/ en-US Mon, 28 Jan 2019 03:24:21 -0800 60 / 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg /author_blog_posts/8750530-if-i-say-no-are-you-gonna-take-it-anyway Wed, 22 Jul 2015 13:45:06 -0700 /author_blog_posts/8750530-if-i-say-no-are-you-gonna-take-it-anyway
A small boy alongside the wall lifted a watering can up over his head, tilting thin streams of water through the nozzle's perforations into the box.

The front yard didn't have a lawn, only a big oak with a tire hung from a lowering limb. On the square porch were milk cans.

The stranger stood at the foot of the driveway, pumping each leg up in turn, the extra-long zipper on his fly buckling.

The face swiveled to stare up the dirt driveway at the boy, watching him conscientiously water each tulip.

"Those sure are pretty flowers you got there."

The little boy turned, holding the watering can aloft with both hands. Round eyes, open mouth.

"Whaddaya call those flowers, anyway? Those aren't roses, are they?"

The kid shook his head.

"Didn't think they were." He started slowly up the dirt driveway. "So whaddaya call them?"

The boy looked around nervously. "Tulips."

"Tulips! I thought they might be tulips." He walked past the boy to look at the tulips.

"They sure are pretty." He turned away from the tulips to the boy, blue eyes glittering. "Did you grow them yourself?"

The boy nodded shyly, watering can sloshing.

The stranger lowered his jaw. "Not all by yourself! I've never seen tulips this pretty before."

"My dad put in the dirt, but I put in the bulbs. I water them." He lowered the can.

"How old are you?"

"I'm nine years old," the boy answered solemnly.

"And when would these beautiful tulips be ready to be picked?"

"Pretty soon."

The stranger leaned forward to smell one, dark nostrils dipping into the cup of color. He studied the boy for a moment, black eyebrows arching. "I would imagine that someone who grows tulips as well as you do–�� his large hand swept out over the nine�� "must have something very special planned for them. Am I right?"

The boy brightened. "They're for my mom."

"I would have thought so."

"They're for Mother's Day."

"Well, I think your mother's going to be very proud." He looked at the row of tulips, each bowl of shapely petals enclosing a space of fragrance. Then he looked at the tight slit in the lapel of his houndstooth jacket.

The little boy stepped backwards, showing an uneasy smile.

"You're shy, aren't you, son?"

The boy rubbed his small thumbs over the perforated cover of the watering can's spout. "I dunno."

The stranger took a casual step forward. "I'd consider it an honor to wear one of your tulips in my lapel."

The boy let out an embarrassed laugh. "They're my mom's." He looked up at the stranger, scrunching his eyebrows together.

"Of course, of course. But surely your mom wouldn't mind if I took just one. One small flower still leaves eight, doesn't it?"

The boy's laugh became even more embarrassed. He looked around. "They're for my mom." He set the watering can down.

"Tell you what–I'll pick the least prettiest one."

The boy didn't say anything.

"Is it all right with you if I pick the least prettiest one?"

"If I say no are you gonna take it anyway?"

The stranger laughed. "No. I don't want to do that. I want you to give me one. Voluntarily."

The boy dug his hands into the pockets of his small jeans, jerking his head a few times. "Okay, but just one."

--excerpt from my novel “Father Figure��. 175,000 words.

It is wet here.







posted by Ralph Robert Moore on January, 28 ]]> /author_blog_posts/8714805-did-i-just-pull-out-part-of-my-skull Wed, 15 Jul 2015 15:22:42 -0700 /author_blog_posts/8714805-did-i-just-pull-out-part-of-my-skull
He coughed again. This time something hard and heavy rattled into his mouth.

The digital clock on the nightstand read 2:34.

He swung his bare legs over the side of the mattress, sitting on the edge, long, narrow feet touching down on the carpet by the nightstand's legs. He experimented bringing his teeth together. A painful crunch amplified itself through his facial bones.

He put his upturned hand under his mouth and spat in the darkness. Something wet and heavy hit his palm.

Lamp on, he stared dumbly at the gold and porcelain crown lying upside down across his lifeline. Although he had the crown put in nearly ten years ago, while living in Vermont, it still looked brand new.

"Fuck."

He poked his tongue around his upper front teeth where the crown had been. All that was left was a swollen rim of gum with, at its center, the point of root to which the crown had been cemented. As his tongue tip probed the point it bent to the left, broke off, and fell behind his lower row of front teeth.

"Fuck!" He jumped to his feet, licking the curved backs of his lower incisors to scoop the tip out. His fingers felt around his lower lip, found the point. Against his index finger's top pad it looked like a tiny white arrowhead.

That was it. The anchor was gone, which meant the crown couldn't be recemented, which meant to fill the gap they'd have to drill a metal post up into his jaw bone, which meant he'd have to live with a gap in his teeth because he couldn't afford it.

He stood in his underpants in the lamplight beside his bed. Took in as much air as he could through his nose, then opened his sad lips to let the air out in a long, unhappy sigh. I'm all alone. I'm all alone, I'm less than ten years past my teenage years, and now I'm losing my teeth.

His head hung. His lips pressed together. Standing alone in the lamplight, he started crying.

After the worse of his sobs passed he swung his head slowly side to side, snuffling, trying to get out of his depression. Fucking tooth. Using his tongue tip, he pushed angrily against the root of tooth still hard in the socket.

As his tongue moved away the root itself fell out, sharp pieces landing on his tongue.

Head jerking back, he spit into his palm again, covering the shiny porcelain and gold crown with ivory shards and blood-flecked bubbles.

This time he didn't swear.

Hunching his shoulders, hearing his heart, he reached into his mouth, eyes blinking, and put thumb and index finger around the tooth next to the hole. As the two fingerpads touched the wet sides of the tooth he felt, between the pads, a shift. To be sure, he gingerly wriggled the tooth. It split with an audible crack.

He took his hand out of his mouth. "Fuck!" When he said the word the split tooth, still embedded in his gum, rattled.

He put his hand back in his mouth, grasping the slippery halves. Breathing around a squeamish hollowness in the center of his chest, he started pulling down.

Don't let me lose my grip. Please don't.

He pulled harder, shutting his eyes against the pain radiating up into his nostrils. Finally, with an muffled tearing sound, out it came, two red and white jigsaw pieces.

He rubbed his palm over his forehead, trying to think. I must have had an infection up there for some time but never knew–no discomfort, no bad taste.

His tongue tip explored the double socket. Something hard and jagged poked back.

His hand shook as it went back in his mouth.

The protrusion he could feel appeared to be the triangular tip of something wider under the gum.

Grasping the tip, he pulled down. The yank jerked his head forward, but only a little more of the tip pulled out. Determined, he pulled again, and again, head bobbing forward, the crawly panic in his chest rising, blood polka-dotting his tongue and lower teeth.

The piece came out with a rush, making his stomach flutter. Hoisting it up in his fingers he shuddered at its size.

What was it?

Going over to the lamp he stooped under its shade and held the jagged bone right up against the bulb, turning it this way and that.

Did I just pull out part of my skull?

His fingers worried over the front of his face. With a thump of dread he felt a deep, soft trough above the two sockets in his gum. His fingertips prodded up the trench, searching for its end. When they at last felt hardness again beneath the flesh he realized he had pulled out most of the bone supporting the right side of his nose.

--excerpt from my novel “Father Figure��. 175,000 words.

It is wet here.







posted by Ralph Robert Moore on February, 24 ]]> /author_blog_posts/8634970-new-expanded-edition-of-father-figure Wed, 01 Jul 2015 15:58:11 -0700 /author_blog_posts/8634970-new-expanded-edition-of-father-figure
We had a lot of fun in Maine (we have a lot of fun everywhere.) Mary, a southern California girl, had never experienced snow before, so this was exciting for her, to live in a land where each Winter went white for months. We built snowmen. Realized our ears were turning red and numb when we ventured out of our third floor walk-up apartment to experience our first Maine snowfall, all those millions upon millions of unique flakes twirling down in the dark, cold, crystalline air, shot through like prison searchlights by old-fashioned street lamps. Seeing Mary’s beautiful, happy face in the lessening light, blonde hair and rosy cheeks decorated with snowflakes. I remember all our trips down to the docks of Portland, entering the wooden shacks selling fish hauled from the ocean, so fresh their shiny scales were bubbled with blood. Remember all the so, so many lobsters we cheerfully killed in our various small kitchens, blue and green antennae twitching as lowered into the boiling water, steam rising from the lifted metal lids, drenching their red and white meat in melted butter, watching movies on this new invention that had just come out on the market, the VCR. And making our own 90 minute film, our last Spring and Summer in Maine, starring just us, The Rob and Mary Show - The Movie.

But it was time to move on.

We packed our bulkier belongings in cardboard boxes, shipped them to Mary’s parents in Milwaukee, figuring once we found a new home somewhere in the horizons of America, we’d have them freight everything to us.

All told, we were on the road eighty days. Nearly three months.

We lived out of the trunk of our car, up on the road early each morning, breakfast somewhere off an interstate exit, then back up on the endless highway, tires humming, until it would get to late afternoon, at which point we’d pull into a black parking lot at a motel in Miami, Chicago, Boulder, Salt Lake City, New Orleans, Albuquerque, San Diego, Olympia, Vancouver, Anchorage, Winnipeg, or dozens and dozens of other cities. Each night, in whatever anonymous motel room we found ourselves, sitting around the circular table that always came with our room, we’d pull out our maps and AAA guides, pour some drinks, and plan in which direction we’d head the following morning. North, south, east or west. It was an extraordinary adventure. It was incredible freedom. We wanted to spend the rest of our lives on highways.

And while we traveled back and forth across America and Canada, all the while, sitting behind the steering wheel, watching the white lines race under the front of our white hood, I plotted out my second novel, Father Figure.

The idea for Father Figure came to me just before we left Maine. Like most ideas, that initial germ changed dramatically as I thought more and more about the novel.

The first idea for Father Figure, that floating speck, was of a sex change clinic, where one of the patients was a highly manipulative person who was now in the process of once again changing his/her sex.

On the road, that first thought evolved. I thought of someone/something who has been alive for longer than recorded time, who can change shape at will, who is not all powerful but certainly immensely powerful, who spends his longevity finding pairs of unrelated people he wants to match in order to destroy them, for his own amusement. He chooses each pair while they’re infants, then works his wiles manipulating them over their formative years with frequent, covert visits, until he’s ready to have them travel to where they’ll “accidently�� meet, after which he interjects himself into their situation, manipulating them further until he brings them down. Because he/it is bored. If you’ve lived forever, perhaps you do evolve into a creature that enjoys tearing the wings off flies.

In the novel, the two victims are Daryl and Sally. The story takes place in Lodgepole, Alaska. A town I created. And is it fun to create characters? Of course. But to create an entire town? Wonderful.

South of Anchorage, accessible only from a muddy road off Seward Highway, lies the town of Lodgepole, Alaska. After midnight, among the blueberry bushes of White Birch Park, a man crawls 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, 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.

The freedom we were feeling in our lives, driving across America, I wanted to express in my novel, so Father Figure has absolutely no constraints. It is sexually explicit, extremely so, and contains a number of scenes some people may find disturbing, offensive, or unwholesome. I did not censor myself at all. Every time there was a line, I crossed it.

Father Figure was first published in 2003, by Bookbooters. The book sold well with them, at the top or near the top of a number of their sales categories (Horror, Thriller, Mystery, Erotic.) A year or so after Father Figure was published, one of the owners of Bookbooters unfortunately suffered a health crisis, Bookbooters went out of business, and Father Figure went out of print. I decided at that point to offer Father Figure for free on my website, as a PDF download. In the time since, it’s been downloaded over 100,000 times.

Over the years, I’ve had a number of people who have read the PDF download contact me to ask if a print version is available. So I finally decided to bring out an edition myself.

This new edition of Father Figure, in addition to the original 175,000 word 2003 text, includes a 2015 Author’s Preface, as well as an appendix containing 6,000 words of deleted scenes. I initially deleted the scenes primarily for reasons of pacing, but each scene is worthwhile in and of itself, and adds to the story. Think of it as a Ryko CD with a couple of previously unreleased songs added.

While I was preparing this new edition, I of course reread the novel, which I hadn’t done in a decade, and I have to say, I was really pleased how well it held up. It is definitely a dark story. I would say probably the darkest thing I’ve ever written, but you really do get a strong, intimate sense of the characters, and the plot itself moves along at a quick pace. And there are some really great scenes throughout the novel.

The 2015 edition of Father Figure is available in trade paperback and Kindle editions through Amazon, and other online vendors.

To order Father Figure through Amazon UK, please go to

To order Father Figure through Amazon US, please go to

posted by Ralph Robert Moore on March, 19 ]]> /author_blog_posts/8157087-mashed-potatoes Sun, 05 Apr 2015 02:48:47 -0700 /author_blog_posts/8157087-mashed-potatoes
2. I was held up at knife point. I was seventeen years old, in Central Park after dark. And I didn’t notice that the crowds were gradually thinning away from the park bench where I was sitting. I heard a voice in my ear, opened my eyes, and there was this knife blade angled down against my throat. About five or six guys around me. Would they have killed me if I didn’t turn over my money? I honestly don’t know. I would hope not. But I did realize that it was important for me to remain calm, and to not act scared. To put that natural reaction to this kind of threat to one side in my thoughts, until I was safe. I asked them to just take my money and give me my wallet back, and to also return my train pass to me, so I’d be able to take the train from Grand Central Station back to where I was living back then, in Greenwich. And they did oblige. Which, all things considered, was rather nice of them. As they turned to leave, the shortest member of their gang turned back to me and said, “Don’t say nuthin��.�� Which even back then, in the moment, struck me as funny. But of course I didn’t smile or laugh at the time. I just watched their backs melt into the shadows of the paved path.

3. I wore the gabardine suit Bob Dylan wore for his TV special with Johnny Cash. This happened while I was working at Brooks Brothers in Manhattan. Brooks Brothers was a highly regarded men’s wear store. There was even a movie called The Man in the Brooks Brothers Suit. Anyway, one of the salesmen I knew told me Bob Dylan had come in to be fitted for a custom suit. I couldn’t believe it. Bob Dylan? Really? Brooks Brothers got a lot of famous people because of its reputation, and I loved being able to meet and talk to quite a few of them, but Bob fucking Dylan? Why would that train-hopping troubadour want a suit? But he had come in. I spoke with the store’s head tailor for customized suits, Vito, and he showed me the suit, marked with chalk slants where adjustments needed to be made. He had no idea who Dylan was, and could care less. Once the suit was ready, I slipped into the special room they had for customized suits, and took Dylan's suit into the back, taking off my own suit, putting Dylan’s suit on, looking at myself in the three-way mirror back there. The suit was too small for me, but even so. I’m wearing Bob Dylan’s suit! Before he is! A few months later, there was a TV special with Johnny Cash and Dylan, and Dylan was wearing that same gabardine suit! It was a nice feeling.

4. I pet a tiger (and a stingray). Mary and I were on one of our cross-country trips, just driving around, living in a long succession of motel rooms, and we decided to go to the San Diego Zoo (which is a great zoo, by the way.) We’re walking around, having fun, and at one point I notice there’s a tiger padding by on the paved walk. A real, classic orange and black stripes tiger. Not in a cage. Just out in public, tethered to the young guy walking with it by a leash. I touched Mary’s shoulder. “Look!�� She reared her head back. “Oh my God!�� So we walked over to the guy. “Can we touch it?�� “Yeah, but wait a minute.�� He brought the tiger’s huge profile against the outside of his thigh, so it couldn’t see us. “O�첹��.�� We both ran our hands over its rough fur. The tiger was huge. So large it was frightening. But it remained calm. And so did we. It was such a beautiful thing to do, full of wonder, to be able to reach out, reach down, and feel our palms rippling over the striped fur. I’ll never forget it. At another zoo, in Florida, maybe Busch Gardens? they had a petting zoo for stingrays. I mean, why not? A large, above ground pond where they’d circle endlessly around the perimeter, so that it wasn’t that hard to reach over the edge, down past the cold water surface, and let your fingers pass over the stingray’s back as it swam by. It felt like wet velvet. Leaving that area, walking side by side, looking at each other, Mary and I both raised our shoulders, laughing. Talk about cool.

5. I was a male model. I was a teenager working at Cuff’s Stationery at the time. A middle-aged man came in, bought something, I don’t remember what, and turned his profile in such a way around me that I realized he was looking at my face from different angles. He asked me if I had ever done any modeling. I’m thinking, Huh? He gave me his card, asking if I’d like to model for him, he was a painter who did a lot of illustrations for women’s magazines and paperbacks. So I‘m intrigued. And I have to admit, I had some concern what his motives might be. But it turns out he was legit. So I modeled for him a couple of times in his home, his kids running in and out of the room he used for his studio. The pay was great. Two hundred dollars for an hour and a half. And that was back in the Sixties. He’d take photographs of me from different angles in a pose, then work up a painted illustration based on those sessions. As I remember it, I was used as the illustration for a story in one of those women’s short fiction magazines, True Confessions or Redbook or whatever, and then for a cover of a Fawcett paperback women’s romance novel. I never sought out either appearance to save a copy, which I now regret. But it was the Sixties. It was so easy to get distracted back then. After a few modeling sessions, I told him I wouldn’t be doing any more. I wanted to be a writer. Not a model.

6. I watched a man get stabbed to death in Grand Central Station. I was about seventeen, eighteen. I was waiting for my train to arrive, to take me from Manhattan back to Greenwich. They had a lot of windows back then (maybe still do) to buy tickets, and it was not uncommon once the windows closed for the night for kids like me to sit up on the marble ledge (was it marble? I think so) of the shuttered ticket windows while we waited for our train. As busy as Grand Central Station is during the day, it’s kind of semi-deserted late at night. Anyway, I’m sitting on the ledge, probably reading a paperback, maybe Nabokov, and I hear this shrieking, coming from the wide passageway leading to the forty-second street entrance to Grand Station, which consisted of row after row of wooden benches, where prostitutes and pimps and the homeless and crazy people, I mean really crazy people, and occasionally me would hang out, and as I look up from the serenity of the text in my paperback, I see one man chasing another man, punching him repeatedly in the back, the pursued man’s knees eventually giving out, him falling, the pursuer finishing him off. Turns out the punches were stabs with a knife. The screams were so large in that enclosed ,marble space. I hopped off my ledge, looking around, and I saw a cop, he was hiding around a corner, back pressed against the wall, so he wouldn’t be seen, so he wouldn’t have to confront the murderer. What a coward, I thought. He’s a cop! He has a gun. Decades later, I was talking to a U.S. Marshall, just an idle conversation, and he said that one thing people don’t understand is that a police officer’s greatest concern isn’t protecting citizens, it’s protecting himself. He will let a citizen die before he’ll risk his own life. Which makes sense.

7. I used to scuba dive. This was while I was living in California. I had to go through a long, arduous training course, one day a week in a classroom, one day in a special, extra-deep diver’s pool, for months. Once we got in the pool at the beginning of each lesson, we weren’t allowed to stand up in the pool, or hang onto the sides, for the four hours we were in the water. Testing our endurance. The pool was heated close to body temperature, which was uncomfortably warm when you first slipped in, but by the end of four hours, we were all shivering. Nearly everyone I took the class with dropped out at some point. Because you’d be underwater, something wouldn’t work right, and you’d be far from the surface with no air. I saw a lot of what were called “bug eyes�� during those times. People panicking, silently afraid at the bottom of the pool that they were about to drown, and it was rare that someone who went through that would ever get back in the pool. Scuba diving was a lot of fun, though. Exploring the sandy bottom of the ocean, watching fish flit by, even though I’d always get sharp pains in both my ears (I guess there was something wrong with my eardrums), and the pressure would cause the black neoprene of my suit to scrunch up painfully around my crotch. But hanging suspended in mid-water above the shadowy ripples of an ocean’s floor? It was a nice feeling.

8. I was a repo man. This was in my early twenties. I was working in Bridgeport, Connecticut, which Paul Newman once referred to as the “armpit of New England��, at People’s Savings Bank. I had been the head teller for the main office and all the branches across the state. I’d routinely handle up to half a million dollars in cash, all of it bundled in paper bands, stacks of those bundles held together by large rubber bands, but it really didn’t mean anything to me. It was just a big bulk of paper I had to somehow fit into the shelves of the main office’s large steel vault. I applied for a promotion to the loan department, since it paid better. Because I was young and male, one of my duties was going out with some of the older bank officers to repossess cars when the owner had stopped making payments. They were almost always in the worst sections of the city. And Bridgeport was a tough town back then. I remember one day walking a few blocks to the nearest McDonald’s to get some lunch, and across the street, on a corner, a woman was tearing off her clothes, screaming in Spanish. She kept disrobing and screaming until she was stark naked, standing on a busy city corner at noon, sobbing. I took Spanish in high school, but I always regretted I couldn’t make out what she was so upset about. Anyway, we’d travel in one of the bank’s cars to the address of the latest automobile we needed to repo, the guy behind the wheel would sit there in case a fast getaway was needed, the rest of the men in the car would hop out, and me and one other guy would locate the car, open the driver’s door, I’d fold myself in, and take off, hopefully before anyone in the neighborhood knew what was going on. One time, a car owner banged out of his front door with a baseball bat, running towards me as I backed up in his car and took off. But that was the only really dramatic incident. Other repo men were shot at, but luckily I avoided that through sheer dumb luck.

9. I saw Psycho during its initial release. It had just opened in theaters. No one knew what it was about, because Hitchcock had insisted that viewers and critics not reveal the plot. At that time, Hitchcock was known mostly for romantic comedies and stylish thrillers. So that's what my parents expected (as well as everyone else in the theater) when the three of us (me just a little kid) took our seats. The lights dimmed. The film started, and I could see my parents, and a lot of the other adults in the audience, were a little uncomfortable with the opening love scene. Today, of course, it would seem tame, but back then, it was pushing the boundaries of what a major motion picture would show. But then the film appeared to settle into familiar Hitchcock territory. A woman steals money, drives through the rain to get to her lover, but has to stop for the evening at a motel when the rain storm becomes overpowering. She talks to the motel owner, even has a light dinner with him, goes back to her room, decides that in the morning she's going to drive back home, return the money. As a part of metaphorically cleansing herself, washing off her sin of embezzlement, she decides to take a shower. We view her from different angles as she stands under the shower's spray. From one of the angles, we see the door to her bathroom open. A dark shadow moves towards her shower curtain. At this point, the audience from so many years ago was chuckling. It had to be the shy motel owner (and although we were misled in this scene, an hour later we discover it was in fact the owner.) The shower curtain is yanked to one side, the naked, vulnerable Janet Leigh exposed, and then the last thing anyone in the audience expected happened. An old woman started stabbing Leigh's poor, naked body. Knife blade, bare body parts, blood everywhere. It was like a bomb had gone off in the theater. People in the audience got up out of their seats. Started milling in the aisles. Shocked. It's impossible to convey now how stunned the theatergoers were. No one had ever shown that degree of savagery in a big Hollywood movie before, or killed off the lead halfway through the movie. I loved it. It was new.

10. I once had to fly a thousand miles to give a speech in a hotel. The company I worked for had been acquired by another company (once again). A lot of the people I enjoyed working with were laid off. I was informed I’d have to fly from Dallas, Texas up to Columbus, Ohio to give a speech during a conference the acquiring company was holding in some big hotel up there. And it was let known to me that how my speech was received would pretty much determine whether or not I stayed with the company, or joined all the rest of my friends in the unemployment line. So, I hate giving speeches. I really do. Speaking out in a meeting, no problem. Standing in front of a large room of people, everyone staring at you, not so much. It’s like the worse sort of dentist visit. Plus it’s not like once the speech is over, I can just pick up Mary, and we can drive back home. I had to take a taxi back to the fucking Columbus, Ohio airport, which is really kind of ugly, wait in the terminal for a few hours for the next plane back, then sit in the fucking plane for two or three hours until it landed back in Dallas. Plus I knew almost no one I’d be speaking to. Plus I forgot to find out what gate my plane left from. Which didn’t occur to me until I was on the highway, at five o’clock in the morning, everything dark. So I got to terminal A, found a place to park, then found out my plane actually left from terminal C or D (I forget which). So I had to fast walk through all these terminals, which was my own fault, the backs of my calves starting to burn from so much fast-walking, and barely got through my flight’s gate before it was closed. In the dismal Columbus airport I was taken by cab through the streets of Columbus to the hotel, found the auditorium where the speeches were being given, had for lunch one of the blandest sandwiches I’ve ever eaten, then after lunch was introduced from the stage, and walked down one of the aisles as people stared at me. Once I reached the brightly-lit stage area, turning around to face the podium, the microphone, all my stage fright went away. Weird how that is. I gave my speech, got a lot of applause at the end, and the head of the conference said, “You’re in.��

11. I was held up at gun point. California. Mary and I had moved from Santa Barbara to the San Francisco area, and we both got jobs at banks (on the same day) as tellers. And it was a fun job, because you really got a sense of the community where the banks were located. Each day, the same depositors would come in, the same retirees, the same merchants. We were a part of the town. Everyone knew us, and we’d often see them outside work, in supermarkets and restaurants. It was an enjoyable experience. One day, I beckoned over the young guy at the front of the line waiting for service, and once he got to my window he said, “This is a hold-up.�� The words didn’t really register. Then he stood a step back, looking sideways, and showed me the gun he had tucked in the front of his waistband. I followed procedure. Opened my money tray, pulled out a band of hundred dollar bills that were clipped inside an electronic monitoring device, so that once I removed the bills the electronic sensors connected, sending out a silent alarm to the police, and activating the bank’s cameras to start taking pictures. I had a lot of bundled bills under my counter, but only gave him my bundled singles, figuring the bulk would be enough to fool him. Which it did. I received a commendation from the bank for not panicking and following procedure. A couple of months later, the Operations Officer, Andy Boyer, an old guy nearing retirement and a real shithead, was held up himself. He didn’t give the robber the marked hundreds because, he said later, he was afraid that would mean he gave that robber more money than I gave my robber. Plus he got into an argument with the robber, refusing to turn over any more money, to where the robber threatened to shoot the New Accounts woman. Like I said, a real shithead. He was fired after the incident. Bank robberies were getting more and more common in that area of northern California then, to where the local papers started printing editorials asking the police to do something. The next robbery, the police waited outside the bank, and when the robbers emerged into the parking lot, shot and killed all of them. After that, no more robberies.

13. I saw a flying saucer. This was when I was around eleven or so. I was walking with my friend John along a dirt road, I had a sense I was being watched, and turned around. Above the road behind me, at tree top level, was a large flying saucer. It was the classic shape, made of very bright metal, looking like aluminum. It hovered absolutely motionless in the air, absolutely silent. The right side of it was behind the treetops. I immediately knew I was looking at something extraordinary. I stared at it a long time, told my friend John to turn around. He wouldn't. I kept insisting he turn around to look at this absolutely incredible sight. I don't believe I told him that it was a flying saucer, only that he should turn around, but he kept facing forward, refusing to turn around. I know how this sounds, and I am well aware nearly everyone reading this will conclude I didn't actually see a flying saucer, I'm either making this up, or misremembering, or I misperceived something ordinary as being a saucer. But I did in fact see it. It was quite close, and very distinct, like looking at a bus in the sky. I have a very clear memory of it, and in fact remember it more clearly than I remember many other incidents from my childhood. This was not something I saw in the middle of the night, after “waking��. And it was not some vague bright light I saw in the sky that could be anything. It was broad daylight, late morning, I had been up for hours, and it was close enough that I could make out details. I saw a flying saucer hanging motionlessly, silently, in the air in broad daylight at treetop level. It happened.

14. I made a 90-minute movie. Mary and I moved from California to Maine (I had previously moved from Connecticut to California), and after a few years in Maine, we decided to move again, taking enough time (as it turned out, 80 days), to motor across America and Canada, and up to Alaska, deciding where we’d live next. And we wanted to document our journey, so we bought a camcorder, which back then was still somewhat new. We actually bought it about a year before we’d be quitting our jobs in Maine and going on the road, so being creative types, we figured, why not make our own movie? There was some precedent for that. While we were living in California, we had recorded about five or so “Rob and Mary Radio Shows�� on audio tape, different comedy sketches we’d write and perform. So we decided to film “The Rob and Mary Show - The Movie.�� It took about a year to do. For each segment, we’d write out the basic scenario, key lines of dialog, create any props we needed for that skit, work out camera angles and movements. Then film the actual segment. Each minute of air time took about an hour of preparation, rehearsal, etc. And the results aren’t that bad. You can see lengthy excerpts of our movie by going to my website, and clicking to the Gallery page. Mary and I both had an enormous amount of fun, as a couple, making the movie. It’s something I’ll always remember fondly.

15. I had several exhibits in the Bruce Museum. Ever since I was a little boy, I’ve had a love for true science. And by true science I mean the honest effort to better understand our world. To explore a love of nature, understanding and cataloging it. I don’t mean the unfortunate fake science with its agenda, for example, to “prove�� animals don’t have emotions, or “prove�� love is only a predictable chemical reaction. Fake science, to me, is anti-science, anti-knowledge. It wants to pretend everything is black and white, with no gray areas. The town I grew up in, Greenwich, Connecticut, had a great, gray granite museum at the bottom of Greenwich Avenue, the Bruce Museum, which if I remember correctly was once the mansion of Somebody Bruce, who stipulated in his will that after his death it should be turned into a museum. For a relatively small town museum it had some terrific exhibits. I used to bicycle there probably once a week. One time I found a section of thick tree limb about a yard long, with three woodpecker holes in it to establish a home. I brought it to the museum, about a mile away from my house, asked to meet with the director, and after examining it, he decided to put it in one of the museum’s nature display glass exhibits. Imagine my thrill when, a few weeks later, I saw it on display, with a small white card giving my typewritten name as the donator. It was like seeing a story of mine published in print. The next Summer, I found a huge quartz rock. About the size of a really large pumpkin. My friend Peter and I had to roll it a mile down the sidewalks of Greenwich Avenue to the museum, adults wearing hats asking us what we were doing. The director loved it. A few weeks later, it was up on its own pedestal in the museum, with a white placard announcing it had been donated by “Boby Moore��. Oh, that typo depressed me! But then I realized, nothing’s perfect, and it doesn’t have to be.

16. I bought my mother perfume. When I was a little boy. My family lived about half a mile from the business center of Greenwich, Connecticut, and every morning during Summer vacation I’d walk by myself into town, maybe seven or eight years old. I had a paper route back then, so I usually had some coin in pocket to spend. My favorite places to visit were the different stationery stores on the downward-sloping avenue (my grandparents�� house and the Atlantic ocean were at the bottom of the slope), because they always had display cases filled with magazines and paperback books (paperbacks, also called pocket books back then, were about thirty-five cents. Quite the bargain.) When a new book would catch my eye I’d pull it down and examine it like a scientist examines a new bacterium to see if it’s contagious. The shop owners didn’t mind me reading for such long periods in their stores, because I would usually wind up buying something to jam in the back pocket of my trousers as I continued my travels. Sometimes I’d come across a friend (I didn’t have a lot of real friends back then), and we’d walk together to one of the pharmacies, get up on the green leather stools, and order a couple of vanilla ice cream sodas like we were big shots with oil wells. One time when I was all by myself, though, in one of the pharmacies (which also had displays of paperbacks), on one of the shelves I saw this big, globular bottle of green perfume. I forget now, so many decades later, how much it cost, but I do remember it was more than a paperback book. But I bought it anyway, for my mom. I was so happy as I left the pharmacy, projecting in my mind, like we all do, into the future, where I’d unbag it for her, Surprise, Mom! And she’d be so happy her son had been thinking about her, even though he was so far away. Like I said, this was the Summer, and on the long, hot trek home, at one point the bag slipped out of my hand, and fell to the sidewalk. I got really scared. I got down on my knees, right in front of people walking by, and fearfully opened the top of the white bag, much like, so many decades later, I fearfully cleared my throat holding the phone to my ear, as a nurse a thousand miles away at the care facility my father checked my mother into once her Alzheimer’s got too bad went to bring my mother to the phone (she didn’t sound like herself at all, her voice was too deep, she had no idea who I was, and that’s the last time I ever “talked�� to her), and looking inside the white bag, I saw the bottle was unbroken, all that beautiful green perfume still in its round glass, but the black cap atop was cracked, so the top no longer screwed on properly. I was trying to keep myself from crying all the rest of the long way home, a good discipline to learn at an early age, and when I did arrive, I went straight from the street door to the back, the kitchen, where my mom was, and I held the bag up to her. Once she opened it, and pulled out the bottle of green perfume with its busted black cap I burst into tears, and told her I had dropped it, I had not been paying enough attention and I dropped it. She comforted me. Hand on the side of my hot face. “It’s fine, Bobby.�� Later that evening, when we all sat down to dinner, and I was still upset, she leaned sideways towards me in her chair. “Doesn’t it smell nice? It’s the best present I ever received.�� I decided that I would not punish myself, I would eat my mashed potatoes after all, and they tasted really good. My mom made them.

posted by Ralph Robert Moore on March, 19 ]]> /author_blog_posts/7962473-your-body-is-a-hotel Sun, 01 Mar 2015 03:30:50 -0800 /author_blog_posts/7962473-your-body-is-a-hotel

Like almost everything that becomes significant, it started from something routine. I went to my dentist for my periodic check-up. The hygienist cleaned my teeth, at the end of which I always feel compelled to say, running my tongue over my tombstones, Wow, they feel really clean! Because it can’t be fun for her to scrape someone else’s teeth for half an hour, so I feel it’s only polite to offer some positive feedback. And it always ends with her saying, Let me see if the doctor is free. And I can hear him laughing with another patient in another cubicle, or sometimes, talking to a patient in low tones down the hall, explaining a necessary procedure, and it’s all about sockets and possibilities.

So anyway, the dentist comes in, he makes a point of washing his hands in the cubicle’s steel basin before acknowledging me, kind of backstage stuff, and we do that weird handshake where he’s standing and I’m lying on my back with my feet in the air. He’s got that little circular dentist mirror he floats around the back of my teeth while the hygienist interjects comments like, I wanted you to check the occlusal at number fifteen. And after he finishes inspecting my mouth this sunny late morning, he straightens up and says, I see a small white patch on the underside of your tongue. He’s not meeting my eyes.

Which can’t be good, right?

“What would that suggest to you?��

“Well, it could be a number of things. You should definitely get it checked out. We’ll give you the number of a specialist right here in town you can set an appointment with, so he can take a look at it. Make a determination.��

“Are you thinking…��

“Well, it wasn’t there during my last examination, so that’s some cause for concern.��

So I guess it’s up to me.

“Are you saying it might be cancer?��

And if you’re going to shout a word out in a crowd milling around eating popcorn, “cancer�� will get more attention than “fire��.

He stood up taller in his white dentist’s jacket. “It could be. You should get it checked out. Sooner rather than later.��

Usually, my periodic exams go a lot better. I meet Mary back out in the waiting room, tell her everything’s okay. Or , at the worst, they have to redo a filling. But cancer? I waited until we were back in our sunshot car, my eyeglasses hot to the touch on the dashboard, alone.

I called the specialist, made an appointment.

About a week away.

That week was not a happy one. Sure, we had fun, and we laughed together, but behind every breath was the idea that I might have cancer. The dentist had said the other patients he had sent to the specialist with similar symptoms had turned out not to have cancer, and even if it were cancer, at this early stage it’s easily treatable, but still.

Your body is a hotel, that’s the way life works, and no one wants one of the guests checking in to be cancer.

When we moved to this relatively small town twenty-four years ago there were only two restaurants, neither of them that good, and only one supermarket. We had to drive into Dallas to get just about anything. Now we’ve got dozens of restaurants, over a hundred specialty shops, and actually some really top notch medical care. None of this was due to any prescient talents on our part-- we just lucked out.

So I felt a great deal of confidence in the oral surgeon specialist I would be seeing. He not only sat on quite a few peer boards, he was president of one or two of them, and in addition to being a dentist, he also had a medical degree.

But I was nervous sitting in the brown and white waiting room. And Mary was nervous. If I have cancer, what happens? How does that change our lives? How does that change our future?

I was called in. Mary wanted to come with me, and they had no problem with that. The specialist introduced himself, friendly and intelligent, shook my hand, and asked me to open my mouth.

He looked around inside. I mean, really looked around inside. Pulling my cheeks back, maneuvering his small mirror everywhere inside. Held the tip of my tongue with a folded-over white cotton gauze, looked under it for quite a while. “O�첹��.��

I’m nervous. I look over at Mary, sitting to one side in the room. She’s nervous.

He picks up a mirror, hands it to me. Picks up a small flashlight, puts it in my other hand.

“Let me show you something.��

Oh, God.

“Do you see that whiteness at the back of your mouth? On the left side?��

I maneuvered the mirror, slanted the flashlight. Didn’t see anything, then saw everything.

“And see it here on the right side?��

Again, maneuvering, slanting. “Yes.��

“And here’s under your tongue.��

Once again. “I do see that.��

“O�첹��.��

I hand him back the mirror, flashlight. Holding my breath.

“What you have is called Lichen Plantus. I’m going to write it down for you.��

“Is it malignant?��

“No. It’s not cancer. It’s actually a fairly common infection. It’s called ‘lichen�� because the pattern of how it manifests resembles lichen. I see a lot of it. Nobody is really sure what causes it.��

I know that Mary, sitting tense in her chair, might not be able to fully follow the conversation, because of the aphasia she has following her stroke back in 2002, so I twist around in the dental chair and give her a thumbs up. Her worried face lights up.

“So how do you treat it?��

“I can prescribe an ointment you can rub over the outbreaks with a Q-tip, but we really should do a biopsy of one of the outbreaks, just to be sure.��

“O�첹��.��

“You do have two bumps inside your cheek, here and here. I’m certain they’re just build-ups caused by blocked glands in the cheeks, but again, for safety’s sake, it’d be better if we surgically remove them as well, and biopsy them.��

So back out front, by the receptionist’s desk, I set up an appointment to have three oral surgeries performed in my mouth. All three procedures will take about thirty minutes. I can have general anesthesia if I want, where you’re knocked out, but I opt instead for local anesthesia, where I’ll be awake but the surgical sites will be numbed. Safer.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not a big fan of people cutting into my body. Especially inside my mouth, because it’s so close to the brain, which is a large part of ‘me��, and especially when it’s three different sites.

But, you know.

We had to wait a week for the next available slot for the surgery. Like a lot of doctors, he performs his surgeries in the mornings, when he’s at his freshest. Makes sense.

The approaching date weighed on my mind. I won’t pretend otherwise. It was one of those things where you wake up in the morning, feeling pretty good, thinking about coffee, then you remember, Oh my God, that’s right! I’m going to get cut up in x number of days.

The surgery was scheduled for 10:30. We didn’t eat that morning. At the time, I thought after the surgery we’d swing by Jack in the Box to get some Sourdough Jack sandwiches, some Monster Tacos, and some Seasoned Curly Fries, which we’d eat in our bed afterwards, something to look forward to.
Honestly, I don’t know what I was thinking at the time, or why I naively believed I’d actually be able to eat anything after all that cutting. Maybe I was just trying to minimize what was about to happen.

Only one other person in the fair-sized waiting room, a middle-aged woman reading a magazine. Or staring at it. I assumed a wife waiting for her husband to be led out by his wrists following his surgery.

I’ll admit, I was nervous going to the oral surgeon’s office that day. Mainly over the pain I knew was coming, but also over just the sheer unknownness of what was about to happen. So nervous, in fact, that when I had to initial down this checklist of statements I was required to acknowledge, There may be a resultant infection following my surgeries, my surgeries may not resolve my problem, etc., my right hand was so cramped that the inked initials I made, wavy and spiky, looked nothing like my real initials.

Eventually the door leading to the inner corridors opened, a head popped out, and I was called back.

“Turn right, into that room.��

I got up onto the typical dentist chair, the padded type that leans way, way back so that you’re staring up at the ceiling, trying to think happy thoughts.

She wrapped a blood pressure cuff around my arm. My readings were a bit high.

“The doctor will be here in a few minutes, then we’ll begin, okay?��

No windows in this room.

The black cuff slowly inflated again, tightening around my arm, a beep went off, and the large monitor to my right measured my pressure. The cuff deflated.

Voices outside the windowless room. The doctor came in, along with his female assistant. “So did you look Lichen Plantus up on the Internet?��

“I did!�� God, I hate small talk before surgery. Or maybe I don’t. Maybe it does help relax me, because I have to pretend to be relaxed, and that can make you a little more relaxed, just like pretending to be happy can make you a little more happy.

He asked me to open my mouth and refamiliarized himself with the sites he’d be cutting into. “Are you ready for this?��

�Ԩ�ܱ�.��

“Okay. I’m going to use a topical first, then a local, then once that sets up, we’ll start. Hand me the two you’ve prepped, then two more.�� That last remark was directed towards his assistant.

He pulled my lower lip down on the left side. Received from her two long Q-tips with a cotton pad only on one end. Maneuvered the first pad between my lower left gum line and cheek, then the second one an inch away. Received two more long Q-tips. Placed them around the same area. I had four sticks rising out of my mouth. Strong medicinal taste along my gum. I swallowed, and the taste and its numbing effect slid down the back of my tongue, down my throat. It did not feel good. Harsh.

More long Q-tips being positioned in two other areas of my mouth, so that I wound up with twelve long Q-tips projecting from my mouth, each long stick indicating the slant he’d use with the syringe inserting a local anesthetic into my gums.

After all those sticks were placed, his large face, looming right above my eyes, glanced beyond my vision field. “Let me have the first set-up.��

She passed him something.

“Okay, Rob, you’re going to feel a little pressure.��

Slanted steel tip of the syringe being pushed into my pink gum at one spot. “And a little more pressure.�� Tip sinking in an inch away. “And here.�� And so on, and so forth, for what seemed like about five long minutes, newly-loaded syringes exchanged out of my vision field for emptied syringes until that part of the preparation was done.

“Now we’re just going to let you sit here for a while until the locals take effect, and then we’ll start.��

I was left alone in the windowless room.

Time, which cannot do anything else, passed. The black cuff of the blood pressure monitor tightened around my arm again, a ping at its tightest grip, and I glanced again at the monitor to see what the new reading was. Still pretty high.

Finally the doctor came back. “Starting to feel numb?��

�Ԩ�𲹳�.��

He was handed something below my field of vision. Positioned it inside my mouth, by my lower left gum. “Did you feel that?��

“Not really?�� I mean, I did, a little, but it wasn’t painful.

“Okay!�� The instrument still in my mouth, his elbow slowly moved backwards. I felt nothing.

“I’ll take them now.��

I could see this new instrument was a small pair of scissors. Like you’d use to trim a moustache. Fuck. His elbow moved back and forth for quite a bit. “Doing okay?��

�Ԩ�𲹳�.��

His white latexed fingers directly above my lips. Slicked with blood. My blood.

“Doing okay?��

�Ԩ�ܱ�.��

A pair of metal tweezers. Going inside my mouth, pinching, carrying something out. Transporting it to the assistant.

“Sutures, please.��

And that’s got to be the weirdest thing. Someone sewing with thread inside your mouth. I mean, come on.

“Hanging in there?��

�Ԩ�𲹳�.��

One down, two more biopsies to go. He pulled my upper lip out, put a tiny scalpel inside my mouth, this time underneath my upper gum, in front. “Did you feel that?��

By the time I rejoined Mary in the waiting room, I had cotton gauze jammed up all around my mouth between cheek and gum on both sides, my lips protruding, making it difficult to speak. Mary and I kissed, sort of.

The post-op instructions were to wait a couple of hours, then have something like ice cream. Except, we didn’t have any ice cream. Pull the wads of cotton gauze out of my mouth every half hour, and replace them with fresh gauze, which had to be dampened first with cold water. (His assistant: “Be sure to wet them, so they don’t stick to the wounds. That can create problems when it’s time to replace them. Use cold water instead of warm water, because warm water might make the blood continue to flow. Keep replacing the pads until they’re no longer pink.��)

I drove us straight home.

Once home, we got back in bed. Turned on the TV, selected a show from our DVR list. I couldn’t possibly eat anything until these cotton pads were out of my mouth, so we just watched the show, speeding through the commercials, until the half hour was up. I removed all the pads. Some pink, but not a lot. I swallowed my penicillin and pain pills. Pushed new cotton pads in.

Another half hour.

Pulled out all the pads. The first two sets were almost white. My hopes going up. But the pads from the third surgical site, pulled out, were dark red, saturated, like a Tampax during a heavy flow. Sorry, but that’s what I thought.

I made an executive decision. Maybe the moisture in the gauze was causing the cuts to continue to bleed. So I decided to stop using the gauze. See what happens. After about another hour, I spit into my palm. Some pink, but not a lot.

I had a lukewarm bowl of cream of mushroom soup. Dear reader, it was fucking delicious. Took me about half an hour to spoon up and swallow, though.

That evening, around seven, I had a bowl of French onion soup. Again, Ooh-la-la!

The next morning, while the local station talked about weather, I spit in my palm. Clear.

I had two eggs over easy. That’s it. No ham or steak or bacon or pork chop or sausage. Not even any toast or hash browns. The eggs were incredible.

I decided to stop taking the pain pills. The pain really wasn’t that bad. I always end up with extra pain pills I eventually throw out. Still had to take the penicillin for another four days, to prevent an infection.

For dinner, I had a baked potato mixed with butter, salt, black pepper, and the minced whites of green onions, topped with sour cream and the minced greens from the onions. Heaven!

Again, it took about half an hour to gingerly eat the potato. But that’s okay.

Someday, a week or two from now, I will eat a Jack in the Box Sourdough Jack, a Monster Taco, and Curly Seasoned Fries.

It will happen.

And it will be delicious.

posted by Ralph Robert Moore on February, 15 ]]> /author_blog_posts/7817490-a-woman-made-of-milk Wed, 04 Feb 2015 16:34:31 -0800 /author_blog_posts/7817490-a-woman-made-of-milk
Tilda shouted again over the deafening scream of the cockroaches. “Do you see her?��

“Honestly, I---�� He froze. Blue eyes staring.

Liz. On her hands and knees. Backing herself into the corner. Frightened.

“I know you see her, because I see her.��

He lifted his old shoulders. “I…This is too much. Why is she so afraid of me?��

Tilda tossed the wire box and its broom handle to one side, like a torch. She came up next to MacDonald. “The dead fear the living. We’re too huge with life. For them, it’s like being in the same room with a lion. Plus her ghost is filled with guilt over dying without you being there. This is your chance. Your only chance. If you want to make peace with her, this is the time.��

MacDonald kept swallowing. “I don’t know what to do, this is too intense, I--��

“Call her! Call her or regret it the rest of your life.��

His lips parted. “Liz? Liz?��

The ghost put its forearms over its head, cowering.

Tilda shouted over the screams of the cockroaches. “Get down on your knees. Call to her!��

The old man went down to the carpet on shaky knees. Held his right hand out. Offering his hand to her.

Now, finally, the tears down his face. Finally understanding it wasn’t a con. “Liz? Can you hear me?��

Still the ghost cowered, a woman made of milk.

--from Ghosters, my latest book.

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.

Available in Kindle and trade paperback editions.

In the UK:


signed. Colin looked at Stan. “If she’s not there, absolutely, one thousand dollars for your expenses. I can understand that! If she is there and you fail to

In the US:



posted by Ralph Robert Moore on March, 23 ]]> /author_blog_posts/7794193-revived-and-presentable Sun, 01 Feb 2015 03:00:12 -0800 /author_blog_posts/7794193-revived-and-presentable
Q: So what have you been up to lately? It’s been a while since we talked.

A: We’ve been enjoying the luxury of not having to go out. That’s the best, when Mary and I just wake up when we want, eat when we want, do whatever we want. Wandering through our rooms, looking out our windows. Birds, squirrels, butterflies. Cats inside, four-pawed on white carpet or polished wood, looking up at our impossible heights, meowing. If one or the other of us wakes up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep, it really doesn’t matter, because we own our days. We don’t have to do anything we don’t want to do when a new morning starts. The only annoyance the occasional ring of the sunlit phone on our bedroom desk from telemarketers, but that’s so easy to ignore.

It’s really nice being home. You have everything you need right there. No reason to go out. When Mary had her stroke, back in 2002, it was absolutely devastating to us, but the end result was that it evolved into us realizing our greatest dream, being able to stay home with each other twenty-four hours a day. Who could want more? A crisis is almost always an opportunity.

Q: How about your writings?

A: As periodically happens, I went through a period where I felt uninspired. All these hastily scribbled notes for story ideas in my hands, and looking at them, their cross-outs and misspellings, I just didn’t feel any interest in developing the sighs and knives into actual stories. What’s usually called writer’s block. They were too pat, too similar to what I’ve already done. “Say something once, why say it again?�� And this birth that doesn’t work out is something that comes up on a regular basis, like a menstrual cycle. I really do believe writer’s block is your subconscious telling you, It’s time to try something different. So rather than panic, I just waited for the good ideas to arrive. Which they always do. A lot of times, in those situations, I find it’s best to think about my past. The situations I’ve been in, the people I’ve known. There’s always a lot of great story ideas in those memories.

Q: So you’re writing again?

A: Yeah. My writer’s block occurred late last year. An early Christmas present. Since then I’ve written “Not Everything Has a Name�� (7,800 words); “Thursday�� (4,500); and “Same Thing for Breakfast�� (7,800). And I’m about to belly-flop into a new story, with two or three viable story ideas in the white mists beyond that. I usually write a story a month.

Q: Healthwise?

A: I feel good, physically. Some minor problems. You know. As you get older, you start to wear out, but that process takes a long time. I’ve been blessed with excellent health all my life, so I expect that unfair advantage to continue. (Until that inevitable day when it doesn’t.) That’s a lesson you learn from gardening: Strong shoots tend to turn into hardy plants; weak shoots droop and dry no matter how much you water them.

Q: What do you think about while you fall asleep? Is it something different each night?

A: No, it’s usually the same. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve had more and more trouble falling asleep at night, and staying asleep. A worry is that I’ll wake up at some point with a great story idea, because that’s so inconvenient to write down in the darkness. I have to bend over the edge of the mattress, finger-find my yellow legal pad and a pen, figure which end of the pen is the clickable end, then write down the thought, because I can't see the paper in front of me, in large, block letters. If it’s an elaborate idea it’s a real pain in the ass. But I do feel a duty to write all the ideas down; you never know where they’ll lead. They’re clues, and I’m a detective.

Q: Tell me a great recipe that’s fucking fantastic, but doesn’t involve a lot of steps.

A: One of my favorite morning meals-- we have it once a month, on Saturdays-- is a steak and pepper sandwich. For two people, buy a rib eye steak, a green and red bell pepper, and two soft sub rolls. Cut the bell peppers into strips and fry them in olive oil. Fry the steak, seasoned heavily with seasoning salt and lemon pepper, in a separate pan, also in olive oil, until the steak is dark, the inside still rare. Slice the top of each roll open. Microwave for twenty seconds. Heavily moisten the warm white interiors of the rolls with a vinaigrette dressing-- Italian dressing works best. Slice the rib eye into thick strips, cutting away any gristle. Load each sub with both peppers, and sliced steak. It is absolutely, juice rolling down your wrists, delicious. Most recipes have one ingredient that really makes the meal, and in this case it’s the vinaigrette. The acidity cuts through the richness of the steak and peppers.

Q: What are you currently watching on TV?

A: Is this where I’m supposed to name all these high-quality shows to establish how refined I am? But I can’t. The Bachelor, Celebrity Apprentice, Justified, American Horror Story: Freak Show, Banshee, The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, American Idol, Face Off, Modern Family, a whole bunch of cooking competition shows, and movies we DVR’d like Last of the Mohicans, Atonement, Eyes Wide Shut, Broken Arrow. On DVD, we’re going through the first seven seasons of the American version of The Office. We’re in season 6 right now. Earlier today we saw Scott’s Tots. “I thought by the age of thirty I’d be a millionaire. But I wasn’t. Then I thought I’d be a millionaire at forty. But at forty I had less money than I did when I was thirty.�� Absolutely heartbreaking.

Q: What’s the best organ?

A: If you’re talking about for eating, it’s the liver. I absolutely love chicken livers. Sear them until they’re blackly bronzed in butter, interior still ruby, then eat them right out of the skillet, caught on the tips of your fork’s tines. If you’re talking otherwise, it’s skin. Holding the hand of someone you love is feeling the warmth of their soul. Mary and I hold hands a lot.

Q: If you could have dinner with any dead person, who would it be?

A: Okay. Assuming they’re revived and presentable? Because otherwise, not too appetizing. Probably no one I knew in life, because chances are I’ve already had dinner with them, or didn’t for a reason. And probably not a famous historical personage like Julius Caser or Galileo, because of the language problem. It’d be embarrassing. We’d be reduced to hand gestures and exaggerated facial expressions. So probably Julia Child. And we’d ask her to cook the meal. Which I’m sure she wouldn’t mind doing. Pretty nice bragging rights. Next day at work, Brad comes waltzing in and says something like, We had scallop roe with burnt kale last night, and we can say something like, Oh, okay, that must have been ‘interesting.�� But guess what? We had a dead person cook our dinner last night. And you know who that dead person was? Julia fucking Child. Yeah, that’s right, Brad. Put your right hand on the bottom of your chin and push up. Your jaw is hanging open. Of course, this is all contingent on the dead dinner guest not coming back as a zombie, because then that’s a different conversation.

Q: What would make the world a better place?

A: If at our location in north Texas we could order fresh produce over the Internet, and get it delivered to our front door. And world peace, etc.



posted by Ralph Robert Moore on March, 24 ]]> /author_blog_posts/7783221-pulling-out-dogs Thu, 29 Jan 2015 16:08:46 -0800 /author_blog_posts/7783221-pulling-out-dogs
Out from between its legs splashed a slightly less obese person, covered in blood, and small dogs, slipping their black paws in the grease of blood, rising up, barking. The slightly less obese person glared at Stan. Still lying on its fat side, it reached between its own legs, yellow eyes rolling. Raised its right leg higher in the air, to get its hand in deeper. Yanked, and yanked, breath coming out in huffs, forearm sliding out, spilling out a third person, who lazily rolled over onto its hands and knees, amid more dogs dropping down onto the greasy pool of blood. Shot a look of roiling hatred at Stan. Crammed its hand up between its legs.

--from Ghosters, my latest book.

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.

Available in both Kindle and trade paperback editions.

In the UK the Kindle edition is only £1.92; the trade paperback is only £9.32.




In the US the Kindle edition is only $2.99; the trade paperback is only $13.36.



posted by Ralph Robert Moore on March, 15 ]]> /author_blog_posts/7740992-new-review-of-ghosters Thu, 22 Jan 2015 13:55:09 -0800 /author_blog_posts/7740992-new-review-of-ghosters
“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. Read the full review here:

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.

Available in both Kindle and trade paperback editions.

In the UK the Kindle edition is only £1.92; the trade paperback is only £9.32.



In the US the Kindle edition is only $2.99; the trade paperback is only $13.36.



��

posted by Ralph Robert Moore on September, 22 ]]> /author_blog_posts/7697610-small-gray-face Wed, 14 Jan 2015 14:27:09 -0800 /author_blog_posts/7697610-small-gray-face
Dirt steps leading down. Smell rising of a place that doesn’t see enough sunlight.

Bud handed Stan a flashlight.

Jones avoided looking down the steps. “I can probably give you boys a deal on anything you find down there. To be honest, I only bought the jars because it was part of a larger deal. I never wanted them.��

Halfway down the steps, Stan turned on the flashlight.

Beam scouting around the dirt-packed walls as he reached the bottom step.

The root cellar was empty except for a wooden bookcase on the left, against the wall.

Four shelves, three bottles on each shelf.

As the flashlight hit the bottles, glittering their dust, the dark interiors tapped into life.

He started at the top row, angling the front of the flashlight down so it only indirectly illuminated the contents, to avoid glare. The first small gray face floated from the back of the jar towards the front. Mouth opening like an anus, big hopeless eyes blinking.

--from Ghosters, my latest book.

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.

Available in both Kindle and trade paperback editions.

In the UK the Kindle edition is only £1.92; the trade paperback is only £9.32.



In the US the Kindle edition is only $2.99; the trade paperback is only $13.36.



posted by Ralph Robert Moore on March, 19 ]]>