Tag Archives: Hollywood

Magnotta’s Hollywood links

MELBOURNE — Police are investigating murder-suspect Luka Magnotta’s possible links to a cold case involving the celebrated Hollywood sign, pushing this strange crime story into another country of interest.

This development, reported by ABC and the Toronto Sun, will surely explode commentary on social media even more than is occurring right now. (Update: LA police later downplayed any connection between the two crimes.)

It is astonishing how we are linked to this case through social media, just how we were with the Mark Twitchell case and trial. I first heard of this case via Twitter and have been getting regular updates as much through Facebook as I am through reading the newspaper, and my own research.

I’m continuing to write more on this topic, too, including a CNN op-ed piece discussing our  “sick fascination with a death video.”

Seems to have struck a chord with a lot of people.

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Notes on the Devil’s tour

MELBOURNE — The initial tour for The Devil’s Cinema has reached its end with my return to Australia, leaving my book on the Mark Twitchell “Dexter Killer” case in the hands of the first wave of North American readers.

These past few weeks have been a fascinating and jolting experience.

A manuscript grows out of relative secrecy and then seemingly overnight these same words are suddenly appearing in hardcover, stacked on bookstore shelves, boxed up for shipping to people’s homes, and transmitted straight into portable e-readers: Kindle, Nook, and so on.

Authors are then subjected to great extremes while on tour: 4am wake-up calls, back-to-back interviews, then long pauses of nothingness that can quickly plunge into another round of public events and encounters with little to no warning.

But it’s been an absolute pleasure meeting many readers and stumbling into old friends as I walked these well-worn trails of book authors and their publicists.

Sincere thanks must go to a few keen and early readers who have spotted a couple of typos in the first edition, which have now been noted and corrected for all subsequent printings.

Many readers have also been messaging me with further questions.

I’ve answered some of them in a Q and A for Book Lounge, and another for Open Book Toronto. But please feel free to contact me with a question and I’ll try to post responses to the most common questions in future postings.

Until then, here some of the highlights from the tour:

Edmonton, Alberta

I arrived to a fresh snowfall blanketing the city, and this proved to be the best welcome home present I could ask for.

Canadians often complain about the bitter winters, but there is something quite refreshing about seeing snow once again for those of us returning after an extended absence (of course, this novelty quickly vanishes and the reality sets in, especially since it was early spring and the snow should have been long gone).

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