Ann's Newsletter
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Ann's Newsletter
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Volume 1, Number 11 Page 1 of 4 Hello Everyone! Surprise--Here, finally, is my new newsletter. I started promising it would be along soon about six months ago, but things kept getting in the way. Years ago, I thought naively that I could send it out quarterly. It soon became a yearly "catch-up" publication, and even then I fell behind. The plain fact is that I write two books a year, and one--or both-requires that I attend trials somewhere in America. Because my books have to come first, my good intentions about newsletters tend to vaporize. But here it is: 2005's newsletter! I know that I didn't write one in 2004, but I'll this will have to do for both years. This will be the last mailed newsletter. Now that we have the Internet, communication has moved into a new era, I have several ways to keep in touch. Most of you can check on-line, and I can pack much more information and dozens of photos there. After this, I'm going to route alerts and newsletters directly to your email addresses IF you will send them to me at AnnieR37@aol.com. Or you can check my website pages at www.annrules.com, and find constantly updated information on what I'm writing, new books coming, frequently asked questions, updates on people from my earlier books, my autobiography, booksignings and talks, and a complete list of my books. (I'm working on my 26th now.) The new photo album soon to be on www.annrules.com will feature previously unpublished pictures of people in my books and some personal photos. I have a weblog, accessible through my website pages, where I usually post every other day. Between that and my Guestbook where all of you can post, things stay pretty lively. This seems to be the best way I can "talk" to many readers and keep writing, too. My website "hits" number is well over a million, we're very close to 600,000 on the Guestbook, and my weblog is about 800 pages long. I check into my website at least three times a day because I want to know how you are doing, your opinions, and, frankly, just to know that you're all out there when I'm sitting here chained to my computer, writing books! Although I try to answer every email and every letter, that isn't always possible, but my website pages and weblog keep the line open between us. If you will visit ALL the sections on my website, you will find answers to almost every query you have. If you aren't on the Internet, I'll bet you have children or friends who do? Hope so. If you have been on my mailing list for newsletters to be sent by regular mail, you are still there. But we do need to build our email lists, so please send your screen names by postcards, letters, or emails to AnnieR37@AOL.com. You can also check into Simon and Schuster's website at www.Simonsays.com; my publisher will link to my website and weblog very soon with more pictures. Starting in February, I also have my own page at www.amazon.com. There are no words to tell you how much your response to me and my books means to me; it's like having a million good friends. I often think about how lucky I am to do what I love to do--write books--and have so many of you tell me that you enjoy them. Even though I write about tragedy and loss, your correspondence lets me know that you understand the significance of lives lost to mindless violence and that you care about the victims--as I do. Just as important are your comments that I remind you to be more careful for your own safety. I've always wished I could put myself out of business, that there were no more homicide cases to write about, but that's an impossible dream Still, you write that I have warned some of you in time, and I treasure the mail that tells me that. NEW BOOKS: Since the last newsletter, I've probably written five or six books. You can find a complete list of my books below and on my website pages. The most recent are Worth More Dead: Ann Rule's True Crime Files #10 (12/1/05), Green River, Running Red (Updated Paperback Edition, 10/1/05) Kiss Me, Kill Me: True Crime Files #9 (January, 2005), and Heart Full of Lies (October 2004).Worth More Dead has a novella length case--the title case--and four shorter cases. All are true stories of homicides where the killers found the victims more valuable to them dead than alive, either for monetary gain or to assure themselves that someone who rejected them would never be able to love anyone else. This edition of the true crime files is one of my personal favorites, if I can even say that about such shocking and sad murders. Green River, Running Red is about Gary Ridgway, the admitted serial killer of at least forty-nine young women in the Northwest. He has probably killed more victims than all but two or three other serial murderers in the world. I researched this horror story for twenty years, never knowing that I had been within an arm's reach of the unknown killer more than once. I am still working on it, even though I was able to write the book last year. I believe Ridgway still has deadly secrets to reveal. I've started writing my next hardcover book: Too Late To Say Goodbye. Its subjects are two beautiful, brilliant young women who died mysterious deaths in Georgia, albeit fourteen years apart. Their lives were closely entangled with that of a handsome, successful dental student--later a wealthy oral surgeon. At this point, I can't say very much about this book, because the story has yet to play out to its finish. It will be published in late 2006. I will attend two trials: one in Augusta and one in Gwinnett County, near Atlanta. While I'm in Georgia this spring and summer, I will be doing some booksignings. The dates, times and locations will be listed on www.annrules.com. This will be one of the most compelling and baffling cases I've ever written. True Crime Files #11--No Regrets will be out in time for Christmas, 2006. There are two books that I want to write; it's only a matter of convincing my editors. Ever since I wrote my only novel, Possession, in 1984, readers have asked me "What happened next?" Possession was based on a real case, fictionalized to spare the feelings of the sole female survivor of a horrifying murder and kidnapping, who was literally brainwashed into believing her captor's lies. Later, I told the true story in Empty Promises in a chapter called "The Stockholm Syndrome." But there is more to tell. What happened after Joanne gave birth to the red-haired baby boy? And Sam, the detective who rescued her? I have to explore the continuing story that is half-true and half myth. Possession was sexually graphic because it had to be, and it was banned in Cincinnati if you were under 18 and didn't have a note from your mother! My other goal is to write my autobiography, or what we now call "a memoir." There are many stories behind the books I've written, things I couldn't tell for various reasons. Between spending my summers in my sheriff grandfather's Michigan jail (which was attached to his house), growing up to be a cop, spending two nights a week at the Crisis Clinic with my partner, Ted Bundy, interviewing killers in prison, going to trials, writing movies in Hollywood, going on 18 nationwide book tours, raising five children on my own, and just living a (censored) number of years, I have some memories to share. I'll let you know when--and if--I get the go-ahead. The one thing I can't see myself doing anytime soon is retiring. BOOK TOPICS: I get about 25 suggestions every day by mail or email on homicide cases. Most of them are about really high profile cases like Laci Peterson, Chandra Levy, JonBenet Ramsey, or Nicole Simpson. Of course, I have heard of them, but cases that garner so much media saturation don't make good subjects for me. There is nothing left to tell, and certainly no way to create any suspense in a book. For every murder mystery that the media falls in love with, there are, sadly, a hundred just as--or more--interesting. And those are the stories I choose to tell. Other things that rule against a book are homicides that are unsolved, too easily solved, too gruesome, or even if they happened too long ago. Sometimes, I have to pass on a truly fascinating trial because the timing is wrong, and I'm already researching another case. But I do choose my book subjects from readers' suggestions; they just have to have the right ingredients and the complexity to demand a 700 page manuscript. And I can only write one book every nine or ten months. Right now, I have contracts to write seven new books, and I'm hoping my autobiography will be one of them. Then I can tell all the back stories of my life that never quite fit into my other books! Just have to convince my editors that my own life has been interesting! HOW DO I CHOOSE BOOK TOPICS? My last six books have come from readers’ ideas. I get suggestions from readers, detectives, victims, even the families of killers. I probably go through 500 cases for every case I select for a book. My books are over 800 pages long in manuscript form, so I have to choose a very intricate, convoluted, case. I never want to “pad;” I look for true stories where, just when you think nothing else bizarre can happen, it does. I have written fiction in the past, but what real people do is far more compelling than anything a novelist can think up! (And, by the way, except for Possession, I don’t write “novels.” Novels are fiction, and I write non-fiction--real life stories.) If you send me an idea for a book, it really helps if you can enclose newspaper clips, and let me know before a case goes to trial? There are many reasons I can’t write a case. Sometimes, (1) there isn’t enough there to fill a full-length book: (2) the characters are just not interesting; (3) the case has been over-publicized (Jon-Benet, O.J., etc.); (4) the story is too sad (I spend a year of my life immersed in each book, and some cases are too hard to live with), or (5) the person who sends an idea wants to co-author the book with me. I don’t collaborate; it would be akin to riding a bicycle built for two--in opposite directions! And then, (6), the timing of a case may be wrong because I am already attending other trials or writing other books. Remember, I’m not an investigative reporter who goes in and solves a case where there has been no arrest, nor am I a private detective or “Jessica Fletcher” from “Murder She Wrote.” I have to wait until an arrest has been made and a case is headed for trial. From there on, it’s a gamble; if the defendant should be acquitted, I probably couldn’t write the book. Most of you know I don’t write about gruesome, grisly, ugly cases that revolve around decapitation, freezers, fires, etc. I don’t want to spend a year of my life immersed in a case that is newsworthy only because it deals with sickening torture or dismemberment--so please don’t send me that kind of story! I am drawn, rather, to cases where the suspect(s) is NOT the classic murderer. I’ve learned that my readers are as interested as I am in the psychopathology of the criminal mind. If a person has all those things that most of us long for--physical beauty, wealth, charm, intelligence, talent, love--and still wants more and more. . .and more, he (or she) may be an antisocial personality, someone who has no empathy for other human beings at all. These people, who often wear a perfect mask, make the best book subjects for me. Find me more of those! WHY CAN’T I ANSWER LETTERS MORE COMPLETELY? Right now, I have a dilemma. Writing is the easiest part of my job. My computer screen is full of unanswered e-mails and my desk is piled high with letters. I’m thrilled that I receive a couple of thousand letters a month, but frustrated that I can’t answer them all and I hope that you do understand. We have had more than 400,000 hits on my website and this newsletter now goes out to almost 50,000 people. I’ve finally come to a point where I have to decide whether to write new books or answer mail. I want so much to respond to EVERY piece of mail—but I just can’t. My office has a very part-time staff. Usually the only creatures on duty are the cats: Fluffbutt, Mrs. Baby, Beanie, Bunnie and Toonces and the dogs Willow and Lucy—and me. The first seven don’t write letters. My daughter, Leslie Rule, tries to keep up with the e-mail while I’m away. Leslie Rule's email address . I will try to update the newsletter more often, but I won’t be able to answer all the mail, although I will READ—as always—every single letter and e-mail. Your wonderful, supportive, messages are important to me, but I hope I’ve guessed right in thinking you would rather have more new books than answers to every letter? Many of you write with specific requests, and, when I can, I try to help. But this one woman-7 cat-two dog office has its limitations! I do try to answer people with special and urgent problems. |
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