer’ in the title.”  I tried to post a response, but couldn’t figure out how.  (The problem, I’m sure, lies with my technological ineptitude; for example, I’ve never snapchatted or pintrested, I’m not even on facebook, and I don’t even know what Reddit is.)  So instead, I decided to write this post to dispel some myths and offer some tips to would-be writers:

Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Avery, Dassey, and Denny

Photo by Rebecca Slye
Check out my newest article in the Wisconsin Law Journal -- a discussion of Wisconsin's Denny rule.  The article, Convicting Avery (and Overturning Denny), explains how the Denny rule was partly responsible for Avery's wrongful, eighteen-year imprisonment in the Beerntsen case, as well as the denial of his right to present a defense in the Halbach case.  In more "Making a Murderer" news, Prometheus Books has just titled my new book, Convicting Avery: The Bizarre Laws and Broken System behind "Making a Murderer", to be published in early 2017.  And yes, there will be a chapter devoted to Wisconsin's Denny rule.