M. Watkins began writing books about the criminal justice system in the United States in 2014. She has worked closely with convicts to bring their stories to the attention of the public. Her crime trilogy, "Glass Castle", began publication in 2015 with the first book "Crazy Love". The final book in the trilogy, "Ever After", was released in early 2016.
Watkins' most recent work has been in the realm of dystopian science-fiction in a collaboration with the writer J. Blackshear, exploring a future in which the prison industrial complex has fused with the military industrial complex in the series "Prisoners of War".