Chip’s Year in Writing & Creating

For me, creativity isn't just what I do. It's who I am, and my most reliable bulwark against glum emotions polluting my otherwise optimistic view of things.


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At Christmas, “It’s A Wonderful Life.” In 2022, hopefully it’ll be a series about a life as Impossible as it is Strange!

Mercury Media has optioned its inaugural title, the underdog story of a teenage daredevil who rose from his deathbed to reinvent himself into a mini-Hollywood…


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My Fantastic Place – An Essay

Squeeze was the sound I’d been waiting for from the black hole left by John Lennon’s murder and the shallow onslaught of hair-metal. When “In Quintessence” hit…


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“The Accidental True Crime Writer” – my Los Angeles Review of Books essay

It wasn’t until one day in 1998, strolling along Hollywood Boulevard, that I got stopped on the sidewalk by a guy named Jerry Schneiderman who had been both a…


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Meet Chip Jacobs: Author, journalist, dog-enthusiast, spiritual optimist

The argument that erupted between us that evening felt like the climax of a John Hughes coming-of-age movie. Suddenly, a 100+ people listening to a speaker up…


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Trailer for my true-crime book: “The Darkest Glare: A True Story of Murder, Blackmail and Real Estate Greed in 1979 Los Angeles”

If you're a fan of Quentin Tarantino movies or Elmore Leonard books, you'll love this darkly humorous, true crime thriller set in late-seventies Southern…


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1979 L.A. True Crime in Song

It was the faces that slayed you that year, when the only reason for a belly-laugh was a Robin Williams standup act.


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The Man Behind the Gun

Not all monsters are born that way. Sometimes, a freak accident changes their fate, and others down the line.


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My true-crime book, “The Darkest Glare,” comes out on March 9. In that spirit, I’m listing — cuz everyone adores lists as much as parfaits and stretchy pants — my favorite works in the genre.

Behind every murder is a tragedy, but also a raw story where a victim intersects with a killer in the culmination of myriad events. Some writers take the…


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