T.A. Moore's Blog, page 9
March 22, 2023
State of the TAM - 22 March
My blood pressure, that’s what. It’s been A DAY. I’ve been running around like a march hare, fell in the field while walking the dog, and Izzy wants another walk. So you’re getting a pupdate newsletter. Next week I’ll let you know if I am going to GRL or not this year :D
Pupdate of the WeekIt was a big day!
Flashback Pupdate
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March 17, 2023
Flash State of the TAM
He might not have left us any snakes, but we do have deals! Get 40% off ebooks from the 17-20 March.

Oh and…

Don’t forget to join me, LA Witt, Josh Lanyon, and Kade Boheme at 9pm GMT for RGR 9th Anniversary MM Romance & LGBTQIA+ Author Chat. Check the table below to find out what time that will be in your region!




Biting the Dragon’s Butt! It sounds like it should be the title of a book. *lol*

March 15, 2023
State of the TAM - 15 March
Happy St Patrick’s in advance!

Don’t forget to join me, LA Witt, Josh Lanyon, and Kade Boheme at 9pm GMT for RGR 9th Anniversary MM Romance & LGBTQIA+ Author Chat. Check the table below to find out what time that will be in your region!

mn, it’s close. I’ve started to worry if I’ll remember to go. That’s ALWAYS my big fear. I’m cocky eough to assume that people want to hear what I say about stuff I know about and Irish enough to slabber about anything I don’t. Plus, you know, I’m a delight!
My problem is that I have an awful sense of time. You have no idea how many missed hair appointments I had to apologise my way out of.
I’ve never missed anything like this, and I’ve sent approximately 1000 reminders, but the fear is always there. Keeps me honest like my grandfather used to say!

What do you think of this? My new author pic or naw? All my other pics have purple hair and I’m probably sticking with brown for a little while.
Pupdate of the WeekWe had snow last week!
It was very cool, and then very cold! We don’t often get snow here - it’s coastal, all that salt air, you know! - but we had one day of proper snow.


This is my favorite photo of Izzy. She wasn’t sure at first, but then she was GO GO GO!
Free Audio Chapter of the Week‘Feet of Clay’ by TA Moore is a Lost and Found short story and a prequel to Prodigal. It took fifteen years for Sammy Calloway to find his way home, find out what those left behind did with those years.
You can find Prodigal at most online retailers.


Fifteen years ago Sammy Calloway disappeared on his way home from school. Now he’s back… or is he?
Boyd Maccabbee has spent his life second-guessing his actions on that fateful day. What if he’d done something differently? Maybe Sammy would have made it home safe and never become Cutters Gap’s most tragic famous son. Or would it have been Boyd who was never seen again? When the police find new evidence on the disappearance, Boyd hopes to finally get some answers.
The last thing Morgan Graves needs is to be dragged into some old case about a missing kid. He doesn’t know why police hit on his DNA, but he’s not Sammy Calloway. He thinks he’d remember being kidnapped.
He knows he’d remember firefighter Boyd.
Drawn into the complex web of suspicion, grief, and anger that has knit Cutters Gap together in the years since Sammy’s disappearance, Morgan struggles to hang on to himself when everyone already assumes they know him.
And somewhere, the truth about Sammy Calloway is waiting.
I don’t drink, but I still want to make it!

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browserMust Read of the Week
When I had cats I desperately wanted something like this so I could work out where they went and why. The closest we had was my my mum trying to sneak around behind Murdock (our oldest tabby, a massive chunk of a soft boy) after she let him out post-dinner. He sat and licked himself thoroughly all over for an hour until Mum lost interest, the minute she looked away he disappeared until nearly midnight.
The Hidden World of Cats: What Our Feline Friends Are Doing When We’re Not LookingMost pet cats are free to roam, but where do they go and what do they get up to? We fitted six cats with GPS trackers and found out.
As I prepared to write this piece, my three-year-old cat, Larry, had been missing for 24 hours. I had checked under the bins, posted in a community Facebook group and Googled variations of “Lost cat how long normal before come home?” all day.
Larry was a house cat when we took him in, but my boyfriend and I had recently moved to a house with a garden so had started letting him out. Just like that, our adorable, loving, docile cat turned into the neighbourhood bruiser. He stopped snuggling with us in the morning, instead impatiently pawing at the door even before we had put down his breakfast.
You have NO IDEA how many chicken bones I have had to pull out of Jax’s mouth. He has a real talent for finding them. Once - ONCE - it was roasted chicken carcass IN THE TIDE.

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I would kill myself on these, but I still want them.

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March 8, 2023
State of the TAM - 8th March
I will be joining Rainbow Gold Reviews on March 17th to celebrate their 9th Anniversary! Make sure and join us, specifically me! But there’s lots of cool authors there that day!


And we have a date for GRL registration! I am hoping to go again this year.
Thank you for reading TA Moore Writes. This post is public so feel free to share it.
Pupdate of the WeekWe are having an unexpected cold snap here in NI. Jax has seen snow before but this was Izzy’s first exposure. I think she did pretty well!

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Jax also got his first go in the pool at hydrotherapy. He wasn’t all that sure about that, but hopefully this week will be a little easier. He likes the water, but he’s never been keen on his feet leaving the ground.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browserFree Audio Chapter of the Week
‘Feet of Clay’ by TA Moore is a Lost and Found short story and a prequel to Prodigal. It took fifteen years for Sammy Calloway to find his way home, find out what those left behind did with those years.
You can find Prodigal at most online retailers.


Must Read of the WeekFifteen years ago Sammy Calloway disappeared on his way home from school. Now he’s back… or is he?
Boyd Maccabbee has spent his life second-guessing his actions on that fateful day. What if he’d done something differently? Maybe Sammy would have made it home safe and never become Cutters Gap’s most tragic famous son. Or would it have been Boyd who was never seen again? When the police find new evidence on the disappearance, Boyd hopes to finally get some answers.
The last thing Morgan Graves needs is to be dragged into some old case about a missing kid. He doesn’t know why police hit on his DNA, but he’s not Sammy Calloway. He thinks he’d remember being kidnapped.
He knows he’d remember firefighter Boyd.
Drawn into the complex web of suspicion, grief, and anger that has knit Cutters Gap together in the years since Sammy’s disappearance, Morgan struggles to hang on to himself when everyone already assumes they know him.
And somewhere, the truth about Sammy Calloway is waiting.
I love weird words. This is a fascinating look into the science of this one: petrichor.
Why You Can Smell RainA weather expert explains petrichor – that pleasant, earthy scent that accompanies a storm’s first raindrops.

When those first fat drops of summer rain fall to the hot, dry ground, have you ever noticed a distinctive odor? I have childhood memories of family members who were farmers describing how they could always “smell rain” right before a storm.
This is really fascinating.

I used to live in Newcastle (in England, not the Newcastle down the road which my family thought I was being very over-dramatic about moving to) and I saw a lot of pets walked. Pigs. Horses. Ferrets.
People just want company when they are outside sometimes :)


Look how cool this is! I have been to A LOT of the ones in Northern Ireland and Scotland (most in NI, I’d say, and a good few in Scotland).


Have a little bit of wholesome joy to wrap up!

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February 28, 2023
State of the TAM - 28th Feb
It looks like March is coming in roaring this year, with Met Office warnings of a cold snap and possible snow days. Probably not here, but the pups will still get bundled up in their BEST sweatshirts if the weather turns.
I’m currently on TENTERHOOKS while I wait for the GRL registration to open. My wee nerves, man, I’m not cut out for this sort of thing!
Thanks for reading TA Moore Writes! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Luckily the new season of Unforgotten is out and I’m unashamedly binging it right now. It’s strange to see Sunny without Cassie, but I like the more antagonistic vibe between him and his new boss.
Pupdate of the Week
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I love this frog.


‘Feet of Clay’ by TA Moore is a Lost and Found short story and a prequel to Prodigal. It took fifteen years for Sammy Calloway to find his way home, find out what those left behind did with those years.
You can find Prodigal at most online retailers.


Fifteen years ago Sammy Calloway disappeared on his way home from school. Now he’s back… or is he?
Boyd Maccabbee has spent his life second-guessing his actions on that fateful day. What if he’d done something differently? Maybe Sammy would have made it home safe and never become Cutters Gap’s most tragic famous son. Or would it have been Boyd who was never seen again? When the police find new evidence on the disappearance, Boyd hopes to finally get some answers.
The last thing Morgan Graves needs is to be dragged into some old case about a missing kid. He doesn’t know why police hit on his DNA, but he’s not Sammy Calloway. He thinks he’d remember being kidnapped.
He knows he’d remember firefighter Boyd.
Drawn into the complex web of suspicion, grief, and anger that has knit Cutters Gap together in the years since Sammy’s disappearance, Morgan struggles to hang on to himself when everyone already assumes they know him.
And somewhere, the truth about Sammy Calloway is waiting.
My tiktok has a LOT of hydrotherapy pups at the moment.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browserMust Read of the Week
World building lies in the weird things, like whether Chef Boyardee would be edible after the mushrooms turned on the world.
Aged Like a Fine Ravioli
How do you begin to explain Chef Boyardee—his cultural significance, his canned pasta achievements—to a teenage girl born into a post-apocalyptic world? If The Last of Us is any indication, you can just let the ravioli speak for itself. Said teenage girl, Ellie (played by Bella Ramsey), is an orphan making her way across the country with a middle-aged smuggler named Joel (Pedro Pascal), and in the show’s most recent episode, the two stop to share, and bond over, some camping stove–cooked Chef Boyardee. Ellie offers an instant assessment: “That guy was good,” she says, definitively and without pausing from shoveling it into her mouth.
This is giving me life. I can hear the ‘voices’ so clearly!

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February 21, 2023
State of the TAM - 21st Feb
Jax is very good at hydrotherapy! He’s quite fond of the whole experience.

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And I guess Spoutible ruled itself out as a replacement Twitter since they would count romance book reviews or promo as adult material (I think!). I mean, that’s their call. I just don’t belong there. It’s not the first place that’s not wanted me! You know what gets you ready for rejection? Being told in PRIMARY ONE that you should mime instead of sing in choir and THEN being told you mime too aggressively.
Ah, Mrs McNickel. If she’d not been such a mean woman she could have done a real job on my self-esteem.
Translation News!
The German translation of Night Shift is out from Dead Soft Verlag. Check it out :D
Pupdate of the Week
Izzy is having a hard time adjusting to Jax getting so much attention. She’s in a bit of a spiral. Jax was there for her while she slept it off.

(Just kidding! I have a Christmas/Family visit cupboard of random bottles. She struck when I opened it and went haring around the house with the bottle like the littlest drunky. I managed to get it back from her before she could chew it open.)
Free Audio Chapter of the Week‘Feet of Clay’ by TA Moore is a Lost and Found short story and a prequel to Prodigal. It took fifteen years for Sammy Calloway to find his way home, find out what those left behind did with those years.
You can find Prodigal at most online retailers.


Fifteen years ago Sammy Calloway disappeared on his way home from school. Now he’s back… or is he?
Boyd Maccabbee has spent his life second-guessing his actions on that fateful day. What if he’d done something differently? Maybe Sammy would have made it home safe and never become Cutters Gap’s most tragic famous son. Or would it have been Boyd who was never seen again? When the police find new evidence on the disappearance, Boyd hopes to finally get some answers.
The last thing Morgan Graves needs is to be dragged into some old case about a missing kid. He doesn’t know why police hit on his DNA, but he’s not Sammy Calloway. He thinks he’d remember being kidnapped.
He knows he’d remember firefighter Boyd.
Drawn into the complex web of suspicion, grief, and anger that has knit Cutters Gap together in the years since Sammy’s disappearance, Morgan struggles to hang on to himself when everyone already assumes they know him.
And somewhere, the truth about Sammy Calloway is waiting.
Kinda cracks me up how THIRSTY the World Rugby official account is. :D

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Jax got into the glare down by the shore last year. It smelled like a seagull’s hangover AND it was sticky. I had to wash him in the shore before I could even get him home to the car. I don’t know which would smell worse.


February 14, 2023
State of the TAM - 2nd Feb
Happy Valentine’s Day! In a STRIKING failure as a romance novelist I totally forget what day it was. To be fair to me, though, I forget what the date is CONSTANTLY. The only appointments I reliably keep are the dogs!
Still! I hope people out there who are more on the ball had a great day!
Valentine’s Day sale! 40% off ebooks and select ebooks only 99 cents.


Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browserPupdate of the Week
Life continues! Jax is well and happy, although he could live with Izzy not stealing his nice pre-warmed spot everytime he gets up to go and have a pee! He’s going to have his first hydrotherapy appointment on Thursday. It will be on the water treadmill to start with, partially to get him used to the water.
I have to get some photos and video for them to do a gait analysis tomorrow.

I do worry if she gets enough attention, but I think she’d let me know if she didn’t. She gets lots of cuddles, she is doing GREAT at her training (except for weaving between the dogs, she always wants to stop for kisses!), and most of all she has opinions.

‘Feet of Clay’ by TA Moore is a Lost and Found short story and a prequel to Prodigal. It took fifteen years for Sammy Calloway to find his way home, find out what those left behind did with those years.
You can find Prodigal at most online retailers.


Fifteen years ago Sammy Calloway disappeared on his way home from school. Now he’s back… or is he?
Boyd Maccabbee has spent his life second-guessing his actions on that fateful day. What if he’d done something differently? Maybe Sammy would have made it home safe and never become Cutters Gap’s most tragic famous son. Or would it have been Boyd who was never seen again? When the police find new evidence on the disappearance, Boyd hopes to finally get some answers.
The last thing Morgan Graves needs is to be dragged into some old case about a missing kid. He doesn’t know why police hit on his DNA, but he’s not Sammy Calloway. He thinks he’d remember being kidnapped.
He knows he’d remember firefighter Boyd.
Drawn into the complex web of suspicion, grief, and anger that has knit Cutters Gap together in the years since Sammy’s disappearance, Morgan struggles to hang on to himself when everyone already assumes they know him.
And somewhere, the truth about Sammy Calloway is waiting.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browserMust Read of the Week
Sometimes I read about adventuring and sports and think ‘I could do that!’ or, at least, ‘I wish I could do it’. I mean, you genuinely have NO IDEA how much I want to kick someone in the head. Sadly the last time I did kickboxing at the gym the instructer made fun of me for being unfit (I have ASTHMA! You prick!).
Climbing though? It’s second to spelunking on Things I Will Never Do!
The Controversial King of Hardcore Climbing
After scaling the 14 meanest mountains on earth in record time, Nepali-born Nims Purja emerged as a powerful champion of the country’s Sherpa guides. He’s also become the first celebrity mountaineer of the social media age—and the most controversial figure in the global climbing community.
When I strolled into base camp at Ama Dablam, the 22,349-foot peak known as the Matterhorn of the Himalayas, the mountaineer Nims Purja was locked in a fierce game of beach volleyball. Just beyond the court, in every direction, sprawled a village of tents, some 65 in all, erected by his guiding company, Elite Exped. The outfit is the ultra-ambitious Nims’s latest gambit—a business meant to parlay his status as one of the world’s most celebrated climbers into a venture that pays more than simply breaking mountaineering records. Perhaps more significantly, though, the Nepali-born Nims wants to use the company to upend the old paradigms of the Himalayan guiding industry by cutting the Sherpa guides in on the largesse. And as with anything Nims tries, he has launched it on a grandly immodest scale.
February 2, 2023
FLASH STATE OF THE TAM
Daily Deal for the Digging Up Bones series! $1.23 ebooks.

And to make it worth your while…how cute is this?!? And the puppies so well behaved!

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February 1, 2023
State of the TAM - 1st Feb
People who came for the books probably wonder why my newsletter is all about dogs. But this is what my brain is full of this weather, so you all get to share it with me!
Jax is doing really well still! He’s off his painkillers, being good about not jumping up at the window, and has a fancy new bed that he really enjoys. Well, that he enjoys when Izzy hasn’t stolen it from him.
He’s got his first appointment at the doggie physio next week to see what we’ll be doing there.
Look at the babies! Don’t be fooled. They are usually in motion!

‘Feet of Clay’ by TA Moore is a Lost and Found short story and a prequel to Prodigal. It took fifteen years for Sammy Calloway to find his way home, find out what those left behind did with those years.
You can find Prodigal at most online retailers.


Fifteen years ago Sammy Calloway disappeared on his way home from school. Now he’s back… or is he?
Boyd Maccabbee has spent his life second-guessing his actions on that fateful day. What if he’d done something differently? Maybe Sammy would have made it home safe and never become Cutters Gap’s most tragic famous son. Or would it have been Boyd who was never seen again? When the police find new evidence on the disappearance, Boyd hopes to finally get some answers.
The last thing Morgan Graves needs is to be dragged into some old case about a missing kid. He doesn’t know why police hit on his DNA, but he’s not Sammy Calloway. He thinks he’d remember being kidnapped.
He knows he’d remember firefighter Boyd.
Drawn into the complex web of suspicion, grief, and anger that has knit Cutters Gap together in the years since Sammy’s disappearance, Morgan struggles to hang on to himself when everyone already assumes they know him.
And somewhere, the truth about Sammy Calloway is waiting.


I am addicted to this show. I’m hoping for a happy ending where Catherine heads off into the sunset in her jeep. I’m expecting an ending that’s neither happy nor sad, rather existentially devastating and bitter-sweet.
Pretty much how I use it!

Tommy Lee Royce is not a redeemable or sympathetic bad guy. He’s not really evil either, no more than any nasty thing in the world is. He lacks the moral capacity to be other than what he is, to be better or decide to eschew his better angels. Born or made, he’s just a skinned-raw id in a skin pretty enough that he can pass as long as nothing bumps him.
That said, I love this unexpectedly cinematic sequence in the current series.

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January 25, 2023
State of the TAM - 25th Jan
Do you know how long it is SUPPOSED to take to get to Portadown? An hour. Look! There it is.

Do you know how long it took me to get to Portadown today for Jax’s big check up? Two hours and ten minutes. Traffic. I do NOT miss commuting, I’ll tell you that.
However…*drum roll please*…Jax is doing well! The vet was really pleased with how he’s healed up. We’ve been upgraded from 3 ten minute walks a day to 3 fifteen minute walks a day for the next month. It doesn’t sound like much, but Jax is flaked out now.
Now we just have to finish healing, build him back up, and then we’ll be doing some supportive measures to keep him in fighting trim (physio, hydrotherapy, and maybe accupuncture…although I can’t imagine that will end well.)

He still isn’t allowed to wrestle with Izzy though!

The last monster died a hundred years ago. At least, that's what the monsters want you to think.
Half-monster Cash just wants to keep his head down and raise his daughter, Ellie, to be an upstanding member of monstrous society. Even if she'd rather spend the summer with her human friends than learn the art of man traps at Camp Dark Hollow.
So the last person Cash wants to see is her uncle Arkady Abascal, who's also Cash's ex-boyfriend.
Arkady has more than Ellie's summer plans on his mind. He's there to enlist Cash to find out who's been selling monster secrets. Cash hasn't gotten any better at telling Arkady no, but it's not just his weakness for Arkady that makes him agree. The Prodigium thinks an Abascal exposed them to humans, and now the whole family is at risk-including Ellie.
Recruited to help Arkady identify the culprit-or frame a scapegoat-Cash finds the machinations of monstrous power easier to navigate than his feelings for Arkady. At least, at first. But when things get bloody, he wishes romantic disasters were all he had to worry about....

‘Tailor Made’ by TA Moore and narrated by Garrett Kiesel is a Prodigium short story and a prequel to Cash in Hand. Find out more about the hidden world of ghouls, ghosties, and long-leggedly beasties — although Grandmother thinks that’s just rude!
Either read the short story or listen to the audio!
Pupdate of the WeekMy photo album consists only of puppy pics *lol*

Look how neat this is! I have never been to Devon, but I have drive through it on the way to Cornwall :D



