Meet Dexter Morgan

Not all book ideas grow up to be books.  I recently wrote a proposal for a law-related book about Showtime’s Dexter.  As a Miami Metro Police Department blood analyst by day, and a serial killer by night, Dexter Morgan found himself buried in legal issues—a lawyer-writer’s dream.  Although several publishers really liked the proposal, so far they’ve all passed on the project.  It turns out that in publishing, as in much of life, timing is everything.  Because Showtime recently announced that Dexter will end its eight-year run later this year, and because books can take nearly a full calendar year to get to print, the publishers thought that my Dexter-themed book would be too late to the dance.  (I respectfully disagree, as the season eight DVD won't be released until next summer.  Besides, academics are still writing about Buffy the Vampire Slayer a full decade after Sarah Michelle Gellar hung up her stake.)  But blogs, unlike books, are near instantaneous.  And with Dexter’s final season now in full swing, I thought that fans of the show might enjoy the two short chapters that I wrote for the book proposal.  The chapters—one on Dexter and the chain of custody and one on Dexter the insanity defense—are, obviously, about a fictional show, not legal advice, and purely for entertainment purposes (unless, of course, any of you Dexter fans and Legal Watchdog readers are also publishers, in which case you should contact my literary agent for a copy of the book proposal).  So enjoy the two chapters that will follow immediately after this post.