Our Elaborate Plans

"Moore’s work is consistently fascinating, original and devastating. His characters speak to you from whatever hell they inhabit, with clear, unambiguous voices." – Trevor Denyer

Ralph Robert Moore is back with 20 Horror/Weird/Slipstream stories and novelettes in Our Elaborate Plans. 550 pages, 160,000 words.

A boy who likes digging holes and has a little sister who adores him, and a mother who is dying.

Someone who while urinating feels a lump on one of his testicles.

A magician and his monkey assistant, who absolutely adores him, and a top hat that allows him to pull out all sorts of unexpected objects.

A man who comes back after peeing in the middle of the night to his bedroom and finds a strange woman in bed where his wife had been.

An old man journeys to an abandoned factory in upstate Michigan to an unusual safari where the wildlife driven past isn't animals, but ghosts.

A young boy who has to go in for some medical tests, and a neurotic woman who 'meets' him years later.

What happens when a wife realizes her older husband is showing signs of dementia?

How do you cope when a noise from the sky keeps getting louder and louder, causing more and more people to lose their sense of hearing?

What are you willing to do to appear in a porno as a way to escape working as a short-order cook for a racist employer?

What happens when you rehearse lines in an abandoned model home for an upcoming part and a stranger shows up?

How do you cope when the ghost of your dead dog keeps nipping at you?

Is it really safe to visit with the father of a girl you just met in his workplace far under the Hudson River?

A man who starts following a woman who likes to insert herself into wedding photographs at the local park.

Someone who has to deal with little men running like cockroaches across his ceiling.

An old man who's woken at night by naked men barking behind his backyard's fences, pretending they're dogs.

A man in a wheelchair who wants to bring his lover, seated in a chair in his motel room with a blanket over his body, back to life.

Is it really a good idea for two boys who watch a TV show that gradually gives directions on how to reach a secret house hidden in the woods to seek out that house?

Have you really considered all the precautions you need to take when a freak snowstorm blows through Texas?

What could possibly go wrong when you take your kids and your second wife on a vacation in the islands?

When you see something pass by outside the front glass of an ice cream shop, why do you go to the restaurant's restroom, lock yourself inside a stall, get down on your knees, and start slapping your forehead down on the porcelain edge of the toilet?