By Ann Marie Ackermann When the director pointed out a plot hole in my movie script, I winced. We were walking through the old section of a German town, scouting possible shooting locations, and she was trying to imagine the film, scene for scene. “If you don’t put the murderer and victim together right away,” she said, “the audience won’t figure out their connection. We need to add a scene of the murderer stalking the victim at the beginning so they don’t come across as two separate characters with separate stories.” Ouch. Why didn’t I think of that? In 2017, I published a book about the murder case, the record-breaking 1835 assassination of a German mayor. When the local museum in my German town decided to create a film for a museum exhibition on the murder, they asked me to write the script, and then we hired a film school to produce it. A historical murder is not only a fun topic for students learning their craft, but we reaped the benefits of working with school’s staff, including a professional director and cameraman. The director’s comment about the plot hole made me realize she was a writer, too, and that I, as an author, can learn from her. Here are some of the things I picked up. I hope they can help you,  too. Directors are visual story tellers. Our medium consists of words, theirs, images and sound, but we both share a passion for clear communication of plot points,…

Congratulations to Ann Marie Ackermann! The German translation of her book Death of an Assassin: The True Story of the German Murderer Who Died Defending Robert E. Lee will be published in September by the Silberburg-Verlag publishing house. Germany’s Federal Ministry of the Interior will sponsor her launch party as one of 16 nationwide events as part of their promotion of regional literature. The launch party will be held on the evenings of September 25 and 26 in the Zander Museum for Naïve Art at the spectacular Bönnigheim Palace, and speakers include the mayor of Bönnigheim on the first night, as well as the editor-in-chief of Silberburg-Verlag. Attendees will enjoy a champagne reception and a reenactment of scenes from the 1835 murder investigation. Several local actors will play a part in the presentation, including city council members, a local policeman, students in the school theater club, and the head of the Bönnigheim Historical Society. Afterward, there will be an opportunity to purchase a copy of the book and get it signed by Ann Marie Ackermann. The event is co-sponsored by the city of Bönnigheim and publishing house Silberburg-Verlag. Then on April 5, 2020, the Museum im Steinhaus in Bönnigheim is opening an exhibit titled “Mord am Bönnigheimer Bürgermeister – Urknall der Kriminalballistik 1835” (Murder of Bönnigheim’s Mayor—Ballistics’ Big Bang) about the murder of Mayor Rieber almost 200 years ago and the case’s connection to the birth of forensic ballistics. The chief of the Baden-Württemberg State Police, Ralf Michelfelder, will be…

Six or seven years ago my advice to aspiring authors of nonfiction books was to build an audience platform by blogging. An example of how critical blogging could be to securing a publishing contract can be found in the case of Ann Marie Ackermann, author of Death of an Assassin: The True Story of the German Murderer Who Died Defending Robert E. Lee. After an initial assessment of her manuscript, I had recommended she start a historical true-crime blog, and she did. In fact, the editor of the ideal book series at Kent State University Press became a fan of her blog and invited her to submit a book proposal. Her book won a 2018 IPPY in the True Crime category, closed a 180-year-old cold case, and has also been translated into German where it received critical acclaim and was recognized for its scholarly contribution to the history of forensics. Today, blogging may or may not be something an author decides to invest time and energy in. If your authority as an author is based on your subject-area expertise, it remains an important goal to have a visible presence on the internet establishing your credibility. Whether blogging is the best means to achieve that goal depends on you and your project. It may be more important to be listed as an expert source available to journalists and appear as a credible source in news publications covering your subject area. HARO (Help A Reporter Out) may be a better fit to…