November Tours, Book News, and More!

Did you  miss out on the sold out Mysterious Chicago: Grave Robbing 101 tours or the cemetery walks in October? Good news! I'll be teaming up with Atlas Obscura to run a few in November, as well. See mysteriouschicago.com for all the info.

In other news:

- Just Kill Me , the book about a ghost tour guide who makes places more haunted by killing people at them, is out in paperback! And Play Me Backwards, my novel for young adults who worship the devil, is an Illinois Reads pick for 2017.

- The Illinois Association of Teachers of English named me Author of the Year, for some reason.

- My band, 82nd Street, will have a new album out soon entitled Dinner and a Crime Spree. It's a concept album co-written with author Libby Cudmore. The first single hits Spotify, etc, around Nov 3. We also cover "Cum on Feel the Noize" on the new Cover Me! 10th Anniversary compilation.

- Did you see me four episodes of American Ripper? Or the recent Murder Castle series on Discovery? Now that the show's over I think I can post my video about evidence as to where HH Holmes was in Fall, 1888 , and my thing about matching his dental records to the skull they exhumed.  My recent enormous Holmes biography, HH Holmes: The True History of the White City Devil, is doing pretty well, from what I've heard. Check out the companion ebook compilation of his letters and writings, Very Truly Yours, HH Holmes.

- Also still available: The Mysterious Chicago book! Unsolved murders, phantom kangaroo sightings, UFOs over O'Hare, unexplained grave stones, missing mansions and more, all with new data unearthed from the archives, personal interviews, and more. Thinking of doing a New York one next; I'm in New York about every other month these days; I got my license to work as a tour guide there in June. Last month I saw Michael Moore's excellent Broadway show there, as well as The Play That Goes Wrong, during which I didn't stop laughing for more than a second. I've caught Marissa Mulder singing at La Rivista three times this year!

- On Nov 17, I'll be talking about Chicago's various antique serial killers at Days of the Dead. And on Nov 9, it looks like I'll be the "in conversation with" guy at Jason Segal's appearance in Naperville. Neat!

- No new books are currently scheduled to be published, but I'm working on several, ranging from middle grade fiction to more Chicago-based true crime.

- I'm also gathering a collection of speeches, meeting transcripts, letters, etc from 1858-1861 regarding why the southern states seceded from the Union in their own words, unearthing a lot of data that hasn't been reprinted in over a century. Not sure what I'll do with that yet; I might do it as an ebook just to get it out in the world faster than I would with a publisher. The world seems to need it. (Short version: the only cause of the war besides slavery was stupidity.)

So, that's where I've been in the months since I updated this page. Follow me on instagram or come see me on a Mysterious Chicago tour!