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the official website for the writings of
ralph robert moore
contents copyright © 1998-2021 by ralph robert moore, all rights reserved
The full text of Father Figure is now available in new trade paperback and Kindle editions, with a 2015 Author's Preface, and an appendix which includes 6,000 words in deleted scenes.
Father Figure is also available at all other Amazon sites worldwide, and additional online venues. 175,000 words, plus 6,000 words of deleted scenes.
The free PDF of the novel, which has been downloaded over 100,000 times since it was first posted, will remain available on this site. The free PDF is based on the 2003 print edition of the novel by Bookbooters, and does not include the deleted scenes.
South of Anchorage, accessible only from a mud-rutted road off Seward Highway, lies the town of Lodgepole. After midnight, among the blueberry bushes of White Birch Park, a man climbs on top of a woman and begins making love to her. As her orgasm rises he puts his hands around her throat, shutting off her air. She struggles, not to stop him, but to stop herself from trying instinctively to pull his hands off her throat. As the top joints of his thumb meet at the front of her throat she comes, her cry of orgasm ricocheting around inside her forever.
Daryl Putnam, handsome, bookish, wakes up from a nightmare and decides to do something he hasn't done in years. Take a walk outside at night. Down in the park, at the lime green shores of Little Muncho Lake, he comes across the body of the strangled woman.
The next morning, at the coffee shop of the hospital where he works, Daryl meets Sally, a pretty, dark-haired girl. He's intelligent, she's outgoing. What they have in common is both are living lonely lives. Until today.
Also in the hospital coffee shop, shaking half a can of black pepper onto his tomato soup, is Sam Rudolph, a fiftyish man with eyes like an angry dog's, who has spent over twenty years quietly manipulating events in Daryl and Sally's lives to have this seemingly chance encounter among the three of them occur.
And who is actually a lot older than fifty.
"It is easy to see why Father Figure has become an underground classic over the years. It is a dark, extremely disturbing but completely gripping suspense thriller with a strongly erotic subtext...Moore is an extremely talented writer with a gift for pushing the reader's emotional buttons...certainly liable to become a cult classic, and deservedly so."
From an editorial review
SENTENCE Publishing is a small, independent publisher dedicated to publishing the work of Ralph Robert Moore in trade paperback and downloadable formats. Inquiries should be addressed to robmary@swbell.net.
Welcome to Me
Welcome to Me is my 14th book, and the first book of mine which focuses primarily on my non-fiction.
Included within are:
All of my Into the Woods columns for Black Static, including two that were never published;
All of the essays I've written over the years;
Our World is a Word, a series of articles on how to improve your writing;
Rewrite Bestselling Authors, wherein I rewrite passages from three best-selling authors, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Clive Barker;
Friends Before Food, giving detailed recipes for dozens of dishes Mary and I love preparing;
The Crib Years, two lengthy autobiographical pieces on my early childhood;
Facebook Posts, a sampling of posts I've made on Facebook over the years;
Jump Down the Hole, which I created in 2000, featuring fake websites, one in which Antarctica is revealed to be a populous, long-historied nation, and another which features a fake family page for Arnie Maddox;
Duck Eggs, a one-act play;
Tiny Texts, giving 31 examples of a new type of writing I created, in which a story is told in a single paragraph, consisting entirely of run-on sentences.
A selection of my poems over the years;
Examples of my autobiographical on-line diary Lately entries over the years, including when Mary had a stroke, and when I broke my right hip; and
Waiting, the first story I ever wrote for possible publication.
This is without question my biggest book ever. 800 pages. 200,000 words. Front and back cover photographs by Mary; cover design by Horia Nicola Ursu.
I'm really proud of it. This is who I am.
Welcome to me.
These Were the Angels
18 stories and novelettes.
Only 2 of them previously published.
150,000 words. 525 pages.
If your pizza delivery guy has eaten one of the slices of your pizza, and brags about it to you in front of your girlfriend, before you get into an argument with him, should you make sure he doesn't know Papa Pajama? Why are your neighbors being so helpful? What happens when you find out what's been clogging your vacuum cleaner? Can old men be trusted? What's the punchline to 'A nun and a priest walk into a bar'? If strange creatures with both their eyes on one side of their head start invading the city, what's the best way to cover that story as a TV reporter?
You wake up in bed beside a woman who has to constantly rush to the bathroom. You have to do a wellness check to see if a homeowner is still alive. You meet a great guy, but he says he's been abducted several times by aliens. Your partner worries the kittens you've taken into your home may be part of a sinister plot. You and your girlfriend climb up staircase after staircase curving up around a massive tree trunk. You and your OCD boyfriend share an imaginary panda who's a podiatrist.
What happens when you see an unusual spider on a tree trunk? When a girlfriend you haven't heard from in years tries to get back in touch with you, is it wise to contact her? If you earn your living pretending to break into homes to terrorize the families inside, does it get harder and harder to tell what's real and what isn't? What are the consequences when you decide to no longer lock your front door? How does a body builder cope with the fact his beloved dog has died? Why has something gray and massive fallen out of the sky on top of your car parked in a supermarket lot?
You Know My Name
You Know My Name contains 30 short stories and novelettes. 600 pages. 160,000 words.
Here's a quick glimpse at the 30 stories and novelettes in this latest collection:
When you're trapped by a blizzard in a deserted fort in the far north, what happens next when bugs with large eyes start climbing up the walls, and across the ceiling? If a young woman tells you she's a witch, should you really let her go inside your backyard chicken coop? What is digging tunnels under your grass, all of them headed towards your house? If a pack of dogs each have six legs, should you be concerned when they start following you? If after falling into the ocean out in the middle of nowhere you're rescued by a ship captained by a man who constantly wears a hood over his head, should you be worried?
Your wife invites a co-worker she may be cheating on you with over for Thanksgiving, and each slice you cut into the turkey breast reveals more and more small bones within the white meat. The woman you met at a bar can only flirt with you by passing you notes, because her tongue has been cut out. A distinguished plastic surgeon has had so many facelifts on his own face his face starts to slide on the underlying bones. The men's room you step into has no toilets, just wide pipes with open tops sticking up in the air. The monkey you and your wife coax down from your roof really likes chocolate ice cream.
Why don't more people take out life insurance policies on high school children, since so many of them are likely to die fairly soon from car crashes or suicide? Is it difficult living with a woman who doesn't have a head? Why is the window-washer outside your office window exposing his genitals to you? What lives in the crevices formed by earthquakes? Can you be friends with a neighbor who's had his human teeth replaced with canine teeth?
You're having breakfast at the local diner when everyone in town starts lifting up into the sky. You and your family are stuck in traffic in Las Vegas when a man on the sidewalk starts taunting you. Your only chance to stop being homeless is to agree to be dropped by helicopter in the middle of a large field, and use the sponsor's lawnmower to mow a path to the sidewalk within so many minutes. You're studying to get your real estate license, but the red-haired boy in your backyard keeps trying to lure your challenged son outside. You're confident you can settle a dispute between your boyfriend, a respected chef, and a children's birthday party clown.
What do you do when your new job, out in the middle of nowhere, taking groups on tour, is interrupted by a lion? If the ground starts falling away from you and your girlfriend and her little sister, the dead down in the bottom of the ever-expanding trench following you, what's the best strategy? When your rowboat is attacked by fish, is the best decision to swim to the shore? What are the consequences when a wide sheet of glass starts sailing in the air down a busy city street? When a cat's head appears in your backyard, is it wise to follow its suggestions?
You want to stop all these endless relocations, but if you do, you know what will be waiting for you when you walk through the glass door with your bag of burgers and fries out into the McDonald's parking lot. Your life is such a mess you don't even notice the people hiding behind furniture in your home. The only way to not again spend time in jail is agreeing to be locked in a cage in an abandoned zoo. You made one assumption and it was wrong, then another assumption and that was also wrong, and now, naked, you're being chased by a chainsaw. Sometimes, a person just drowns-or doesn't.
The Angry Red Planet
"We used to finish each other's sandwiches."
Harry and Edna are a middle-aged married couple who probably did love each other when they were young and just starting out, but now maybe don't any longer? Or possibly still do, in some ways? It's so hard to tell sometimes, with people who have shared their lives for so many years.
Harry, a big, angry, disappointed man with a sarcastic sense of humor, flips houses for a living in the greater Dallas area, buying run-down homes, supervising his crew as they go in and renovate the properties, reviving them so they're once again a thing of beauty.
Edna, his wife, has become increasingly promiscuous, and has had to undergo more and more invasive surgeries to try to eliminate an infection that has taken hold in her body.
The Angry Red Planet is a sad, funny, scary exploration of the changing relationship between a man and a woman, and the daily social irritations that slowly grind them down, like they grind all of us down.
About Ralph Robert Moore
Ralph Robert Moore, nominated twice for Best Story of the Year by the British Fantasy Society (2013 and 2016), has been published in America, Canada, England, Ireland, France, India and Australia in a wide variety of genre and literary magazines and anthologies, including Black Static, Shadows & Tall Trees, Nightscript, Midnight Street, Chizine, and Sein und Werden.
His books include the novels Father Figure, As Dead As Me, and Ghosters; and the short story collections Remove the Eyes, I Smell Blood, You Can Never Spit It All Out, and Behind You.
"Moore's work is consistently fascinating, original and devastating. His characters speak to you from whatever hell they inhabit, with clear, unambiguous voices."-Trevor Denyer
"[Moore's] work is not quite like that of anybody else. He is a true original."-Peter Tennant
"Moore's…work is always heartfelt, deep and superbly executed…a writer everybody with an interest in dark fiction should be reading."-Grim Reader Reviews
"Disturbing. Nightmarish. Terrifying. And above all, original...reinforces his reputation, amongst those in the know, that here we have a genre-storytelling giant in our midst."-AJ Kirby
"Moore's writing is consistently powerful, his descriptions (even of the smallest minutia) terrifically rendered. He is not afraid to tap into his darkest imaginings and to go places most writers might very well shy away from. Indeed, he is one of the most singularly powerful authors I've encountered in a long, long while…"-C.M. Muller
The Sex Act
My newest collection, The Sex Act, has now been published in both trade paperback and Kindle editions.
The cover design is by the wonderfully talented Horia Nicola Ursu, using a foreground image created by Venturaartist. This is Horia's fourth cover he's designed for me. I highly recommend him. I raise my glass to you, Horia.
'The Sex Act' is a collection of thirteen stories and novelettes that all revolve around sexual obsession, from early youth to old age. They're funny, sad, surprising, unsettling, and occasionally offensive.
Just like sex is.
Here's the line-up:
When You Surfaced
The First Shorts of Spring
Truth Be Told
The Middle Leg
Sex on Sheets
Rattlesnake in a White Envelope
Freedom From Want
My Doll Likes to Eat
Beaten Up by Girls
The Wet Months
The Rape
Daddy's Glad Hands
The Final Fuck
Our Elaborate Plans
I'm really, really pleased to announce that my latest collection, Our Elaborate Plans, is now published and ready for purchase, in Kindle and trade paperback editions.
This is my tenth book, and my largest collection to date. Twenty stories and novelettes. 550 pages. 160,000 words. It's a mix of horror/weird/slipstream stories.
A boy who likes digging holes, has a little sister who adores him, and a mother who is dying.
Someone who while urinating feels a lump on one of his testicles.
A magician and his monkey assistant, who absolutely adores him, and a top hat that allows him to pull out all sorts of unexpected objects.
A man who comes back after peeing in the middle of the night to his bedroom and finds a strange woman in bed where his wife had been.
An old man journeys to an abandoned factory in upstate Michigan to an unusual safari where the wildlife driven past isn't animals, but ghosts.
A young boy who has to go in for some medical tests, and a neurotic woman who 'meets' him years later.
What happens when a wife realizes her older husband is showing signs of dementia?
How do you cope when a noise from the sky keeps getting louder and louder, causing more and more people to lose their sense of hearing?
What are you willing to do to appear in a porno as a way to escape working as a short-order cook for a racist employer?
What happens when you rehearse lines in an abandoned model home for an upcoming part and a stranger shows up?
How do you cope when the ghost of your dead dog keeps nipping at you?
Is it really safe to visit with the father of a girl you just met in his workplace far under the Hudson River?
A man who starts following a woman who likes to insert herself into wedding photographs at the local park.
Someone who has to deal with little men running like cockroaches across his ceiling.
An old man who's woken at night by naked men barking behind his backyard's fences, pretending they're dogs.
A man in a wheelchair who wants to bring his lover, seated in a chair in his motel room with a blanket over his body, back to life.
Is it really a good idea for two boys who watch a TV show that gradually gives directions on how to reach a secret house hidden in the woods to seek out that house?
Have you really considered all the precautions you need to take when a freak snowstorm blows through Texas?
What could possibly go wrong when you take your kids and your second wife on a vacation in the islands?
When you see something pass by outside the front glass of an ice cream shop, why do you go to the restaurant's restroom, lock yourself inside a stall, get down on your knees, and start slapping your forehead down on the porcelain edge of the toilet?
About Ralph Robert Moore
Ralph Robert Moore, nominated twice for Best Story of the Year by the British Fantasy Society (2013 and 2016), has been published in America, Canada, England, Ireland, France, India and Australia in a wide variety of genre and literary magazines and anthologies, including Black Static, Cemetery Dance, Shadows & Tall Trees, Nightscript, Midnight Street, Chizine, and Sein und Werden.
His books include the novels Father Figure, As Dead As Me, Ghosters and The Angry Red Planet; and the short story collections Remove the Eyes, I Smell Blood, You Can Never Spit It All Out, Behind You, and Breathing Through My Nose.
"Moore's work is consistently fascinating, original and devastating. His characters speak to you from whatever hell they inhabit, with clear, unambiguous voices."-Trevor Denyer
"[Moore's] work is not quite like that of anybody else. He is a true original."-Peter Tennant
"Moore's work is always heartfelt, deep and superbly executed…a writer everybody with an interest in dark fiction should be reading."-Grim Reader Reviews
"Disturbing. Nightmarish. Terrifying. And above all, original...reinforces his reputation, amongst those in the know, that here we have a genre-storytelling giant in our midst."-AJ Kirby
"Moore's writing is consistently powerful, his descriptions (even of the smallest minutia) terrifically rendered. He is not afraid to tap into his darkest imaginings and to go places most writers might very well shy away from. Indeed, he is one of the most singularly powerful authors I've encountered in a long, long while."-C.M. Muller
Breathing Through My Nose
Breathing Through My Nose documents eight cases in which Donald Duke entered someone's life.
"RRM always makes you think. No political correctness here." - Des Lewis, Gestalt Real-Time Reviews
Roy took a deep breath. "There's something else."
"You want me to have your babies?"
"No."
Her face registered hurt surprise that he didn't laugh at her joke.
"While we were making love? I felt a small lump in your breast."
She said nothing. Tilted her coffee cup towards her, saw it was empty. "Wait. What?"
"I felt a small lump in your breast." He pointed at her right breast. "Is that something you're already aware of?"
She stared at him, eyes reddening.
"I didn't mention it at the time. For selfish reasons. And I thought maybe you already knew."
She slipped her left hand under the top of her blouse.
"Do you want me to show you-"
"Shut up."
He sat across from her at the small table, watching as her five fingers, underneath the front of her blouse, moved from one side of her right breast to the other.
Anger and relief in her voice, she said, as her fingers kept pressing, "Son of a fucking bitch, Roy, if this is some kind of sick, fucking joke-"
Her voice stopped. Her fingers stopped.
Her dark eyes looked across the table at him.
Fingers moving again under her blouse. In one spot.
He could tell she was pressing against the lump with her fingertips, trying to gauge its submerged size, and to see if it was painful.
Behind You
Kindle/Amazon Trade Paperback US
Kindle/Amazon Trade Paperback UK
18 stories and novelettes from Ralph Robert Moore. 400 pages. 110,000 words.
Includes "Our Island", nominated in 2016 for Best Story of the year by the British Fantasy Society.
What crawls after midnight on elbows and knees into hospital emergency rooms?
Who hides in the woods waiting for hikers who get lost?
How could a 90-year old woman get pregnant?
What do you do when your girlfriend grows multiple noses and ears?
Is a bird really a bird if it doesn't have any feathers or wings or head?
Is there a ghost in your best friend's attic?
Do dolls get cancer?
Can sharks attack someone on a cobblestone street?
Is it wise to have an affair with your dental hygienist?
What should you do when you suddenly discover you are male, and have a penis?
How do priests protect Latino boys from a young girl who likes to put her pet tarantula inside her mouth?
Why are you so drawn to a red-haired computer nerd who is indifferent to your beauty?
How does a middle-aged couple appearing together in Italo-Spanish-German low budget horror films maintain their relationship when the wife is now being cast in movies as a witch, while the husband still has sex scenes with actresses half his age?
When your toilet tells you that you need to get a screening colonoscopy, can your toilet be trusted, especially when your life is being filmed every day by a reality TV crew?
How dangerous, and in other situations quite useful, are bananas?
How many versions of you and the love of your life exist?
Is the world just one island, and endless ocean?
What are you hiding, where are you hiding it, and are you willing to submit to a rectal exam?
"Moore's work is consistently fascinating, original and devastating. His characters speak to you from whatever hell they inhabit, with clear, unambiguous voices." - Trevor Denyer
Kindle/Amazon Trade Paperback US
Kindle/Amazon Trade Paperback UK
You Can Never Spit It All Out
Amazon Trade Paperback US
Kindle Edition US
Amazon Trade Paperback UK
Kindle Edition UK
"...the most recent collection from a writer who is relentlessly pushing the envelope. Along with Stephen Volk's The Parts We Play it was my favourite short story collection of 2016, and a book that I would definitely consider required reading if you are at all interested in what horror can accomplish when it doesn't accept the expectations foisted upon it by those who are only aware of the genre's limitations and not its potential."
Peter Tennant, Black Static 57
"..this searing book."
D.S. Lewis, Real-Time Reviews
10 horror novelettes by Ralph Robert Moore. 400 pages. 120,000 words.
Includes "Dirt Land", nominated in 2016 for Best Story of the Year by the British Fantasy Society.
Children born with four feet. A man physically attached to three other men. A pushy waitress. A woman who dresses up as Santa Claus on Halloween. An off-campus NYC apartment overrun with tiny, crawling faces. A tomato with spikes sticking out of its red skin. A third rate stand-up comic who insists he isn't gay. A lonely woman who constructs a tabletop village of miniature buildings wherever she moves. A widow who's visited by God in a dream, singing instructions to her about the structure He wants her to build. A psychiatry student who has to convince a handcuffed serial rapist to sit on a toilet seat to reconnect with his childhood.
Featuring 3 novelettes from Black Static, "Dirt Land", "Kebab Bob" and "Drown Town"; 3 novelettes from Midnight Street, "They Hide in Tomatoes", "Nobody I Knew", and "Suddenly the Sun Appeared"; 1 novelette from Hellfire Crossroads, "She Has Maids", and 3 novelettes never before published, "During the Time I Was Out", "Imperfect Boy", and "Boyfriend".
"Up on the mountain, not everything that gets born is human. Or at least, human enough. That's just the way it is. Some of them are kept, if they look close enough, but a lot are taken down to the river before they get big, and drowned. Shaken out of a blanket. If you go downstream, you'll find all kinds of dead babies bumping against the gray river rocks. Stiff limbs, open mouths. Getting picked at by fish. Of course, up on the mountain, the people who live there catch that fish, like they catch all fish. Fry it. Eat it. That may be part of the problem."
--Opening paragraph of "Dirt Land"
Amazon Trade Paperback US
Kindle Edition US
Amazon Trade Paperback UK
Kindle Edition UK
Father Figure
The full text of Father Figure is now available in new tradepaperback and Kindle editions, with a 2015 Author's Preface,and an appendix which includes 6,000 words in deleted scenes.
Father Figure is also available at all other Amazon sitesworldwide, and additional online venues. 175,000 words, plus6,000 words of deleted scenes.
The free PDF of the novel, which has been downloaded over100,000 times since it was first posted, will remain availableon this site. The free PDF is based on the 2003 print edition ofthe novel by Bookbooters, and does not include the deletedscenes.
South of Anchorage, accessible only from a mud-rutted road offSeward Highway, lies the town of Lodgepole. After midnight,among the blueberry bushes of White Birch Park, a man climbs ontop of a woman and begins making love to her. As her orgasmrises he puts his hands around her throat, shutting off her air.She struggles, not to stop him, but to stop herself from tryinginstinctively to pull his hands off her throat. As the topjoints of his thumb meet at the front of her throat she comes,her cry of orgasm ricocheting around inside her forever.
Daryl Putnam, handsome, bookish, wakes up from a nightmare anddecides to do something he hasn't done in years. Take a walkoutside at night. Down in the park, at the lime green shores ofLittle Muncho Lake, he comes across the body of the strangledwoman.
The next morning, at the coffee shop of the hospital where heworks, Daryl meets Sally, a pretty, dark-haired girl. He'sintelligent, she's outgoing. What they have in common is bothare living lonely lives. Until today.
Also in the hospital coffee shop, shaking half a can of blackpepper onto his tomato soup, is Sam Rudolph, a fiftyish man witheyes like an angry dog's, who has spent over twenty yearsquietly manipulating events in Daryl and Sally's lives to havethis seemingly chance encounter among the three of them occur.
And who is actually a lot older than fifty.
"It is easy to see why Father Figure has become an underground classic over the years. It is a dark, extremely disturbing butcompletely gripping suspense thriller with a strongly eroticsubtext...Moore is an extremely talented writer with a gift forpushing the reader's emotional buttons...certainly liable tobecome a cult classic, and deservedly so."
From an editorial review
"Immensely readable and informed by a lucid intelligence, Father Figure belongs up there with the likes of Delany's The Mad Man, Bataille's Story of the Eye, Sade's oeuvre, The Story of O, and other works of transgressive literature that challenge our assumptions as what is normal and what goes beyond the pale."
Peter Tennant, Black Static magazine
"Every once in a while, and sometimes it's a long while, a writer reads a book voraciously for a few days in sessions that leave him or her breathless. After reading it...you sit in your chair thinking about the feelings that masterpiece has evoked in you. This was my experience after finishing John Fowles' The Magus. I also felt it at the end of Ralph Robert Moore's Father Figure....Ralph Robert Moore yields great power in his dark pen. Power to ensure that your landscape of perception changes forever...if you like fiction that turns your assumptions and perceptions on their head, go out and buy it."
Tom Adams, Writing in Starlight
Ghosters
Amazon Kindle US
Amazon Kindle UK
Amazon Trade Paperback US
Amazon Trade Paperback UK
"…Moore has written a book that contains a thoroughly original and totally convincing portrayal of the supernatural world, one in which cosmic vision and human feeling collide. I loved every single page of it, not least for the wealth of incidental detail and the assured way in which Moore so often circles around the crux of each story, slowly dragging it out into the light of day, letting us see and experience what is really at stake. It does for ghosts what his novel As Dead As Me did for zombies, with bells on."
Peter Tennant
"These are not ordinary ghosts and the Ghosters are far from being normal individuals. The ghosts are startlingly original creations from the mind of one of the most accomplished writers in the field…The solutions to the hauntings are spectacularly horrifying.
"Once again, Ralph Robert Moore has produced a startlingly original book that surprises and unsettles with every page turn. He has seamlessly fused these elements with a genuinely sympathetic understanding of character and personal tragedy that propels this collection into the literary stratosphere.
"His work inspires as it reinvents familiar themes, infusing them with something that only the most talented writers can achieve: a sense of wonder that takes your breath away."
Trevor Denyer
"Ghosters…are members of a small group who travel around America "curing" people of their hauntings…All are beautifully drawn characters…There's a lot of humour in this book then but there's also real horror-- the opening and closing stories in particular, set in the upper floors of a haunted mall, contain some truly disturbing imagery--and there's also poignancy, often when you least expect it.
"The Ghosters themselves are wonderful creations and the skill the author shows in moulding them is also evident in the characters of the clients…[he] manages to invest all his characters with real personality and depth.
"[Moore]…is an extremely imaginative writer, coming up with some truly original ideas. That skill is demonstrated emphatically in Ghosters and I sincerely hope the world he's created here is one the author will return to in future publications. It's a book I urge you to buy."
Anthony Watson, Dark Musings
When someone you love dies, are they gone forever?
Meet the Ghosters, and the desperate people who hire them.
In our modern world, only Ghosters know what comes after death. What stays behind. And what dwells between.
Ghosters are a small, loosely-connected group of individuals who travel the highways of America curing people of their hauntings. For as much money as they can negotiate from each client. They are legitimate. But they are not nice.
Here are the known Ghosters:
Stan Costello. Works with Bud Hardy. Their specialty is buying and selling bottled ghosts. For the right money, they'll bottle a fresh ghost.
Clay (last name unknown). Homely. Cold. All the food he eats tastes like mud. The apparent leader of the Ghosters. Handles the more frightening cases.
Tilda Clem. Six foot seven. Never fit in anywhere. Somewhat sympathetic to the people she takes on. But not much.
Patrick Kelly. Tall Irishman with an onion-shaped head. Along with Stan and Bud, maybe the most human of the Ghosters. Will never say a bad word about anyone. But a lot of blood on his big hands.
Matt (last name unknown). Young African-American traveling with Patrick as an apprentice, to see if he'll fit in with the group. He has the talent. But does he have the stomach?
Imagine a building where only half the building is haunted (and the rest is a thriving shopping mall); a haunted doll house inside an otherwise unpossessed home; family estates that are hundreds of houses long, each new house attached to the front of the previous one, the older homes disappearing into the swamps like a centipede; a haunted house that travels across America. Imagine ghosts that can only manifest in water (like the inside of your dishwasher, or your shower stall); ghosts who believe they're still alive, pay their mortgage each month, and can interact with others; bottled ghosts that are bought and sold like vintage Coca-Cola signs; ghosts that pass their flaw down through the male descendants of a family, like color blindness; ghosts that were unwanted house guests in real life, and now won't leave even after they die.
If you thought life was complicated, find out what death is like. Ordinary ghosts aren't the only supernatural entity between life and death. There are neeks, plums, siliths, smudges, flesh ghosts, spirit ghosts, prayer ghosts, inbreeding ghosts, and that great white shark swimming in the sea between life and afterlife, The Fear Ghost.
The stories comprising this 95,000 word novel are ten known cases in which Ghosters were involved.
Amazon Kindle US
Amazon Kindle UK
Amazon Trade Paperback US
Amazon Trade Paperback UK
As Dead As Me
Amazon Kindle US
Amazon Kindle UK
Amazon Kindle Canada
Amazon
Amazon UK
Amazon Canada
iTunes, iPhone, iPad, iPod
The NOOK
Lulu
"It takes something special to interest me in a zombie novel, and this really is something special. Relentless, unsentimental, and with a plot that moves like a freight train. You want bleak? Read this…an excellent novel from an excellent writer."
Gary McMahon
"Rob Moore has done it again; turned a conventional theme of zombies and all the genre cliches that go with it into something that rises so far above the ordinary that it takes your breath away (no pun intended!). This book has depth. It is not only a visceral tour de force, but has the advantage of Moore's extraordinary imagination being brought to bear, introducing characters and situations that you care passionately about. Without giving too much away, the climax to the story astounds the reader by its spectacular, heartrending audacity. A brilliant achievement."
Trevor Denyer
"By making his characters so fully rounded, Moore gives us a reason to care about them, and this in turn makes the book's resolution all the more poignant and painful… These are just ordinary human beings, acting with common decency in the face of the unacceptable…Moore has written a zombie novel, but it's not just another zombie novel. He takes the familiar and makes it heartrendingly sad, but not at the expense of the action fans of this subgenre will have come to expect from zombie fare."
Peter Tennant, Black Static 37
A first person account of the zombie apocalypse, from its beginnings to its end.
The dead are rising. As Dallas falls, Jack and several other survivors are rescued by an Army patrol and taken by ship to a remote island off Indonesia where, under the leadership of the Colonel, they'll try to rebuild the human race.
That effort involves dangerous military forays, including an assault on an oil tanker infested with the dead, to have a generation's worth of fuel for the island; and a long train journey up the Asian continent to rescue a group of humans holed up in a women's prison.
Jack, whose life before the fall had been aimless and filled with anger, grows as a person as he tries, for the first time in his life, to make a difference. He starts to reach out to the other people on the island with him, including Sergeant Weiss, a big man with close-cropped hair, and a bit of a bully, who leads the missions in which Jack participates; Lt. Hoch, a thin, cold, by-the-books army officer who only cares about results; Dr. Dannon, a medical theorist with slicked black hair who has some unusual ideas about how to rebuild the human race; Marcie, a pretty, pregnant woman who gets close to Jack; and The Colonel, a homely, near-retirement career military man and widower who has been thrown into the role of leader.
Part military novel, part adventure story, part horror tale, As Dead As Me follows a group of desperate men and women who try to be strong enough, organized enough, and brave enough, to take back the world. If they don't succeed, mankind is extinct.
If you want to order As Dead As Me from your local bricks and mortar bookstore, the ISBN is 978-1-300-35503-8.
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"Disturbing. Nightmarish. Terrifying. And above all original. Ralph Robert Moore's new collection is unlike anything else I've read all year. All decade. It's also bloody good. I Smell Blood, Ralph Robert Moore's second short fiction collection, reinforces his reputation, amongst those in the know, that here we have a genre-storytelling giant in our midst…this is a surefire cult hit which deserves wider recognition…Moore manages to distill the best qualities of horror writing and produce something which is unique…conventions go out the window, and through it, something far more beastly crawls…Moore lends you his eyes (or lets you hop into his head, a la Kid) and it is a very, very dark place indeed…Moore here tackles deep themes. Beyond the white picket fence themes. Sex games, gender relationships, obsessions…the deepest horror here are the things which human beings are capable of doing to other human beings."
AJ Kirby
The Short Review
"With eight stories and the short novel "Kid", the new collection…combin[es] horror and gonzo invention in a winning combination, with an unadorned prose style that…drives the narrative forward at a cracking pace and allows for moments of surprising tenderness.
…Finally we have the short novel "Kid", weighing in at approximately a hundred and twenty pages, and the undoubted highlight of this collection…The novel's eponymous hero is a young man with the ability to head hop, to enter and insinuate himself into the mind of another and eventually seize control of his body…there's plenty of explicit sex and violence, with the scenes in which a man's face is removed particularly horrific…crime lord Knuggles is a master stroke of invention…the man oozes menace, and I cringed in anticipation of something terrible taking place every time he held centre stage…A particular highlight is the dazzling and vividly cinematic shoot out at a restaurant when the kid takes on another head hopper, each of them controlling a selection of stooges.
..."Kid" was a wonderful finale to one of the best collections I've read this year, delivering exactly the kind of uncompromising thrills and spills I've come to expect from this writer."
Peter Tennant
Black Static 24
"Ralph Robert Moore's second collection confirms the excellent qualities displayed in his previous book "Remove the Eyes", namely a powerful imagination, an extraordinary degree of originality and a great storytelling ability… A highly recommended book."
Mario Guslandi
HORRORWORLD
"One thing that is very evident from the moment you start reading [I Smell Blood]: these stories are far from predictable…The characters here inhabit surreal worlds grounded in reality but full of outrageous surprises.
Visibility [is] a tale so rich in character and atmosphere that it takes your breath away….["Afoot"] drills deep into what motivates people to want to break away from a society that confines our base instincts... The novel, "Kid", is a faultless mix of sure-fired observation…that hinges upon a plot that combines a dark and morbid supernatural ability with a crime mystery…Once more, the author has created a fascinating ensemble of characters…
Moore's work is consistently fascinating, original and devastating. His characters speak to you from whatever hell they inhabit, with clear, unambiguous voices...[I Smell Blood] is a worthy successor to Remove the Eyes."
Trevor Denyer
Midnight Street 15
I Smell Blood is my newest short story collection, a follow-up to 2009's Remove the Eyes.
I Smell Blood gathers together eight short stories, plus the full text (46,000 words) of my short novel, Kid. Almost 100,000 words in all.
Here's the line-up:
THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES IN THE WOODS (4,200 words) - Originally published in 2006 in the anthology Read By Dawn, edited by Ramsey Campbell. Honorable Mention, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, 20th Edition. Cory, a boy with problems, ventures into the forest behind his cul-de-sac to search for a little girl who legend says wanders through the woods holding a white stone she thinks is her doll's head.
IN THE TUNNELS OF THE AGOGS (6,900 words) - Originally published in 2009, in Dark Horizons, Issue 55. Honorable Mention, The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 3. Harry and Sarah, honeymooning in the islands, are returning with other tourists from a day spent exploring the island's underground quartz caverns, when their bus breaks down on a dark oceanside road. They climb a nearby hill so Sarah can relieve herself, at which point they hear a heavy thumping behind the bushes.
RAIN TURNS TO SNOW (3,100 words) - Originally published in 2010, in Dark Horizons, Issue 56. Honorable Mention, The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 3. After the latest argument with his wife Meg, Jake gathers up his outdoors equipment, and spends the night camping out in the mountains of Montana. When he returns home the next day, he doesn't realize - at first - that he's brought something cold and evil back from the mountains with him.
VISIBILITY (5,800 words) - Originally published in 2001, in ROADWORKS, Number 11. Honorable Mention, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, 15th Edition. Reprinted 2006, Revelation, Volume 3, Number 3. Reprinted 2006, in the anthology Revelation III, edited by Brian A. Dixon. Two men go on a night dive off the California coast. Half a mile out, they discover a naked blonde-haired girl underwater, wrapped within the tall, swaying tendrils of green kelp. Pulling her to shore, they decide to take her body to the nearest Sheriff's substation, to report her death. At the time, it seems like a good idea.
WHEN THE BIG ONE THAWS (7,000 words) - Originally published in 1999, in Fugue Magazine, the Summer issue. Philip and Jill move back to Maine, after an attempt to live in Colorado fails. They wind up in an apartment overlooking a frozen pond, where talk has it a giant frog lives, on the green bottom. Philip is unhappy they're back in the same town where Jill's former boyfriend Raymond lives, plus each night Philip and Jill are hearing louder and louder sounds coming from that thawing pond.
AFOOT (7,400 words) - Never before published. All Mason wants to do is pick up his tuxedo from the dry cleaner's and head over to his fiancé's home, where her rich daddy is hosting a dinner for the mayor. Unfortunately, the young woman behind the counter, black bangs and a plain face, can't locate the tuxedo. She off-handedly asks him to come back next week. Mason, desperate not to miss this important dinner party, kidnaps her and drives her all over Dallas, trying to get her to tell him where the owner of the dry cleaner's lives, in the hopes that the owner will take his problem more seriously. This battle of the wills escalates as the clash between the two of them becomes more and more dangerous.
THE MAN WHO COULD JUMP OFF ROOFS (9,500 words) - Never before published. Charley has moved into a new neighborhood following the death of his wife from liver cancer. He's woken up in the middle of the night by his son Johnny, who owes the sinister Mr. Miller, who "doesn't take no for an answer," thousands of dollars. Johnny pleads with his father to help save him, but Charley could care less. At a welcome to the neighborhood backyard barbecue, Charley meets the divorced Missy, who owns a The Buried Dog hot dog franchise. During the barbeque, Charley shows everyone what's unique about him, by climbing up on the hosts' roof, and jumping off without any injury. Missy is so impressed with Charley she offers him the manager position at The Buried Dog. Just as Charley's life is turning around, Johnny tells his dad Mr. Miller wants to meet with him, in a bad part of town, to settle Johnny's debt.
FLEEING, ON A BICYCLE WITH YOUR FATHER, FROM THE LIVING DEAD (6,000 words) - Originally published in 2006, in Midnight Street, Issue 7. Honorable Mention, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, 20th Edition. Reprinted 2009, in the anthology The World is Dead, published by Permuted Press, edited by Kim Paffenroth. Honorable Mention, The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 2. In the new world created after the zombie uprising, when the living dead are still a threat but somewhat controlled, Nate makes a journey from his family's boarded-up home to the municipal water works where his father works, to make sure, for the sake of his kid sister Tess, that their father is safe. But getting their father back home proves difficult when a zombie chews through the ignition wires in Nate's car (the dead love eating electricity), and Nate and his father have to journey by foot and bicycle through a landscape of long, dark roads and newly-risen dead.
KID (46,000 words) - Never before published. You're seventeen, trying to break into the dominant crime mob in northern Texas, run by the police, specifically by Knuggles, a police captain who performs with a monkey as 'Officer Clean' at junior high schools, owns a string of pizza parlors, and wears a red plastic mask twenty-four hours a day. During your interview with Knuggles you also meet Darla. She's older than your girlfriends, probably in her twenties, which intimidates you, but when she has her back to you she lets her right foot trail behind her, sneaker pulled up so only the rubber toe is touching the floor. You get excited, because you know a woman sometimes does that to get a man to look at her legs, which means she probably doesn't mind you looking, may even want you to look, even though you are just a kid. To her. Your one advantage in life is you're a head-hopper. Like any gift, head-hopping has its rules. If you eat what someone else has eaten, you can hop into their head and control them like a puppet, although both you and your puppet will get colder the longer the head-hop goes on. If there are any iron-soluble vegetables nearby, you become trapped in your own head. Knuggles wants you to hop into the head of a government official who has a very important number in his mind. You'll have to hop into the official's head several times before the big hop, so he doesn't become aware of your presence in his head. The big hop itself will take place in a busy, California restaurant. If the hop works, Knuggles has promised he'll let you be a member of his mob. That means lots of money. You'll be able to take Darla out to fancy restaurants, buy her things from the catalogs you love looking at. If the hop works. And if Knuggles is true to his word.
I Smell Blood is also available for order through virtually any bricks and mortar bookstore.
The ISBN for I Smell Blood is 978-0-557-63876-5.
I've created a promotional video of me reading excerpts from each of the nine fictions in I Smell Blood. I hope you enjoy it.
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Remove the Eyes
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"Tired of the usual suspects? Bored with the same old genre clichés? Then follow my advice and read Ralph Robert Moore, a hell of a writer whose work is provocative and refreshing, never ordinary, always imaginative and graced by a compelling narrative style…Moore has all the features of a great writer: he conceives original plots, creates credible characters and makes them speak plausible dialogues, and, most of all, is a terrific storyteller. Try him, you won't regret it."
Mario Guslandi
Hell Notes
"…[Moore's] work is not quite like that of anybody else. He is a true original, someone who has taken on board the lessons of genre and mainstream, then harnessed both to his own ends, and if you are looking for something different, then I can't recommend this collection highly enough."
Peter Tennant
Black Static 14
"Unusual, erotic, frightening and stunningly good…This collection showcases the wide and versatile range of [Moore's] work. From the horrors of the internal demons that infest the wonderful "The Machine of a Religious Man" to the powerful and erotic, yet despairing "Rocketship Apartment", these stories capture the extremes of human experience. The writing is tight and uncompromising. The dialogue provides depth to the narrative, drawing the reader into shocking and unusual scenarios that stun, remaining in the memory long afterwards."
Trevor Denyer
Midnight Street 13
Honorable Mentions by Ellen Datlow to "My First Kiss" and "Like an Animal in a Hole" in Best Horror of the Year, Volume Two (2009).
Remove the Eyes is my first short story collection.
The collection consists of nine stories.
Here's the line-up:
AFTER HERE (2,300 words) - Never before published. Tom is eating his lunch in a crowded pubic square in Portland, Maine when a pretty young woman comes up to him and asks if he'd like to play a game.
THE WOMAN IN THE WALLS (7,000 words) - Originally published in the anthology, Darkness Rising 2005 edited by L.H. Maynard and M.P.N. Sims. A girl Jack meets in a San Francisco bar invites him to come home with her, but warns him there's an incredibly obese woman who lives in the walls of her apartment.
THE MACHINE OF A RELIGIOUS MAN (8,000 words) - Originally published in Midnight Street. Reprinted in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, 19th edition, edited by Ellen Datlow. Long-listed as Best Short Story of the Year in the 2006 British Fantasy Society Awards. Bonay races in a car through the desert highways of New Mexico, trying to help his friend Gordon, who's crying in the back seat.
STRANGERS WEAR MASKS OF YOUR FACE (15,400 words) - Originally published in Theaker's Quarterly. Philip pretends to still be asleep in the middle of the night in his northern Wisconsin apartment, as strangers with knives gather around his bed.
MY FIRST KISS (10,000 words) - Never before published. Honorable Mention, Best Horror of the Year, 2009. A boy and girl who like to break into other people's houses for fun find themselves faced-down by an old woman with a shot gun when they break into a castle that's been transported stone-by-stone to Connecticut.
STEAKS IN THE CITY (7,000 words) - Never before published. Warren sucks up huge amounts of booze and drugs, then goes driving into Dallas to find his lost love.
THIS MOMENT OF BRILLIANCE (9,500 words) - Originally published in Lullaby Hearse. Ed, a wet work specialist, goes a little bit crazy in the Maine to Florida corridor while he's searching for a man with a secret.
LIKE AN ANIMAL IN A HOLE (10,600 words) - Never before published. Honorable Mention, Best Horror of the Year, 2009. David and Nell visit the Seattle town home of Nell's dead brother, trying to figure out how he died.
ROCKETSHIP APARTMENT (7,700 words) - Originally published in Midnight Street. Kevin meets Carla at a Los Angeles laundromat, and gets drawn into her plan to travel to the next galaxy.
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Remove the Eyes is also available for order through virtually any bricks and mortar bookstore.
The ISBN for Remove the Eyes is 978-0-557-06893-7.
You can read the complete text of two of the stories in Remove the Eyes for free, to decide if you'd like to purchase the collection. Strangers Wear Masks of Your Face is available here. This Moment of Brilliance is available here. Both stories are in PDF format.
I've created a promotional video for Remove the Eyes. I hope you enjoy it.