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Franklin Maw’s ‘Blood Evidence’ Now Available on Amazon (Guest Post)
I’ve made many author frients over the years, and Franklin Maw is one of them. I couldn’t be happier to see him get his first true cime collection out, inspired by his first true life: real crimes committed by real people, some caught, some lost to history, all captivating. Enjoy his guest post and announcement! – Mark
It’s Out. Blood Evidence Is Here.
I’ve had a passion for these stories all my life. Today 25 of them are in a book you can hold in your hands.
Blood Evidence: Twenty-Five True Crime Stories is now available as an eBook and in paperback. The audiobook is coming soon on Spotify, so if you’d like to hear about a Victorian poisoner on your commute than read about her before bed, you won’t have to wait long.
Some of you know how this started. I was ten years old when I read my first real murder in a newspaper, and I never stopped. I cut the stories out and kept them in a shoebox. I kept that shoebox through a lot of jobs, a lot of kitchens and a lot of years. This book is what finally came out of it.
I didn’t want to write about the same cases everyone already knows. You won’t find Jack the Ripper here, or Lizzie Borden. You’ll find Mary Ann Cotton, who buried three husbands and as many as eleven children in England before anyone thought to ask why. You’ll find the woman burned in a valley outside Bergen, Norway, who carried eight false passports and has never been identified. You’ll find the boy in the box in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who waited sixty-five years for his name. And you’ll find men who spent years in prison for murders they didn’t commit.
Some of these cases were solved. Some never will be. All of them happened, and all of them deserve to be remembered.
If you read it, I’d be grateful for a review. It’s the single best thing you can do for a book like this one.
And I’m not done. Up next is Young Blood: 25 True Stories of Killer Kids. It’s a harder subject, and I almost talked myself out of it. I’m glad I didn’t. Stay tuned for details.
Thank you for reading. Thank you for remembering them with me.
From a safehouse somewhere in Pennsylvania,
Franklin
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True Crime Tuesdays on the Fearsome Fiction Podcast: The Soothing Draught – Catherine Wilson
Welcome back to True Crime Tuesdays on the Fearsome Fiction Podcast. Today’s case takes us to a Victorian sickroom, where the person meant to make you better was the one who decided whether you lived.
Her name was Catherine Wilson. She worked as a private nurse in small English towns through the 1850s and into the 1860s, sitting at bedsides, mixing medicines, and quietly becoming the beneficiary of more than one dying patient’s will. Husbands, lovers, landladies, patients. The deaths piled up for a decade before anyone thought to ask why.
This is The Soothing Draught, the story of the woman who became the first known serial killer nurse in England, caught not because anyone suspected her, but because one patient refused to die quietly.
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True Crime Tuesdays on the Fearsome Fiction Podcast: Mary Cotton – the Arsenic Widow
Enjoy this True Crime Tuesdays episode, brought to you courtesy of author Franklin Maw’s upcoming Blood Evidence: 25 True Crime Chillers.
She married often, and buried often — husbands, stepchildren, her own children, one after another, in a mining town that had already seen more than its share of death. No one thought to ask why. Arsenic was cheap, convenient, and nearly impossible to prove… until someone finally did. This is the story of Mary Ann Cotton, one of Britain’s first convicted female serial killers, and the quiet, domestic horror she left behind in West Auckland. This is “The Arsenic Widow,” from Franklin Maw’s Blood Evidence.
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A Book Reading at Federal Twist Vineyard in Stockton, NJ
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Devil’s Wood Audiobook Now On Spotify and Select Retailers
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Devil’s Wood Audiobook Sample (Now on Spotify and Payhip)
Listen to a two-chapter, 20 minute sample of Devil’s Wood, the audiobook. You can now get it on Spotify, or directly from me at my Payhip storefront (Zip file and single MP3 file).
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Devil’s Wood Audiobook Now Available
LISTEN TO A SAMPLE
The audiobook edition of ‘Devil’s Wood’ is now available from Spotify or directly from my Payhip storefront. Fasten your headphones!
Antiques dealer Peter Brightly encounters an unusual walking stick at a mysterious estate sale where strangers come to bid on the remnants of a life. He sees its multi-colored wood, lovingly carved as if by the gods. It’s not just any walking stick. It has a sense of history and mystery to its beauty. He desires it at any price, knowing he must possess it. What he doesn’t know is that it must possess him, too.
Something changes when he brings it home. His health declines as his life unravels. Determined to understand what’s happening to him, Peter traces the object’s history through the lives of those who’ve owned it before, each trail leading further into darkness. A tree, an ancient people, a man and a curse. A woman he joins forces with to find the truth. Will the walking stick claim him as a debt to pay? Or will he bury it along with the forces that gave it life? Enter the Devil’s Wood for the answers. You may never come out.
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Paperbacks Available with Direct Buy!
Really happy to offer an option for folks who don’t want to get books on Amazon (my ebooks are already available at my PayHip storefront). This is for paperbacks. I’ll be offering my entire catalog soon. https://www.books.by/markmcnease
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Still Here: A Video Description of a Journaling Workshop
This is a short video description of a workshop designed specifically for LGBT participants. You can read about it, with dates and registration information HERE.
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Fearsome Fiction Podcast: The Devil’s Wood Journal Entry 7
Found in an abandoned cabin in the New Jersey woods, the Devil’s Wood Journal continues with Entry 7. The story has been told by the fireplace, but is any of it real? Is any of it even possible? Anonymous and the others debate the merits of a story so incredible it must be real.
