James Moore - Blood Red

Praise for BLOOD RED

FAST-MOVING with a good mix of sex, gore, and laughs . . . Moore knows how to keep the pages turning and the blood running. Sad, introspective vampires in powdered wigs need not apply. Page Horrific

BLOOD RED DOES WHAT ALL THE BEST VAMPIRE NOVELS DO; it . . . digs for blood beneath the skin.

Rick Kleffel, The Agony Column

OFFERS PLENTY OF . . . HORROR CHILLS leavened with flashes of humor. Publishers Weekly

THE COMPARISONS TO VINTAGE STEPHEN KING ARE JUSTIFIED. Brutal and scary, Blood Red has restored my faith, not only in the vampire subgenre, but in horror as a whole. Kealan Patrick Burke

THERE IS SO MUCH TO ENJOY ABOUT BLOOD RED. Moore is powerfully descriptive.

Baryon-online.com

MOORE HAS WOVEN TOGETHER THE BEST THREADS OF VAMPIRE LORE with lust, power, and brutality . . . Grab this treat, turn off the phone and enjoy a refreshingly inventive take on the vampire tale.

Monsters and Critics.com

Praise for SERENITY FALLS and the Serenity Falls Trilogy: WRIT IN BLOOD THE PACK DARK CARNIVAL

QUITE POSSIBLY THE BEST HORROR NOVEL SINCE SALEMS LOT. [It] will grab you and horrify you while maintaining a death grip on your interest throughout. This is the ultimate page-turner . . . Fully fleshed, well developed characters. Immerse them in a great plot and superb action where the menace and mystery increase with each paragraph and you have a truly important novel. James A. Moores Serenity Falls shows some of the strength of a young Stephen King, some of the flavor of the current Bentley Little and a dash of the wit and perverseness of Dean Koontz. In the end, Serenity Falls is a major accomplishment in the horror field. Read it and you will echo my praise. Jim Brock, Baryon-online.com

INTENSIFYING TERROR. The Best Reviews.com

A TREMENDOUS HORROR STORY WORTHY OF THE MASTERS. James A. Moore is perhaps the most talented writer of this genre to date. Midwest Book Review

A SPRAWLING EPIC . . . Moore creates and develops a whole populations worth of memorable characters . . . This is easily the best horror novel to appear this year. Its more ambitious than the last three novels youve read put together. If theres any justice in the world, James A. Moore will be the genres next superstar. Hes the only horror author out there whos already writing at the level of the modern greats. The name James A. Moore will soon be spoken in the same reverent tones we now speak of King, Straub, and Koontz. Count on it. Garrett Peck

YOURE GOING TO GET YOUR MONEYS WORTH WITH THIS ONE, in terms of both quality and quantity. Youll become immersed very quickly, and once caught up in the story, youll find it difficult to put the book away until youve finished it. Chronicle

BRINGS TO MIND EARLY STEPHEN KINGthink of it as Dawsons Creek as written by King. In Serenity Falls, James A. Moore has written a novel where all hell breaks looseliterally. His descriptions of small town quirks and foibles hit the mark on all cylinders . . . a great horror novel. James Argendeli, CNN Headline News

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

No book is written alone and truer words have never been spoken. The author would like to thank Paul Miller for his insights, kind words of encouragement, and enthusiasm. Thanks also to my wife, Bonnie, for her amazing patience and love. You have always been and remain my heart and soul. Thanks also to Kelly Perry, one of the finest editors I have ever had the pleasure of working with. Under incredible time constraints, Kelly kept me on track and made Blood Red five times the book it would have been otherwise. For those reasons and a thousand others, this book is dedicated with awe and admiration to the people listed above. Thank you, more than I can say with mere words, thank you.

James A. Moore

QUOTH THE RAVEN

AN INTRODUCTION BY SIMON CLARK

Stone the crows. A figure of speech uttered in exclamation. A murder of crows. A collective noun for a gathering of crows. There are more, including the evocative a story-telling of crows.

These devourers of corpse meat are found pretty much across the planet. There are over a hundred different species of the crow family, including the carrion, hooded, and American crows, plus rooks, jays, choughs, jackdaws, and Poes iconic raven. Some are big and ominous-looking; as dark as black holes in the sky. Several of the species are small. One is even white.

Crows can be metaphor for the horror story. In the best tradition of Hitchcocks The Birds, crows tend not to arrive in a single battalion. A murder of crows assembles in ones or twos. You dont notice them infiltrating your neighborhood until suddenly you realize your house, or that childrens climbing frame, is full of the black-feathered daemonic creatures. For me, the best horror stories are like that. The horror begins with a gradual accumulation of off-key details at near-subliminal level in an otherwise harmonious environment. The reader outside the bookand the hero inside the coversdoesnt realize that anything is seriously amiss until its too late.

Thats why horror is subversive. It infiltrates the readers mind before it launches its attack. Sit with friends and discuss favorite horror movies and stories. A goodly bunch of those mentioned will feature an everyday, safe environment. Or what should be a safe environment. The home for instance. How many horror stories begin with the hero and family moving house to a new home only to find they hear footsteps on the stairs at the dead of night, or the lavatory inexplicably flushing? Psychologists will admit that the home and the self are inextricably linked. So the notion of your house being invaded or haunted by a ghost is, in effect, a metaphor for an invasion or haunting of ones mind. And one thing our culture teaches us is this: what should be our one safe place in the worldour homeis hideously vulnerable to supernatural attack. As children, didnt we fear the monster under the bed? Ghosts are already in the woodwork. Vampires, zombies, and assorted ghouls soon find a way across the threshold (heck, even those starlings in The Birds . . . remember the gush of our feathered friends down the chimney?). And it doesnt matter whether youre playwright-turned-caretaker in a swanky mountain hotel or a man of God. Theyre coming to get you.

Case in point: in 1715, the Reverend Samuel Wesley, father of John Wesley, one of the founders of the Methodist Church, experienced a poltergeist infestation at their home, the Epworth Rectory in England. At night he and his family were alarmed to hear groans and weird howling from the attic, accompanied by frenzied banging. Frequently, he was woken at night by what sounded like torrents of coins cascading onto the floor and the crash of breaking bottles. But when he investigated, he found nothing visibly amiss. Members of the household glimpsed a strange figure in white. His children eventually called the specter Old Jeffrey. See, no ones safe.

Nor are the inhabitants of the peacefully affluent Black Stone Bay, Rhode Island, in Blood Red. Oh, they think theyre in no danger, but just as the crows settle unnoticed one by one on their houses, a sinister infiltration has already begun in Black Stone Bay.

In this novel of James A. Moores youre going to encounter crows aplenty, and thats as much of the plot as Im giving away. Of course, I can let other things slip . . . Quick! While the publishers out of the room! Come close and listen:

Blood Red is a beautifully written horror novel. The easy-going loquacious style is deceptive. Take it from me: anything that reads so well, with such attention to detail, is damnably hard to write. This prose style is the product of years of hard work, of staying home with the blinds shut when everyone else is out having fun in the sunshine. James A. Moore has paid his dues, honed his craft, and now the delight is all yours in reading a powerful and witty story, which opens in the elegantly tantalizing way that is the mark of exceptional talent. Pun intended but theres a rich vein of humor here as well as horror. Despite the carnage of the climax, the ending is genuinely poignant, too. And as you read, youre forgiven if you exclaim more than once Stone the crows! Its a kind of book that unveils surprise after surprise.