Writing, reading, travel, music, good food and wine, and those little cocktail weiners they serve at parties
Music
William Topley, the Eagles, James Taylor, Counting Crows, Three Doors Down, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Rolling Stones, Tom Petty ...
Books
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Shoeless Joe by WP Kinsella
Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
The Magus by John Fowles
Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
I'm a newspaperman, novelist and now, nonfiction writer. My latest book, "FALL: The Rape and Murder of Innocence in a Small Town" ($24.95, New Horizon Press, 300 pages) comes out Dec. 1 in Colorado and Wyoming ... January for the rest of the country.
It's a true story about the 1973 abduction, rape and murder of two young girls in Casper, Wyo. -- both childhood friends of mine and my next-door neighbors at the time. Two punks snatched them outside a neighborhood market and over the next few hours, the two girls endured unimaginable horrors before they were pitched alive off a dizzingly high bridge into a dark canyon. One would live and one would die.
"FALL" is their story, but it’s also the story of a community’s unhealed wounds more than 30 years later. To me, it’s more than a true-crime yarn; it’s a classic tragedy about how the past reverberates destructively into the present -- for individuals, for families, for entire communities.
It's already gotten some damned humbling advance praise from Ann Rule, Vincent Bugliosi, Gerry Spence and Colorado's Steve Jackson. You can see a little more about it at a blog I set up (and which will be soon getting more active): FALL
"Few authors understand what makes a true crime book stand out like a beacon from the mass of prosaically gruesome re-telling of police reports. Ron Franscell does! 'FALL' explores the true story of this unholy sacrifice of youth and misplaced trust in a gripping, throat-tightening way. It is an almost-hypnotic read, hard to look away from. But it is also compassionate as we question the awful fate of the victims, sadly singled out by fate or luck or whatever shapes our destinies. This is a very, very, good book--a gem for readers who look for the whole story, written by a very, very, good writer. Every time I hear a neighbor or a local lawman in a traditionally low-crime town, say 'Something like murder doesn't happen here' -- when, of course, it does -- I shake my head. This time, it happened in Casper, Wyoming, and Ron Franscell takes you there ... completely. It will make you cry honest tears. The victims deserve no less." -- ANN RULE, New York Times bestselling author of "WORTH MORE DEAD" and "THE STRANGER BESIDE ME"
"FALL is an intimate true crime story. Franscell tells his story from a truly unique perspective. What sets FALL apart in the genre is that he was there, not as a victim or a perpetrator, but as a child splashed by the unexpected evil of it all -- and he grew up with a gift to be able to tell the story in all its violent colors." -- GERRY SPENCE, Famed trial lawyer, Wyoming native and author of "GUNNING FOR JUSTICE"
"On more than one level, FALL rises above most books in the true-crime genre, mostly because it searingly depicts a type of evil not too often exceeded. … This uncommon story has every chilling component of human terror, drama and suspense that readers of true crime look for. In an elegant and powerful voice normally seen only in fiction, Ron Franscell captures the sights, sounds and smells of this Wyoming saga and masterfully gets inside the emotional marrow of its participants. I highly recommend this engaging book."-- VINCENT BUGLIOSI, New York Times bestselling author of "HELTER SKELTER"
"Ron Franscell reveals extensive new details of one of the vilest crimes in Wyoming history, one that cast a long and poisonous shadow through more than three decades. He returns to his hometown (and mine) of Casper to illuminate how it touched the lives of so many who were dragged along in its wake. This is first-rate reporting and a riveting read."-- PETE WILLIAMS, Justice Correspondent, NBC News
"Author and newspaperman Ron Franscell is one of the most versatile writers on the scene today, as FALL amply demonstrates. FALL is one of those rare true-crime books that crosses genre lines into what is simply dramatic literary nonfiction at its best. This is much more than a book about one of the most chilling crimes I can recall. In the vein of 'In Cold Blood' – and perhaps even more meaningful with the author's personal connection – it is a deep and moving tale about the impact of a crime on a small town, written with the flair of a novelist, and a journalist's eye and ear for truth."-- STEVE JACKSON, Best-selling author of "MONSTER," "NO STONE UNTURNED" and "PARTNERS IN EVIL"
Who I'd like to meet: A guy desperate to give away $1 million.
I know you are in Texas and I am in Florida, but just in case you are in my area... Author of Murders In The Swampland; Blue Eyes; Bridged by Love and several biographies; I will speak about my career as a writer, working for newspapers, getting published as a freelance writer, and writing biographies and fiction at the East Hernando Writers' Group at the East Hernando Library in Ridge Manor, FL, July 23 at 1 p.m. Please stop in and visit if you are in the area.
Just wanted to give you a heads up that my latest forensic crime thriller, Freezer Burn, is coming out June 3! It will be available in bookstores everywhere next week, and it’s available for preorder on Amazon right now! I'll be doing a bunch of events in and around Philadelphia. For details, see my profile. Thanks for the friendship!
Hey Ron, just read the Peckerwood Hill article, and as soon as I finished it I had to scroll back up to see who wrote it, (I should have known)! Great piece.
