Glenn Langohr's Blog, page 12

Glenn Langohr is Speaking at The Salvation Army in LA Tonight About The Spiritual Nature of His Books

The Salvation Army is the worlds largest non profit and blesses people all over the world. I get to speak at the Pasadena Salvation Army to the men in Ms Victoria's class. I will be sure to post a video of it!

Here's a video of me speaking about Solitary confinement.PR Newswire articles

Leave a Comment on Glenn Langohr's Front Page Story in the Register and Win a Free Book

FREE copies of my books in kindle format for whoever leaves a comment on the front page O.C. Register article on me. If you already have email me for a free copy at rollcallthebook@gmail.com Here's what Nielsom Media says about my first novel Roll Call, A harrowing, down-and-dirty depiction--sometimes reminiscent of Steven Soderbergh's Traffic--of America's war on drugs, by former dealer and California artist Langohr. Locked up for a decade on drugs charges and immersed in both philosophical tomes and modern pulp thrillers, Langohr penned Roll Call. A vivid, clamorous account of the war on drugs. --Kirkus Discoveries, Nielsen Business Media, 770 Broadway, N.Y Yk http://ning.it/WcM5UcPR Newswire articles

Glenn Langohr is on the Front Page of the O.C. Register For His Books: Can this OC drug dealer go straight?

I don't like the title, Can this OC drug dealer go straight? That was well over a decade ago and I served my time for it. The rest of the article is well done. Here is the link~ http://www.ocregister.com/articles/la...http://www.ocregister.com/articles/langohr-380221-prison-says.html If you get time, leave a comment on their website.



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Prison Widow - Inside Time Newspaper

Prison Widow - Inside Time Newspaper My friend from the UK is awesome!PR Newswire articles

Glenn Langohr's New Youtube Video For His Drug War and Prison Books

Glenn Langohr's New Youtube Video For His Drug War and Prison Books. My good friend and video pro Steve put together another promotional video for my drug war and prison books. This one focuses on how God had taken my life at the lowest point and brought it to His good!PR Newswire articles

An Interview With Author Glenn Langohr About His Book Underdog, A True Crime Thriller of Prison Life

This interview came to me through Book2Buzz and will be on her site as well. 
1. So, Glenn obviously you get your inspiration from true facts and real life experiences, but do you draw from anything else to create great works like Underdog? I take the true colors of life and paint them into stories that mingle with my own experiences. As you know from reading Underdog, I have a lot of personal experience with prison. At 13 years old I started as a runaway from a broken home. I was hyper sensitive to a fallen world and had a chip on my shoulder. Looking back, it seems like I had a death wish. I wasn't cautious. It started with selling and smoking marijuana and business with the Mexican Mafia, Outlaw Bikers and street gangs became the evolution. The Criminal Justice system interrupted me and gave me over 10 years to research the insides of a bunch of different prisons. I also use the newspapers and other media to do my own research. I also stay in touch with a number of prisoners to keep my finger on the pulse inside. 
2. How much of the personal relationships like Damon and the dogs you rescued from the shelter are true? Damon shared a prison cell with me for a couple years. In California's state prisons, every race is separated by cell. That has brought more organization and structure. It has also caused race riots. Things like a lack of respect, drug debts, and alcohol are some of the toxic elements that explode into violence. I watched young inmates who for the most part were drug addicts or homeless, feel the pressure to join a gang. It bothered me. In prison, perception is reality and you either lead or get led. It is also a predatory environment so if the right people aren't leading it gets down right evil. I chose to lead and Damon was shoulder to shoulder with me and ready to go back to back against everyone if necessary. We chose diplomacy as much as possible. 
Rescuing dogs from the shelter came from my imagination. While locked in a cell for at times 23 plus hours a day for months at a time, you can't help but feel like a dog. During those times I imagined how good it would feel to go to a dog pound and let the dogs out of their cages. I imagined taking each one for a walk and petting them with a lot of love and encouragement so that when they had to go back in their cage they wouldn't be as depressed. When I got out of prison I did go to a couple of shelters but they wouldn't let me walk the dogs! They make you sign up for classes first. Finding somewhere to live and pay bills took over and I still haven't been able to do it yet. 

3. Do you have a system when you write? For example you must have a cup of coffee at your side while you sit in a triple cushioned chair with the phone off the hook? I started waking up at 4 am in prison to write before everyone else woke up. I still wake up early when I'm writing another book. I leave the phone on but if I get interrupted, or if I get stuck, I get up and pace. Pacing helps me think. When I get to sections where everything is flowing and the characters are coming to life off the pages, I run back to my laptop and type off and on all day and night. It feels incredible. I do drink a lot of coffee!
4. Do you ever still go on visits to Pelican bay? That part is fictional. I feel like I visit inmates there and other places through letters. I know what they are going through in intimate detail from being in solitary confinement. I have to get cleared to visit inmates first and it is a long process. I plan to do it as soon as possible. I also want to interview the inmates and help them see they can turn their lives around through God, writing and art. 

5. Glenn, is California's prison system still running the same way described in Underdog? The way the guards treat the inmates? --If yes, what can your readers and anyone else who cares to, help with the situation? Great question with a hard answer. To be totally fair to all the fantastic prison guards and workers in general let me say that Underdog paints the truth about a small percentage of them. With that said, it is even worse in some cases. It is so hard to explain what happens in there in an interview. This is why I write stories about it. The best part about my book Underdog, is at the end I get to use ex prison guard's testimony. I also get to use attorney's testimony who have fought for the abused inmates at Pelican Bay. So it isn't just me, a former inmate writing a story. As far as helping inmates, or fighting against the system that creates so many prisons, God bless you for caring. The first thing is to pray for more compassion. God will give the answers. 
6. If Underdog or anyone of your prison killers series were made into a movie....who would play BJ, Damon, or Stranger? Anyone else? My friend Steven Smith was with me in another prison and plays Giant in my book, Prison Riot, A True Story of Surviving a Gang War in Prison. When we were in the hole ( Administrative Segregation ), another way of saying solitary confinement, I told him I was going to make him a movie star. The guy has the looks and style of Christopher Walken but bigger. BJ, my character, would probably be played by Leonardo DiCaprio. Damon is so classic looking he has to play himself. Who else can play a prison character better then a long time former prisoner? For Stranger, same thing, a true Mexican gangster.  
7. Glenn are you working on anything else at the moment? After every book I get stuck in marketing mode. Each time I learn a little more and get blessed with more interviews. I'm about to be on the front page of the Orange County Register for speaking at the University of California Irvine to 100 students in a Criminal Justice Class about solitary confinement. I'm going to start on the 6th book of the Prison Killer series any day now. I'm really excited about it because now I narrate my own books as well and it is so fun to throw my voice into different characters as if I'm still in prison! 
8. Last buy not least! Thanks for answering some questions for Book2Buzz....is there anything else you would like to share? Thank you for taking the time to read and review Underdog and interviewing me! Take a look at the rest of my books in print, kindle and audio book and let me know which kindle book you want for free. I would also like to extend that same offer to all of your friends and followers who can't afford copies. Sharing is caring so please share this interview far and wide. Even more important, once in a while, say a prayer for all the prisoners and prison guards. God bless. 


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Glenn Langohr's Prison Book Underdog is Getting Great Reviews!

Glenn Langohr's Prison Book Underdog is Getting Great Reviews! Here are pieces from the last two reviews for Underdog, A True Crime Thriller of Prison Life from David Bitco, a journalist, and CJR, a Criminal Justice Professor. All of Glenn Langohr's drug war and prison books are available in print, audio book to listen to like a movie and kindle to download to your tablet, computer or phone here~ http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00571NY5A


From CJR~ Academics studying prison should pay special attention to Glenn's work. The scholarship on prisons has increasingly turned to quantitative, aggregate statistical analysis to understand life behind bars. In doing so, this research has turned a blind eye to the nuances, norms, and subtle texture that characterize so much of prison social organization. Glenn's work, drawing upon his own experience, provides the rich detail of the governance institutions that guide inmates' daily life. Not everything that counts, can be counted, and this book illustrates that fact by providing the nuanced and detailed description that sociologists and criminologists have, for a variety of reasons, stopped providing. Famed sociologist Loïc Wacquant notes that "with social science deserting the scene, one is forced to turn to the writings of journalists and inmates to learn about everyday life in the cells and dungeons of America." In just this way, scholars studying incarceration, norms, and gangs should pay special attention to Underdog. It takes context-dependent, detailed studies to understand how inmate society functions and why it functions that way. This book does just that.


Here's a review from David Bitco Who better to speak to the horrors of a broken prison system than a former inmate? Glenn Langohr's inside view of life behind bars, in some of California's most brutal prison facilities, is an eye opening, day in the life view that no other author could provide. Through his eyes, we see the inner workings of a system that few of us ever see, and all of us dread.

His opening salvo is a hat-tip to my other cause celebre, the mistreatment of our most unfortunate of fur children - shelter animals. He uses this chapter though, as a lead-in to a story of brutal torture, inept administration, racism, deception, derision, divisiveness, prejudice and injustice. In Underdog, Langohr makes the point that the time spent breaking inmates could be much better spent, building - or rebuilding - Human beings.

The book - more a novella, really - takes the reader on a first person account of a prison riot, triggered, both by a power vacuum within the heavily segregated racial schema, and the rampant Heroin use that has become such an integral part of prison life. From there, we're made privy to a lockdown in the hole and the rabid need to classify all inmates as gang members. We're told in exacting detail, the methodology used by gang investigators to determine an individual's status - tattoos, self-identification, and the word of other prisoners. No burden of proof, no advocacy, no defense. You're branded a gang member and thrown into solitary without so much as a how do you do.

n Underdog, we're given first hand views of several California facilities ending with the infamous Pelican Bay, during the height of the hunger strike that made the name of that institution a household word - the Western Attica.

I found Langohr's voice to be open and brutally honest. His prose is neither stilted nor flowery. He writes about his subject in plain English, and peppers his work with the argot of the places that had so much impact on his life. Through Glenn, we learn the meaning of terms like off the shelf and IGI Gooners.

There is a marvelous first person tension to his writing. He's not an academic writing about the prison system for a college text book, he's a former prisoner and activist, writing about it for you and me.
All of Glenn Langohr's books are also available in audio to listen to a free sample first and found here~ http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00571NY5APR Newswire articles

Glenn Langohr: The Path Into Solitary Confinement in Prison is Wide and the Path Out is Narrow

Glenn Langohr: The Path Into Solitary Confinement in Prison is Wide and the Path Out is Narrow. Glenn Langohr spent over 10 years in some of California's worst prisons on drug charges, with 4 years in solitary before turning it into research as a writer and expert on prison culture. For a complete list of his drug war and prison thrillers in audio go here- http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=glenn+langohr%27s+audio+books You can also download the books to your phone, tablet or computer in minutes for free and buy them in print as well here- http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00571NY5A

"The path into solitary confinement is wide for this reason. We have to many laws and send to many people to prison these days. It used to be, in the 1980's, that you only went to prison for murder, rape and robbery for the most part. Tough on crime political platforms and the drug war took over and now we are paying the price with a prison population that is exploding at the seams.

To expand further, now that we send people to prison for poverty crimes like stealing to survive "Petty theft", and not being able to pay for probationary costs, and for being addicted to drugs, we have an overburdened prison system that frankly, has a lot of mental issues. Imagine being in prison as a drug addict or an orphan of poverty, on a packed prison yard, where the inmates are comprised of every race, color and creed. Now mix in hundreds of different street gangs and some predators. But please don't forget to add in a percentage of outright mental cases. Add all of that up and you have a recipe for violence, the slippery slope into solitary. This is where you have to look deeper. As an inmate trying to fit in, and avoid that violence in a predatory environment, one of the easiest masks to put on is in the form of tattoos. Human beings often enter the prison system as innocent, young drug addicts, and out of fear, try to fit in by blasting their bodies with ink to look formidable. This is the main reason that the path out of solitary is narrow. Since the path into solitary confinement and the path out aren't regulated by a court of law, dubious evidence is used that has to do with certain tattoos meaning certain things. Other dubious evidence is second hand information from other prisoners, and the one that hurts my heart the most, self admission.

What most people don't understand is that as a new arrival to a prison, the prison administration has to run a check to clear the inmate for mainline population on the "Big Yard". During this process the inmate is under the microscope like an insect under a magnifying glass. He or she is asked questions like, 'What gang do you run with? What do they call you? Do you have any enemies?' These questions make a new inmate feel like joining a gang is the answer! A great percentage of lost misfits pass the tipping point and claim something. In my case being a White inmate they asked, 'Are you a peckerwood or skin head?' I saw the verbal bait on a hook and responded, can't I just be a White man without any affiliation? For those who take the bait and claim where they're from in the form of initials to their county like S.J.C, for San Juan Capistrano, just gave someone's pen the power to keep them self in solitary forever.PR Newswire articles

My Friend Steven Smith, A.K.A. "Giant" is in My Book Prison Riot in Print, Kindle and Audio Book

My Friend Steven Smith, A.K.A. "Giant" is in My Book Prison Riot in Print, Kindle and Audio Book. It's found here in audio book~ http://amzn.to/UD9EZa To find it in print or kindle go to the side bar. Remember, you can download a kindle free in 2 minutes to your phone, tablet or computer.

I met Steve in a northern California prison and immediately called him "Giant". As with most prisons, the White inmates were heavily outnumbered. Giant was similar to me and most prisoners, he was doing his time for drug related charges. In both of our cases, we were addicted to the power that being a drug supplier brought. Thank God we outgrew that. I turned into a writer and philanthropist and Giant turned into a hooker. Just kidding, he turned into a prolific artist and mentor to wayward kids. Here's some pictures of him in the "Feds".

Both Giant and I did our time by working out a lot and playing handball and basketball. Those areas on the yard were heavily regulated by the Black inmates and the northern California Mexican inmates and we didn't have much airspace. The book, Prison Riot, A True Story of Surviving a Gang War in Prison eventually happened... Buy it, gift it to inmates and families of inmates, review it, share it, I love you.

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A Video Interview With Prison Author Glenn Langohr About Solitary Confinement in Prison

A Video Interview With Prison Author Glenn Langohr About Solitary Confinement in Prison. Glenn Langohr starting writing drug war and prison books from a cell in solitary confinement on drug charges. His book Underdog is about the Pelican Bay Hunger strike and shines a light on how prison administrators use dubious evidence against inmates to keep them in solitary forever. Check out Underdog in print for 7.99, or download it to your phone, tablet or computer for .99 cents while it's on sale, or listen to it in audio book on Amazon, iTunes or audible for a free sample here- http://tinyurl.com/underdogpelicanprison  


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