The Haunting of Hiram Abiff, Volume 1

The Haunting of Hiram Abiff Volume 1 is now available in Kindle and print version at Amazon.  

For hundreds of years the Knights Templar and the Freemasons have hidden a terrible secret.  His name is Hiram Abiff, and he has been dead for over three thousand years, but that won't stop him from taking over the world.

The Horror Zine Reviews "Tainted Blood"

Tainted Blood got a  great review from "The Horror Zine" today in their Halloween issue.  It's always a weird feeling to know a magazine is going to review your book.  When you read the review, its like listening around the corner when people are talking about you.

On the other hand, when it's positive, it's worth eavesdropping!

Free "Tainted Blood" Promotion!

Starting today and lasting through April 6th, "Tainted Blood," will be Free through Amazon Kindle.  Click here to download it for free.  We're already at #19 in the number of Kindle Horror downloads in the US and #20 in the UK, so keep downloading!  Help us get to number one!!


It's hard to find a better price.


Just scheduled this at 11:00 a.m. Monday, April 2, and it may take a few hours or maybe even til tomorrow morning to show up as free, plus or minus an electron.

Steampunk & "The Ghost Box"

My new book "The Ghost Box" is ready for print layout and cover design, for a release date early next spring.  I don't know how many books a year the rest of you write, but two or three is quite enough for me, I think!  James Patterson produces an average of 230 books per year, but I believe in all honesty that he is not a human being, but an organized work farm of alien laborers from the planet Profit.

I'd love to hear from the rest of you what your average yearly word count is.

The  covers a mixture of three genres- Steampunk, Paranormal and Science Fiction.  Maybe we should call it "Dark Urban Fantasy" and leave it at that.

"The White Death" is well underway, and is a mixture of Steampunk, Lovecraft, and Science Fiction.  A seatbelt is required when reading the book.

Next year, though, I'm sticking with one genre category per book.  How about you?

Lisa Morton's "The Samhanach"

This Book Must Be Made into a Movie!

Lisa Morton's gift for pacing is so naturally displayed in this Halloween tale that you don't notice how quickly the suspense builds until your shoulders begin to hurt. 

*****

Here's the publisher's plot synopsis:

The Samhanach by Lisa Morton
“On a Halloween night 300 years ago, something rose out of a Scottish bog to curse the McCafferty clan. Now, in 2010, single mother Merran McCafferty finds her suburban Halloween celebrations torn apart by the arrival of the Samhanach, an ancient trickster demon. When the Samhanach tries to steal Merran’s young daughter, Merran is forced to put aside reason and accept that magic is real, and bogies really do exist on Halloween night.”

*****

In this deftly crafted short novel, Lisa Morton shows such mastery of pacing and tension that when you're through you'll really believe that she can alter your heartbeat.

Because of her internationally acknowledged expert status in Halloween lore, we expect the factual precision she delivers with regard to world superstition and legend, but her buildup of powerful tension through clever placement and presentation of culturally encoded symbolism is a marvelous surprise.  The horror a mother experiences when her child is abuducted is forcefully contrasted with that same mother's life and death struggle against a creature summoned by a man wo died before she was even born.  The intriguing psychological conflict is that her main character must first believe in the demon who has stolen her child in order to confront it.

"The Samhanach" begs to be made into a horror movie.  It's main character, Merran, is a woman that I so immediately liked and cared about that I unconsciously began selecting which actress could play her in the movie while I was still reading the story.  And the visuals of Merran's decent into the Otherworld are as startling as those suffered by Alice in "Through the Looking Glass," by Lewis Carroll.

This short novel can be read in a single setting, which I thought was great because, as another reviewer said, I didn't want to put it down until I'd read the whole story.  In fact, having read "The Samhanach," I'm heading to the bookstore to find another Lisa Morton novel to read.  When it comes to reading, I like to hang out with quality people.

For more information on Lisa Morton, visit her website: http://www.lisamorton.com/

To purchase "The Samhanach," please visit: Bad Moon Books

Disputin' Rasputin

(He's Pretty Serious)

*****

“Evgeny, side of the house. Something from the window.”


“Tracking.”


It was big, bigger than a man and on the ground with a crouching movement, like a big cat hitting the ground. Even though they were several blocks away, Hauck had to fight the urge to draw his gun. It was up and moving so fast toward the back of the house that it left one screen and shot onto the other as quick as Hauck could turn his head.


“Shestapolov,” shouted Hauck. “To your right.”


Shestapolov and Rodin turned simultaneously, pivoting on their heels and bringing their pistols around. A fury of bright movement was on them before they could fire and Hauck heard a vicious, triumphant snarl that flooded him with fear. Light swirls smeared with something dark spiraled across the screens. A cry from Rodin that sounded like “mother,” but must have been something else.


“Evgeny?” called Hauck.


Above the snarls and snapping and howls, he thought he heard the slap of bullets and Shestapolov's terrified cursing. Either Shestapolov or Rodin was down and the other tried to sprint across the yard, but it was on him and dragging him toward the fence line faster than Hauck could believe.


“Evgeny,” he called again.


"On the move."

A fat finger jutted into view before the monitor. One of the back windows of the house was glowing. Smears of furious light bled into the night. A quick, sharp blast rocked the speakers and Hauck stepped back against the immovable figure of his watcher. The man snorted and pushed him away, but bent over suddenly as he did so as though in pain. Hauck ignored him and stared at the monitor. Flames and sparks shot out the windows as though the house were a fireworks display. excerpted from "Tainted Blood," by Ferrel D. Moore

*****

There are some people who make you a little uneasy. You're not sure if you should add them to your guest list without doubling up on your home owner's insurance policy. Rasputin falls into that category. A charismatic wild man steeped in scandal and secret plots- yep, a perfect character for the novel I'm writing.

Born January 22, 1869 in Siberia, he rose from a simple peasant upbringing to the level of advisor to Tsar Nicolas II and his Tsarista Alexandra. He was such a bad influence on them, that many historians consider him a major contributing factor to the fall of the Romanov empire.

He was sexually promiscuous, mesmeric and charismatic and lived for plots and counterplots. His influence of the Tsarista Alexandra was so complete that many suspected them of being lovers enslaved by passion.

Yet, he was a great comfort to the family, as only he seemed to have the power to dismiss the incredible pain suffered by their hemophiliac son. Physicians seemed to do nothing much at all compared to this mysterious man.

The church fathers considered him steeped in sin because of his alleged involvement in the khylsty sect, whose services reportedly resulted in physical exhaustion and orgies. The ritual known to the khylsties as "rejoicing" involved group sex which, the khylsty leaders felt encouraged members to turn towards God after yielding to temptation. If people did not first sin, they thought, why would they ever turn their eyes heavenward for forgiveness?

And, he was reputed to be the hardest man ever to kill. He enemies (notably Prince Yusupov), fed him enough cyanide to kill several men, then shot him in the back, came back and stabbed him and shot him again when he was still up and getting really upset, then reportedly castrated him and threw into an ice cold river. An autopsy report showed that he took water into his lungs before finally dying- which meant that he was still alive when thrown into the water!

Later, his body was stolen and burned, but observers were horrified that while burning, Rasputin's body sat bolt upright in the flames. I started my werewolf novel over from scratch when I started thinking that the reason Rasputin was so hard to kill was that he was actually a werewolf. So I began researching the topic, started from scratch again, and, 10,000 words later, I'm hard at it again. Sometimes you just have to find the antagonist.