My true crimes like SHADOWMAN and THE DARKEST NIGHT are the product of old-school research and investigation. I’m an old-fashioned reporter who believes in first-hand, up-close sensory experiences that tell me everything I want to tell a reader. I can only get that from having my boots on the ground in the places where it […]
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I never met Elsie Mae but I wish I had. I don’t know too much more than last week’s obituary tells me: She taught grade school for most of her life, led Sunday school, and played the church organ at the First Presbyterian Church in Ottumwa, Iowa. She had 13 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. She […]
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When you read a printed book, you might imagine the different characters’ motivation, feelings, and emotions. You might even envision funny little mannerisms. But when you listen to an audiobook, good narrators add something else: Their voices. It ain’t easy. The narrator’s job is to entice you into the story but also to re-create every […]
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Get a taste of the new thriller that suspense superstars Anne Hillerman, CJ Box, and John Lescroart are raving about! Then go pre-order DEAF ROW at your favorite bookstore and get it in your mailbox, e-reader, or audio player on February 14! AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER HERE* WIND CITY BOOKS AMAZON print AMAZON audio KINDLE BARNES […]
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On Feb. 25, 1957, a naked, emaciated boy between 4 and 6 years old was found dead in a cardboard box in a wooded area in northeast Philadelphia. He’d been severely beaten and dumped beside the road. As tragic and widely reported as the discovery was, nobody ever came forward to report him missing. With […]
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IN BOOKSTORES EVERYWHERE FEBRUARY 14, 2023! Retired to a small Colorado mountain town, ex-Denver homicide detective Woodrow “Mountain” Bell yearns only to fade away. He’s failed in so many ways—as a father, a husband, friend, and cop—he fears he’s missed his chance for at a meaningful life. But when he stumbles across a long-forgotten, unsolved […]
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A great book cover elicits an emotional response. And if it’s done well, a reader will feel the same while reading the book. In the case of the new cover art for DEAF ROW—my first crime fiction in more than 20 years, coming next February from WildBlue Press—artist Tatiana Vila was aiming for menace … […]
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This spring, a French metal-detecting buff found the artifact a young doughboy unintentionally left behind in a muddy camp on the Western Front
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My father-son memoir The Sourtoe Cocktail Club, about our Yukon odyssey to the literal edge of the Earth to find a cocktail containing a mummified human toe, was published in 2011. It is a deep—and often funny—contemplation about whether I was still relevant to my teenage son after a divorce. On Father’s Day, eleven years later, it seems appropriate to contemplate it again.
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Unable to go out into the world during Covid, I turned inward. How could I use what I’ve learned in decades of true storytelling and journalism? How can I still write a provocative book without leaving the safety of my home and imagination? The answers changed the arc of my writing.
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WHY is a natural and human question. I’m not a psychologist, I’m a journalist who has spent a career exploring what some evil, disturbed humans can do to fellow humans. But while it might be natural and human to want to know, we must be patient. Partly because it’s not always evil we’re seeing. We […]
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In May, Ron will hit the road with “ShadowMan” on a book tour in Montana, the epicenter of the grim crimes recounted in this new bestseller. (There’ll be some stops in his native Wyoming, too!) Click here to see the tour overview and keep checking back because new events are still being added. SEE INDIVIDUAL […]
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You’ve been exposed to so much Hollywood crapola that I’m surprised you aren’t already on Ducky’s slab.
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The secret of my success as a writer is that I never pick a story I can screw up. “ShadowMan” struck me as such a story. To me, its power was universal stuff like a mother’s anguish, determination, and fear of the dark. I first heard about this case when I was a senior writer […]
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“I’m an actor by training and a lover of words by nature,” she says. “I want to build the bridge that travels from the author’s intent, through the text, to the reader’s imagination.
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The entangled tales of a harrowing crime and the introduction of the FBI’s newest forensic tool: criminal profiling
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Satchell Paige, the great baseball pitcher and philosopher-from-left field, once said, “Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.” I’ve never been sure what he meant. Do your best right now because somebody better is gonna catch up? Leave your past in the past and focus on the future? Or maybe he meant that […]
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Today, I received word of the passing of Howard Teten, the pioneering criminal profiler who plays a front-and center role in my upcoming true crime book, “ShadowMan: An Elusive Psycho Killer and the Birth of FBI Profiling.” His death was related to Covid complications. He was 88. Yes, he was a pioneer and pioneers always […]
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According to the Mayo Clinic, narcissistic personality disorder — related to sociopathy under the umbrella term Antisocial Personality Disorders — is a mental condition in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for excessive attention and admiration, and a lack of empathy for others. But behind this mask of […]
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We know you have many choices for your reading pleasure … so you can pre-order Ron Franscell’s upcoming true crime at your favorite bookseller here.
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The Gabby Petito case has stirred fascination, sympathy, and a hornet’s nest of unrest about “Missing White Woman Syndrome,” an accusation that racist white media prefers stories about pretty Caucasian girls in peril, but not so much minority women in peril. There’s some truth to that perception, but it’s not always what it seems. […]
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“Pain is the price we pay for memory. It’s some kind of sin to forget what hurts, as much as it is to forget what makes you smile. Suffering has its meaning, and memory has its graces.” —from ANGEL FIRE, A Novel A lifetime ago, back in 1983, I took work as an editor at […]
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Just a taste of Ron Franscell’s chilling tale about a real-life nightmare … and how it changed forensic history
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They killed at least five people and damn near got away with it. Then a lucky break changed everything.
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