Wm. Stage's Blog - Posts Tagged "missing-persons"

This has been a good year for publishing. My 12th book, NO BIG THING, came out in paperback, and now my 3rd book, 1998's LITCHFIELD: A STRANGE AND TWISTED SAGA OF MURDER IN THE MIDWEST, has been dusted off and placed on Kindle format. Litchfield is a riveting true crime work written like a novel. I wrote it over a 2-year period while I was a columnist with The Riverfront Times here in St. Louis. I knew the accused and we have many mutual friends / acquaintances. As a newspaperman I saw that this story needed to go beyond a couple 500-word columns. I attended the trial, 75 miles away, in Hillsboro, IL, in the fall of 1995. I got to know the people involved, I covered it for the paper. In deciding to tell the entire story IN COLD BLOOD was my inspiration and guide. Like Capote's great work, LITCHFIELD is a psychological study of a brutal crime and its aftermath. The paperback came out in 1998 and was sold out by 2004. It has not been available for the last 14 years. In the last 3 months I have read this book probably 12 times and made a multitude of improvements -- after all, I'm a better writer now, 20 years later. Please read the synopsis on my author page. Litchfield: A Strange and Twisted Saga of Murder in the Midwest, 20th Anniversary Edition