My second short story collection, I Smell Blood, is now available as a trade paperback and e-book download. Almost 100,000 words of fiction, including eight stories and my short horror novel, Kid. Please go here for details.

"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."

"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."

"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."

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."

My first short story collection, Remove the Eyes, is available as a trade paperbook and e-book download. Please go here for details.

"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."

"…[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."

"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."

Please go here for more details and ordering information.

My novel Father Figure, a bestseller for its publisher in trade paperback, is now available for free in PDF format. Click here to go to a page where you can download the complete text of the novel.

"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."

"For me, the masterpiece of the collection is The Rape by Ralph Robert Moore, a multi-viewpoint - in every sense of the word - examination of an apparent rape (or is it) that sizzles with tension and inventiveness."

"…once again the editors have confirmed their extraordinary literary taste and excellent editorial instinct by selecting twenty stories which, for the most part, are up to the high expectations of 'Darkness Rising' aficionados…In some instances, I suspect, the stories are so good as to surpass even the best from the previous volumes, much to the delight of everyone fond of solid, compelling short fiction...[four of the stories] are really outstanding..."The Woman in the Walls" by Ralph Robert Moore is quite amazing. Despite the tell-tale title (believe it or not, that's the core of the plot!) the story is so original and full of surprising twists it remains absolutely memorable."

"This is a very strong tale, which will take a hold of you at the beginning and grip until the end. It tells of a farmer and his family and the tragedies which fall upon them, and of the dedicated employee who does anything the farmer asks of him. I found this tale to be very emotional, yet creepy and violent. Moore puts us, the reader, right into the story as if we are driving it, and we are."

"…as it's always the case in any anthology, some stories in "Read By Dawn" are positively awful, some just ordinary, and only a bunch are worth mentioning. The latter group, in my opinion, amounts to a dozen, which is not bad at all in a volume assembling twenty-seven tales …The Little Girl Who Lives in the Woods by Ralph Robert Moore is a very dark, cruel tale about the hidden truths of human existence, blending the reality of spoiled innocence, loneliness, violence and hunger for love."

"Another mind-blowing story is Truth Be Told by Ralph Robert Moore, and it is probably the story that most fits the 'artifice' remit. A couple - Franklin and Sarah - are talking. He questions her about her encounter at work with another woman, and his questions gradually lead her on to more and more pornographic descriptions of the encounter. It is obvious from her changing stories that much of what she is saying cannot be true. Is she taking her cues from Franklin's (leading) questions? Is this some sort of a game that they play regularly? But there is a narrative outside of Sarah's, and it is moving on and taking the reader somewhere disturbing. A quite remarkable story."

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.

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

I Smell Blood is my newest short story collection, a follow-up to 2009's Remove the Eyes.

Remove the Eyes was longlisted for Best Short Story Collection of 2009 by the British Fantasy Society. Ellen Datlow gave Honorable Mentions to two of the four new stories in the collection, "My First Kiss" and "Like an Animal in a Hole", in Best Horror of the Year, Volume Two (2009). Both Ellen Datlow and Peter Tennant cited Remove the Eyes as one of the notable short story collections of 2009.

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.

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