The Blood Moon

About the Book

Alan Roston is a young man seemingly leading a good life. A college student and skydiver, he has no real worries in his life. Everything is smooth with him until the day he receives a phone call telling him that his sister has been found dead, apparently from an accident. Life has changed more dramatically now than he could ever imagine. And though he doesn’t realize it yet, it will continue to do so even more severely for awhile yet. Right after his sister’s funeral, he is approached by a rogue state police investigator and told that she had actually been murdered.

He changes completely. Everything else in his life is neglected, as is his relationship with his girlfriend, and he becomes completely consumed by the need to identify those responsible and have them taken down. At first, things are promising, but then disintegrate as he finds that he is dealing with a brutal cult and that somehow they are always one step ahead of his plans. Any cop

or FBI agent he becomes involved with gets murdered and he is put to run. Despairing of ever

beating them, he is then further crushed when his now ex-girlfriend takes up with his best friend.

Alan reaches the lowest point he’s ever been at in his life.

Drunk most of the time, Alan is sinking into a hole. His friend intervenes and another plan is hatched. This also turns into disaster, however, as his friend is attacked and another agent with him killed, the friend barely surviving through luck. Both men realize that their only options are to run forever, or turn away from the law and handle things themselves. But they have to move quickly, for the girlfriend has been snatched by the cult and will be murdered in a bizarre ceremony unless they can rescue her first. The cult is attempting to lure them to their deaths in this way, they understand, but they know that they have no choice.

However, Alan concocts a quirky plan that will at least give them a fighting chance: They will parachute into an unlit field during the night, evade the cultists waiting for them out on the roads and infiltrate the ceremony site to rescue the young woman. Both men know that it’s a desperate plan and the chances of dying are great, but neither feels like he has much to lose anyway. The plan is executed and the story culminates in a brutal and bloody massacre, from which one of the friends doesn’t survive.

About the Author

Mark Lashway is a lifelong resident of the Adirondack region of New York, the setting of his novels. A journalism major and English instructor before writing this novel, he is also a U.S. Parachute Association-rated jumpmaster and instructor at Vermont Skydiving Adventures in West Addison, Vermont. He lives in Moriah, New York, with his wife and two daughters.