15 Best Places for Writers to Retire
What writer wouldn’t want to live on “Ernest Heming Way”? We love the irony or whatever it is. Nobody really knows what irony means. Anyway, as I approach the official […]
Read More…Tag: Ron Franscell
Die different.
“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.” —Jack Kerouac, “The Dharma Bums” A long time ago, in another life, I sat with Jan Kerouac, the […]
Read More…
A ghost in the machine, by Ron Franscell
Twenty years ago, in 1999, the Chicago Sun-Times’ legendary book editor Henry Kisor—who had fallen in love with my first novel Angel Fire—asked me to be one of 10 American […]
Read More…
A crime. A boy. A teacher. And a hundred books.
“Up ahead they’s a thousand lives we might live, but when it comes, it’ll on’y be one.” The Grapes of Wrath Fourteen years ago, a couple Southeast Texas high school kids just […]
Read More…
Cry later.
Not long ago, I stood with my wife Mary at the Houston grave of murderous Texas mother Andrea Yates’ five children, whom she drowned in her bathtub. I was writing […]
Read More…
Let me tell you about my first time
I started reading young. I fell in crazy-mad love with books, or at least became addicted to the way they made me feel. I began to wish that I could […]
Read More…
Tour dates for new true crime book ‘Alice & Gerald’
Now you can meet Ron Franscell, the Edgar-nominated author of “Alice & Gerald: A Homicidal Love Story”—a new true-crime book ripped from Wyoming headlines—at readings, Q&A, and free book signings […]
Read More…
Alice & Gerald: A Homicidal Love Story
Available now!16 pages of color photosIn trade paperback, ebook, and audio Would you kill for love? ALICE & GERALD tells the grisly story of a loving couple who killed at least […]
Read More…
Atticus Finch and the #MeToo movement
You know the story: A young lawyer named Atticus Finch is appointed to defend a black man against rape charges in Depression-era Alabama. His defense is vigorous, but ultimately futile […]
Read More…
History repeating? Anita Hill, Kavanaugh … and George Hennard
While he ate alone at a small table, he watched the TV over the beer cooler. The evening news was replaying yesterday’s clips of the Senate hearings into […]
Read More…
Stealing pennies from dead kids’ eyes
“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” —Rahm Emanuel, Obama aide and Chicago mayor Today, the Left is outraged that the Right has instantly politicized the murder […]
Read More…
Dead Man Talking: Killers’ last words can be humorous … and monstrous
As it does fairly regularly, Texas executed a killer on Tuesday. Christopher Young, 34, shot a San Antonio convenience store clerk to death in 2004. The victim’s family had begged […]
Read More…
A father, a son, and the longest day
Excerpted from “The Sourtoe Cocktail Club,” by Ron Franscell (Globe Pequot Press, 2011). While Matt sleeps, I watch the subtly changing sky as the sun circles around to the north […]
Read More…
A modest proposal to relieve the burden of immigrant kids
It is a sad thing to those who walk through this great country, when they see the streets crowded with immigrants followed by three, four, or six children. Instead of […]
Read More…
Is true crime as entertainment morally defensible?
I’ve been writing true crime for 10 years. I confess to occasional pangs that I am reopening wounds for a few people, but the old-school journalist in me rationalizes that […]
Read More…
20 years ago today, ‘Angel Fire’ was published
On this day—June 4—in 1998, a tiny publisher in an Alabama small town released a little book, a first novel by an unknown writer in Wyoming. It didn’t change the world but it changed the writer’s life. The little book was titled “Angel Fire.” And the author was me.
Read More…
Canadian producer developing TV series on MORGUE
Pixcom, an international production company based in Montreal, has optioned our book MORGUE: A LIFE IN DEATH—co-authored with world-renowned medical examiner Dr. Vincent Di Maio—for a true-crime TV series, the […]
Read More…
Just hanging out at the library
In my hometown of Casper WY, the Natrona County Public Library is celebrating local authors such as CJ Box, Craig Johnson … and me … with colorful banners along the […]
Read More…
For writers, endings are beginnings
“I hate writing; I love having written.” —Dorothy Parker Once upon a time, early-day typesetters recognized the end of a newspaper story when they saw “XXX” at the bottom of […]
Read More…
DARKEST NIGHT among 10 Most Underrated TC books, says website
A popular crime website and podcast has rated THE DARKEST NIGHT one of the 10 Most Underrated modern true-crime books. TheLineUp.com put the story of the horrendous 1973 abduction, rape, […]
Read More…
Broken Windows: One thing we can do tomorrow about school shootings
We are engaged—again—in a great, uncivil war. Another mass murder, this one a school shooting, fuels a debate that often seems to threaten to rip the fabric of our American […]
Read More…
Was the genius artist Vincent van Gogh murdered?
The feverish life and curious death of Vincent van Gogh have become a kind of myth, partly true and partly what we wish to be true. His disappointments, his genius, […]
Read More…
The Black Dahlia dissected again
Today, it’s been 71 years since Elizabeth Short’s grisly parts were discovered in a vacant Los Angeles subdivision, sliced cleanly in half and posed lasciviously. This obscure waitress suddenly became far […]
Read More…
45 years ago today, Mark Essex unleashed himself
This was excerpted from Ron Franscell’s DELIVERED FROM EVIL, a book that explores the lives of 10 ordinary people who survived mass killers. One of those monsters was a racist […]
Read More…