Riders of the Seven Hills - Out Now

Lad Moore tells tales ... some of them long, some of them short and some of them - by his own admission - pretty tall. All of them re-create a world of recent yesterdays to set some folks to rememberin' and others to dreamin'.

They're down home yarns of East Texas and dazzling adventure stories set in the mysterious Far East, they're of store-stove conferences and dark murders, of the good, the bad and the ugly who've crossed his many paths.

Lad's writing has appeared in countless journals and anthologies and Riders of the Seven Hills is the third of his popular collections, each of which - although skillfully presented in dozens of bite-sized chunks - leave his reader with that satisfying, well-fed feeling of someone who's just devoured an epic novel.

His cast of players come and go; sometimes with a character taking center stage, sometimes with him or her merely in the chorus. Just as you'd expect in real life. But the creeping result is real life people who grow familiar as the stories unfold, events that are fully explored, and places that almost miraculously achieve solid form as the pages swiftly turn.

Lad's short works take shape like the tiny dabs of seemingly random color in an impressionist painting. The colors combine to create a living landscape because the brush is held by a master of his art. Now let's take the time to step back a little and admire the broad canvas.
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Read an extract from Riders of the Seven Hills

About the Author

Purchase: paperback | eBook

Title: Riders of the Seven Hills
Author: Lad Moore
Print ISBN: 978-1-906609-02-3
eBook ISBN: 978-1-906609-03-0
Page count: 244
Release Date: 31st May 2009

Distributors: Bertram Books, Gardners, Baker & Taylor, Ingrams

BeWrite Books are available from: BeWrite Books, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones and other online booksellers and to order from high street bookshops

Exclusive excerpt from Riders of the Seven Hills

Slipping on a Mossy Log, a story where 'Forbidden fruit is highest in calories and shame'.

An excerpt taken from Lad Moore's new collection in available to read online here

Coming Soon - Riders of the Seven Hills by Lad Moore

Tales of Red Clay and Blue Denim

Lad Moore tells tales ... some of them long, some of them short and some of them – by his own admission – pretty tall. All of them re-create a world of recent yesterdays to set some folks to rememberin’ and others to dreamin’.

They’re down home yarns of East Texas and dazzling adventure stories set in the mysterious Far East, they’re of store-stove conferences and dark murders, of the good, the bad and the ugly who’ve crossed his many paths.

Lad’s writing has appeared in countless journals and anthologies and Riders of the Seven Hills is the third of his popular collections, each of which – although skillfully presented in dozens of bite-sized chunks – leave his reader with that satisfying, well-fed feeling of someone who’s just devoured an epic novel.

His cast of players come and go; sometimes with a character taking center stage, sometimes with him or her merely in the chorus. Just as you’d expect in real life. But the creeping result is real life people who grow familiar as the stories unfold, events that are fully explored, and places that almost miraculously achieve solid form as the pages swiftly turn.

Lad’s short works take shape like the tiny dabs of seemingly random color in an impressionist painting. The colors combine to create a living landscape because the brush is held by a master of his art. Now let’s take the time to step back a little and admire the broad canvas.

For further information, interviews, pictures, etc, Lad Moore can be contacted by email

Title: Riders of the Seven Hills
Author: Lad Moore
Print ISBN: 978-1-906609-02-3
eBook ISBN: 978-1-906609-03-0
Release Date: May 2008
Distributors: Bertram Books, Gardners, Baker & Taylor, Ingrams
For further information and review copies, please contact: Cait Myers at BeWrite Books

For updates about titles coming soon from BeWrite Books, please email us with the title of the book in the subject line.

An Interview with Trouser Cloninger of Low Melody Farm by Lad Moore

Interview by Lad Moore, author of "Odie Dodie"

Lad: Good Morning. First tell me the origin of your unusual name.
TC: You mean Trouser? Well, when I was a little tweet, we was cockeyed poor. I slept in one leg of a pair of my Daddy’s overalls-you know, like a sleeping bag. Mama called me the Trouser Boy. Reckon now that’s my name.

Lad: Tell me what you remember most about Low Melody Farm and your childhood.
TC: Daddy believed that a kid oughta have chores, like a list of regular things to do. You couldn’t play or fiddle around until that list got checked off. And you couldn’t cheat-Daddy had a copy of the list in his bib all times.
TC sighs. But mostly it was a good childhood. Full of adventures. I pretty much played by myself. Didn’t like the little Neds-the Townies I mean. I rather play sticks than townie games.

Lad: Sticks? What is that?
TC: Sticks is when you cut a small pole about a yard high. And you find other poles in the woods and they smack each other. The pole that breaks loses. But if you be careful, like pick a persimmon pole, you can whup every other stick.

Lad: Okay, Now about that story you told in the book ‘Odie Dodie’. What do you think the tale about Ferro and the fishes is really all about? Is there a moral or lesson to that story you wanted readers to learn---a special message?
TC: In my head I followed some kind of direction that I wasn’t in control of. It was a dream, but not really a dream. Because I rode that tractor down to Caddo Creek just like the story says. I didn’t make that up.

Lad: But in the tale you tell of sleeping by the Iron Ore Pond and waking up after what was a long rest, reciting the tale of the fishes.
TC: But in that dream it actually happened. I came swooning out of my body. My body was at Iron Ore Pond, and my figment was on the 8-N Tractor, like I said. I was with Ferro and the Fishes on their ride to Progunder.
If you read the story again, you will recognize that it is the Good Book tale of Exodus. The fishes are freed and they follow their new leader. But they forsake him later, and they all die.

Lad: Is that the fate of mankind today?
TC: I look around and I see the merriment and the frolic, and the forgettin’ of the rules. I think that is what happens when things get too good and nobody has a chores list. Also, you surprisingly can learn that the leader is just plain wrong. Yep, leaders sometimes hear the wrong drummer, but there ain’t no one there that can tell them anything, because, well, they are the Deciders.

Lad: But in the end, the faithful fishes all die. Is that what all of us can expect?
TC: 'Spose so. The big Ten-Star General Julius Caesar was the best leader of all the big wars of the Roman World. But even he learned there was a fiddler to be paid.

Lad: And what was that?
TC: There was a simple but trusted scribe that whispered in his ear the warning, that ’All Glory is Fleeting.’ Then look what happened to Rome.

Lad: We could all learn from that. But to sum up, what is the best lesson we can learn from the fate of the fishes at Progunder?
TC: That singing man Bob Dylan had it right. Do you know what he said?

Lad: Not actually.
TC: He wrote these words once: He said, ‘Don’t follow leaders. Watch your parking meters.’
So I trustes, I mostly obeys, and I serves my chores list. But I keep one eye squinted in case the Deciders is wrong.
______

To read more about Trouser and his friends, pick up a copy of Odie Dodie paperback | eBook

It would be a cold day in the storied caves of Hades before anyone got any better at it than Odie Dodie.
When he flashed that smile and touched their hand, long-malnourished moths escaped from tightly clasped wallets.
He sold what everybody wanted …
God’s eternal love and forgiveness: the always special-of-the-day.

Roll up … roll up … for The Very Rev Odie Dodie. God’s worst nightmare!

Lad Moore builds a collection of twenty tales of stark reality, hanging on the wobbly hook of a phony, money grubbing, licentious gospel-peddler, Odie Dodie and his unholy glory bus. He sees his flock as sheep – there for the fleecing.

The sad acceptance by the gullible rogue religion Odie Dodie pitches by the dime make Lad Moore’s interim tales of simple humanity all the more poignant.

Never since Steinbeck and Hemingway has an author written so tightly, entertainingly and honestly about what matters most …

The simple truth!

Excerpt

Lad Moore's Success is Attributed to Vivid Imagery and Realism of Characters

Writer Lad Moore is preparing for the release of his third short story collection, Riders of the Seven Hills. Once again, he has chronicled a montage of characters and events that as he says, represent his world of “red clay and blue denim.”

Like his first two offerings, Tailwind and Odie Dodie, his new work will be published by BeWrite Books in the UK. In addition to his three books, Mr Moore has been published more than five hundred times in print and internet venues, including The Pittsburgh Quarterly, Virginia Adversaria, Amarillo Bay, and Chicken Soup for the Soul. His is a six-time contributor to Adams Media’s Cup of Comfort and Rocking Chair Reader anthologies and has won such awards as The Silver Quill, The Wordhammer, and a best-fiction nomination to the Texas Institute of Letters.

Lad Moore has an earthy style often compared to that of Mark Twain, Patrick McManus, and William Faulkner. As to these comparisons, Lad admits to having read woefully little work by the three famous writers, and is surprised and honored to be thought of in that company.

Questions of style and discipline often dominate the curiosity of his fans at interviews and book signings.

“The question I get most is ‘how do you approach writing’?” That question suggests style and content, but usually the root of the question centers around discipline. How can one sit for those many hours and fill all those pages? The answer embraces something even the writer has difficulty explaining. How does one describe a compulsion? It would be easier to list reasons for not writing.

“Writing for me is reaching past flesh into one’s guts. I think Red Smith expressed my feelings best: “There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”

Lad explains that there is, at the core, a creative mind and a need to share experiences and imagination with others. There is a pride in reading a sentence that bristles the hair on the neck. There is that inevitable soft sigh when the last page is finished and the cover closed. It is the release of truth, release of passion, and yes, the freeing of secrets.

“I just feel it. I don’t have a ‘time’ to write. I don’t have an agenda to fill, a number of pages or chapters to complete, a deadline to meet. I let it flow until it stops. Sometimes it stops because of distractions. Sometimes it's that mysterious dam called writer’s block. But it will flow again, because of that compulsion writers have at their helm.”

As to subject and material, Lad explains: “I don’t force genre. I don’t force theme. My writing includes poems, mystery, passion, anger, and even fantasy. It’s what came out that day. Maybe that is why I am a short story writer. It allows me to hopscotch around my noggin. For in each crevice of my brain lies something to share. I don’t write to satisfy anyone else. I accept criticism and praise as both being useful. My credo was captured well in these lines: ‘Better to write for self and have no audience, than write for audience and have no self.’ - Cyril Connolly

Lad Moore resides on a small farm near the historic steamboat town of Jefferson, Texas.