The last time I mentioned that I chose the title, Blood Moon, because it symbolized...how can I put it?...the horror that I associate with the sale of body parts. It's a world-wide industry today, and one that we don't like to talk about. It's too frightening.
The trouble with crime is that it really does pay. Not that I'm trying to encourage it, but the reality is that bad people make a lot of money doing bad things--like sell body parts. After all some of our parts are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. A good business. If you added up all of our parts, we would be worth over several million dollars. The parts are worth more than the whole. This just in case you're feeling bad about yourself. Our body is probably worth more than most of us will earn in a lifetime. Talk about an investment! Anyway, that's what Cooper is dealing with in Blood Moon. He's chasing down kidnappers who deal in body parts. They aren't interested in ransom. No, there's more money in selling the victim, piece by piece. A gruesome thought isn't it. That's why I have nightmares when I write. The story becomes a part of my life. The story becomes my nightmare.
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The title of my second book, Blood Moon, sounds like it's about vampires, doesn't it. But it's not. I chose the titles of my first two books, Cooper's Moon and Blood Moon, because of a preoccupation I have with the moon. Some people are "sun" people (my wife) and some are 'moon" people (I am one of those).
The titles also represent the general feeling of the book. For instance, I chose the title, Blood Moon, because the story deals with human trafficking and the terrible consequences of that world-wide problem. Finally, the blood moon, the first full moon after the harvest moon, is so named because, according to legend, native Americans hunted under the light of the moon and the fields ran with the blood of their prey. It is in this setting, under the light of the blood moon, that Cooper and his friends hunt their prey, who are themselves predators. My guru (wife) and I were talking about crime in America today. The killing of Love being a case in point. It seems to me that the media sensationalizes such killings for ratings rather than for any serious search for justice.
Every year, or is it every month/week now, we live through another grisly murder. So crime does pay, it seems, at least from the standpoint of media coverage. And with that coverage comes the high visibility attorney to defend the alleged killer. In this case it's Mark Geragos defending George Huguely against a murder charge of Yeardley Love, a UVA Lacrosse player. So this case will be in the news for months to come, maybe even for the rest of the year. We don't really need to make up stories to get the public interested. The stories are happening every day. So when someone asks me are the crimes that I write about in Cooper's Moon and Blood Moon real, I always say, sure, in a sense, that sense being that they are founded, to some extent, on real life. My web designer (Ryan) has worked his magic and just uploaded Chapter One of Cooper's Moon. Thanks, Ryan. You will find it under Excerpts. Let me know what you think of it.
Part of the challenge of writing a mystery is planting clues that point to what will follow much later in the story. There is a clue in this chapter that points to action that will occur about half way through the book. It's well hidden though. |
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