News & Events

March Murder Fun

3/20/2021

Gymnastics is a perfect place to meet real people—who I can use in fiction!

Read my blog post here.

Big Blend Radio is run my a fun mother daughter team. The gals spend their days traveling! Good work if you can get it. Thanks to the Tucson Sisters in Crime (and Eva Eldridge!), I had the chance to do a live interview. My show airs on March 24th, 4pm Tucson time, but it will be available after that. We mostly discussed Mexico, mariachi, and men! Check out their website here. Listen to my interview here.

This New Zealand mystery-thriller is a real knockout. Read my review here.

Chicken Fried Seduction

2/1/2021

Sometimes I wonder what’s wrong with me. Even though murder is thankfully far from my real life (knock on wood), I like nothing more than to cuddle up with a good murder mystery or follow Tom Barnaby through yet another murder spree in Midsomer. When it comes to my own writing, I haven’t finished my travel memoir because my hands simply prefer to write mysteries instead.
            But maybe I’m not so crazy after all. It turns out that there is a huge audience for a good mystery. I was reminded of this in class last week. I’d asked my college students to find fun examples of ads that we could use for our rhetorical analyses. One student confessed a penchant for Kentucky Fried Chicken ads. He’s followed the company for some time; somehow he’s amused by the Colonel and his various forms of persuasion. “KFC even put out a mini-movie,” he mentioned casually. “That would be fun to analyze too.”
            A mini-movie? By a chicken company? I would have dismissed my student’s interest as downright silly until he told the title: “A Recipe for Seduction.” By then I was intrigued. After class I went straight to Youtube. For the next sixteen minutes I was entertained by a young Colonel Sanders. Hired as a chef for rich snobs, he holds onto his dream of escaping poverty. His ticket to freedom: a winning chicken recipe.
            But he has more. A beautiful woman who falls in love with him. The beautiful woman’s mother, who thinks nothing of plotting murder. A rival who thinks nothing of committing said plotted murder to gain favors with both women.
            The mini-movie has more as well. It uses a full range of common mystery tropes from oversized kitchen knives to hidden rooms, and greed, so much greed—to tell a tongue-in-cheek story of a humble chicken cook.
            It doesn’t hurt that the story takes place in an enviably lush setting where all the attractive actors wear carefully designed costumes or that the Colonel himself is a well-known, impossibly cute actor (I’ll keep it a mystery). But the film is a thrilling reminder that, while writing and reading mysteries might be a ludicrous way of understanding the world, it’s a way many choose. Mystery lovers can’t help themselves. They willingly succumb to mysterious seduction. Sometimes, even to fried chicken.

Kirk-Bear Canyon Library Talk on Novels and Music

1/12/2021

Check out my talk for January 19th! I get to kick off the author series at Kirk-Bear Canyon Library. The promo they prepared is below:

Topic: "The Role of Music in Fiction"
    D.R. Ransdell (www.dr-ransdell.com) is the author of the Andy Veracruz mystery series, about a mariachi musician. She knows of what she writes -- she plays violin in a mariachi band, having honed her skills living in Mexico. She also has performed with the Southern Arizona Symphony Orchestra.
    A University of Arizona English professor, D.R. teaches writing, with a specialty in second language composition. She loves music, travel, learning new languages, and her cats.
    Check out D.R. Ransdell's books (available soon!) from your local Pima County library.

Dizzy in Durango
Mariachi Meddler
Secrets of a Mariachi Violinist (biography)
Island Casualty
Substitute Soloist
Amirosian Nights

Your Zoom link to D.R. Ransdell's talk is here:
Join D.R. Randell & Friends on Jan. 19 at 7 PM
If you would prefer to join us by telephone rather than video, reply to this email address.
Friends of the Kirk-Bear Canyon Library is proud to sponsor D.R. Ransdell (as well as other forthcoming authors) as our guest. The Friends have supported the Kirk-Bear Canyon Library community for two decades. An annual membership is just $10. Here is how you can help support Friends.

Click the JOIN/DONATE button below to give via PayPal
Donate via Zelle using the email address friendskbclibrary@gmail.com
Mail a check to FKBCL, 8987 E. Tanque Verde Road #309A, Tucson 85749

JOIN/DONATE Thank you for supporting FKBCL, a 501(c)(3) organization.

Substitute Soloist wins!

11/16/2020

Substitute Soloist earned a prize for Fiction in the 2020 Arizona Authors Association Literary Contest! In his fourth outing, Andy Veracruz switches from the familiar world of mariachi to the classical music stage, but he never expects to find so many cutthroat musicians or tackle so many technical challenges. When the conductor enlists him to find a runaway violinist, the game’s afoot…. http://www.dr-ransdell.com

Substitute Soloist (ebook) https://amzn.to/2XX2vp4
Substitute Soloist (print) https://amzn.to/2IS0zL1

October Events

10/16/2020

Conferences in 2020 are very funny indeed! And since mine was in the morning, I'm not sure if I remember anything I said. But it did seem that we had a lot of fun doing it. We even had 40 people in the audience! Paula Benson, our moderator, did a wonderful job of keeping everyone on track. And S.C. Perkins did the lovely graphic--and captured the screenshot!

Substitute Soloist is a finalist in the Arizona Authors’ Association 2020 Literary Contest! The book will be featured in the 2021 Arizona Literary Magazine. Winners will be announced on Nov. 7, 2020. (www.arizonaauthors.com)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1035232563340231.

I’ll have a chance to talk about Andy at Bouchercon, the national mystery conference originally scheduled to be held in Sacramento, from 9:30-10:30 a.m. on Friday, October 16th. My panel is “Make Mine Romance: Is There a Love Angle?” Fellow panelists include Camille Minichino (“The Quotient of Murder”) and Julie Henry (Garden Squad mysteries).

On a non-mystery note, I just did an interview for Tolkien Fandom. William Fliss is collecting three-minute videos from Tolkien fans. If you love “The Lord of the Rings” or “The Hobbit,” be sure to check out the website. I was Interviewee 481!
https://www.marquette.edu/library/archives/Mss/JRRT/fandomoh.php

Good Week for Andy!

5/26/2020

Last week was great for Substitute Soloist! First, the book earned a sweet review from Elizabeth Solara at Silver Reviews
https://silversolara.blogspot.com/2020/05/substitute-soloist-by-d-r-ransdell.html

More importantly, (but also ironically), the title won Silver for the regional IPPY Award! (Independent Publisher Book Award)
(Scroll down to the West/Mountain category.)
http://www.ippyawards.com/147/2020-regional
During any other year, I would have been invited to the IPPY Ceremony in NYC! Any other year I would be invited to attend the ceremony! I guess that just means I'll have to win another one........

Radio Show in Four Corners

3/20/2020

I got to do a fun radio interview for Traci Halesvass up at Four Corners, New Mexico. She read SECRETS of a MARIACHI VIOLINIST and SUBSTITUTE SOLOIST and asked great questions about both!

The show aired on March 18th.
https://www.podbean.com/eu/pb-9yxmm-d55dec

Book talk at Mostly Books

11/20/2019

On Saturday, November 30th, 1-2 pm, I get to do a book talk at Mostly Books. I'm going to talk about Mostly Mariachi!

Seriously, I'm going to explain basic aspects of mariachi music and explain how I've used mariachi elements to write my Andy Veracruz murder mysteries. I'll also going to talk about my memoir about learning to play mariachi.

There may be singing!

Mostly Books
6208 E Speedway Blvd, Tucson, AZ 85712
(SW corner of Wilmot and Speedway)

Bouchercon 2019 in Dallas

9/23/2019

In a month I'll be speaking at Bouchercon, the biggest U.S. mystery conference. My panel will be on November 1, the same day I do speed dating. Please stop by if you're at the conference or in the vicinity!

Friday, 2:30 - 3:30: Escaping the Village: Modern Traditional Mysteries

Moderator: Con Lehane

Panelists: Cheryl Hollon, Julie Hyzy, D.R. Ransdell, Nancy Cole Silverman, Wendall Thomas

Description: One of the elements that make cozies popular is the sense of community they illustrate for their readers. But cozies have also moved beyond the small villages of St. Mary Mead and Three Pines, but still manage to provide that sense of community for their readers. Join some top cozy writers as they discuss the challenges and benefits of not writing a series set in a small town, without crossing over into another genre.

substitute Soloist book launch

5/3/2019

If I do say so myself, the book launch for Substitute Soloist was a complete success! We started with a little Q & A. My mom asked Linus hard questions about conducting such as "Have you worked with any difficult soloists?" and "What do you do if a soloist has to cancel at the last minute?"

Listen to an excerpt from the interview here.

Linus was the warm-up act to the mariachi! Tony Reis, Jaime Valenzuela, and Rudy Valenzuela helped me entertain the crowd.

Listen to some of our mariachi songs here.

Please enjoy the book launch vicariously if you couldn't make it in person--and re-live it if you were there!

See pictures here.

The next book launch will be.......?????? That writing stuff is slow work, but somebody's got to do it!