Vanessa A. Ryan's Blog

A Palette for Murder is now out as an audiobook on Audible

A Palette for Murder, my mystery novel is now out as an audiobook. You can listen for free when you try Audible
Now on Audible

Please Join Me at the Sisters in Crime Mystery Panel at the Ocean Park Library in Santa Monica, June 24, 2017

This will be a fun event! Hope to see you there.

A Palette for Murder will soon be available as a book on tape

Early next year an audible version of A Palette for Murder will be available on Amazon. I am very excited to have Karen Stoff as my reader. She has the right voice for Lana Davis, the main character and the right timing and gentle sarcasm to tell the story. Watch for it in the first quarter of 2017.

A Palette for Murder, A Lana Davis Mystery set in L.A. and Santa Fe
Available on Kindle and Hardcover on Amazon.

This and That

Those elegant California White Pelicans have come back to the park near my house. I have to take this as a sign that life will always be beautiful. Tomorrow morning I have to go to the hospital for some surgery. I'll get out the same day, though I might not feel the same as when I walked in. I certainly won't be able to eat the same. Hope to be healed by Thanksgiving. Wouldn't want to miss candied yams or pumpkin pie. In the meantime, I will think of those lovely pelicans and relax!

Back in the U.S.A.

I dreaded the flight to the U.K., and it exceeded those expectations. Awful flight--thought I'd have to turn around and go home--but one shower and an Italian dinner later, I felt fit enough to continue on. I'm glad I did. I had a wonderful time. Though as you can see from this photo, taken the next morning, I'm not all that sure how this trip is going to work out.
 Later on, I look more content. I'm about to eat dinner at one of the oldest pubs in London.
 More about the highlights of my trip later.

My upcoming trip to the U.K.

I plan to visit England, Scotland and Wales. I’ve been to Europe a few times, but I never made it to the British Isles. Being an avid reader of Golden Age British mystery novels, I am excited to see the type of quaint villages they set their stories in. And course, as a fan of all Jane Austen novels, I can’t wait to see Bath, where some of her stories took place.
The one thing I am dreading is the plane from Los Angeles to London. It’s over ten hours. Somehow, I will have to get at least seven hours sleep during that flight. I opted to take a nonstop because packing and unpacking creates many opportunities for losing and forgetting things, at least for me. On one European trip I had a layover in New York, and when I spent a very short night in a hotel I ended up losing my contact lenses. On a trip to Ontario, Canada last year I left my mouse pad in the hotel because it blended in with the desk I was using, and I didn't notice it. Not this time. The mouse pad I’m taking for my laptop now is bright blue. Maybe this trip will inspire me to write a mystery about a forgetful sleuth. In the meantime, I’ll comfort myself by reading a Jane Austen novel on the plane. It's a bit worn around the edges, but if I lose it or someone mistakes it for my wallet, it won't cost much to replace.

Join Me This Sunday, May 22, 2016 7-9 EDT on The Writer's Chatroom

Join me this Sunday, May 22, 2016 7-9 EDT on The Writer's Chatroom at
http://www.writerschatroom.com/Enter.htm. During the chat I will be giving away a copy of The Legacy Of Fear, book 1 of Horror At The Lake, my vampire mystery.

To participate, just register for a free account at http://www.writerschatroom.com/Enter.htm 
and pick a user name and password. 


 I hope to see you there!  

The Uncanny Intelligence of Geese

I live near a park with a small lake--really, just a man-made pond--that is alive with waterfowl, squirrels and turtles. Every year a flock of Canadian geese come back to the park. One couple each year will mate and have babies. It's fun to watch the babies grow up. At first they are all brown and fuzzy and eventually, those feathers give way to the distinctive brown-black and white markings of the adult Canadian geese. This year there were seven babies born to one very smart couple. I say smart because they obviously realized seven is a lot to keep safe from predators so they enlisted the services of two other geese who are regulars in the park. One is a large white goose and the other is an even larger African goose. They've been hanging out in the park for years. And now they act as surrogate parents or body guards for the seven babies.

Before I realized one Canadian geese couple had given birth, I saw these two non-Canadian geese on the grass, shielding something with their wings while two Canadian geese stood on the walkway warding off passersby. I realized the adult geese were protecting Canadian goslings. Now the whole diverse tribe is inseparable--eating and swimming together like one big happy family.

Well, it makes sense. What else can stressed-out parents do when they have a lot of kids? They hire a couple of baby sitters to make life a easier for them.




 Vanessa A. Ryan is the author of:
  Horror At The Lake, A Vampire Tale mystery trilogy:

Book 1, The Legacy Of Fear -- order now Book 2, The Trail Of Terror -- order now Book 3, The Blood Of Redemption -- order now
A Palette For Murder - order now

Follow  Vanessa A. Ryan  at:https://twitter.com/Vanessa_A_Ryanhttp://vanessaryanwriter.blogspot.com
https://www.facebook.com/VanessaRyan33http://www.amazon.com/author/vryan

Strange Mysteries That Are Still Unsolved

 I'm sure many of you read Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys mysteries when you were a kid. I certainly did. And I always hoped somehow I would stumble on a mystery that I could solve. Nancy Drew always seemed to find scraps of paper on the ground or sidewalk that linked to other mysterious events that she eventually solved. How I wished I could be like her. But though I scoured the ground for clues to some unknown mystery, I never found anything. But I the other day, I did find beautiful grounds and a garden wall during my search for unknown clues--pictures are below. And I found an article about mysteries that are still unsolved. Gives me some thoughts of solving some of them in a story:

http://listverse.com/2015/02/25/10-strange-mysteries-from-around-the-world-that-are-still-unsolved/

My Recent Trip To Cuba

My recent trip to Cuba at Christmas has given me some ideas for new stories. Far from being a “police state,” as we have been led to believe, the Cubans seem reasonably content with their government, enough to poke fun at it. While spending four days in Cuba doesn’t make me an expert, what I discovered was people leave Cuba not because of government repression but because they want a better standard of living. They can own a house in the city and in the country, but they can’t buy new houses, because no banks have financed new housing projects in Cuba since the embargo. That means people have to live in the homes of their parents or grandparents. Also cars and travel are expensive (yes, Cubans are allowed to travel) and public transportation is spotty. My tour guide lives in the country because she feels that’s a better place to raise a child, but she has to take a succession of taxis to get to work. And it takes her an hour and a half. The vintage cars are mainly owned by taxi companies who cater to tourists. To improve their standard of living many people make money on the black market. Unless they do it on a large scale, the government looks the other way. This is why I saw many Cubans arriving at the airport with a pile of hats on their heads they planned to sell. They get the same TV shows we get. They like their healthcare system and the fact that college is practically free. It’s also a more liberal place for artists and musicians than it was in the 1970s when the government forbid listening to Beatle’s music. Especially inspiring on my trip was visiting the Hemingway Museum, the house where Ernest Hemingway lived for a number of years. It’s about fifteen miles outside Havana. According to my tour guide, Mary Hemingway deeded it to the Cuban government if they would keep it intact as a museum. However, as some online articles point out, the Cuban government confiscated it. At any rate, it’s a quiet, idyllic spot in a tropical setting––a great place to write. Another highlight of the trip was a talk by Marta Nunez, the Minister of Gender Relations. She discussed the problems Cuba faces. She is a sociologist and former Harvard professor, whose family supported the Revolution in the early days. According to Nunez, the fact that men have compulsory military service and women do not has resulted in more women becoming college graduates, but because of that, men lag behind intellectually. That results in more divorces, and one-child families––not from family planning but because the marriages don’t last long. In addition, it is a machismo society. Women raise their sons to be manly––gays are not that tolerated––and to view housework and child rearing as “women’s work.” As I said, Cubans are not reluctant to criticize their country. This is the view from my hotel:  Havana at sunset. 
And of course, I got to ride in a vintage car. Most of them are owned by taxicab companies because they are very expensive to buy. Because a ride in a vintage car is more expensive than other taxis, the average Cuban can't afford them.


Convertibles are the best to ride in because all cars use leaded gas.
In a pinch, you can always take a ride in a Soviet-made car. Not as fancy but on my last night in Cuba this was the only taxi we could find to get back to the hotel. For $10 it was a deal, but not one I'd like to repeat. The back doors didn't open and the front seats didn't pull down, so we had to crawl over the front seat to get in. And the fumes were horrible.

My take on Cuba is it's an interesting, colorful place to visit. The people are friendly and relatively content. The food, the music and entertainment were fabulous. The plumbing--not so much.