Love Bytes gives a warm welcome to author TA Moore joining us today to talk about her Digging Up Bones Series
Check out the fabulous interview she did!
Welcome TA 🙂
Hi! I’m TA Moore an indie author who writes MM romance hotter than honey and sweeter than sin. Whether you enjoy romantic suspense, urban fantasy, contemporary romance, or…well, that’s about it…I have something for you! Consider me your friendly neighborhood purveyor of crime, curses, and cheap thrills!
Tell us about your new release.
Down to the Bone is the third Digging Up Bones novel and it rejoins Cloister and Javi a few months after the events in Skin and Bones. So just enough time for the dust to settle…ready for everything to kick off again in this book.
How did you decide on the title?
You will have to ask my subconscious! I was set on calling it Bare Bones or Close to the Bone – following the established ‘bone’ based naming convention. Every time I wrote it down, however, I ended up calling it Down to the Bone. So I just gave in and went with it. I know myself, I’d have been constantly mid-correction and end up putting something like ‘Close to Bare’ on Amazon.
…which could have worked for a different book.
It ended up being pretty accurate though. Some things happen that do cut right down to the bones of the character’s previous traumas, and Bourneville gets to do some biting!
What are you working on at present?
Would you like to share a snippet? Well, I am working on a super-secret paranormal romance project. I’d tell you the title, but I’ve not got that NDA back yet (also I’ve not decided on the title, because that’s how I roll. It’s saved as ‘BITEME_2026_V1’ currently.
Which again could work for some books, but this one has neither vampires NOR werewolves in it. I just got annoyed trying to come up with a title because I wanted to write, so it can sit with the Bite Me hat on until I decide.
What is the hardest part of writing any book?
The middle bit, from about 25k to 40k. Up until 25k you are riding on that new book high, writer’s limerence, and throwing all the cool ideas at the wall. From about 40/45k on the weight of the narrative is behind you and pushing you toward the end, the momentum keeps your fingers flying. The middle bit is where you have to make your coffee strong and lean on your craft to make sure everything hangs together and makes sense.
You can usually tell where I am in a book by the direction in which I slump. Forward: starting. Backwards: middle. Hanging onto the edge of my seat by a single sliver of ass-cheek and trying to write with one eye open (the other gets to rest, it’s almost like sleeping!): the end.
….or sex scenes! They can be pretty hard too. I once accidentally removed a character’s ball and, when it was pointed out, refused to admit it for agggges. I insisted it was a deliberate choice and the character had lost ‘lefty’ during the war, and that thematically it represented the imbalance that he needed to correct to make his relationship work.
My editor said I was full of it. Which was fair, and the drawback of working with someone who knows you too well!
Did you learn anything from writing your recent book? What was it?
That if you stop worrying that you’re going to disappoint all the readers and stop worrying that you wrote all the good words you had in you and now you suck and…if you just stop worrying about writing a good book and write the book you want to write?
…it actually turns out pretty good! Like, I really like this book. A couple of times I actually stopped writing and went ‘damn, that’s good’ to myself. I’m Northern Irish. Thinking something like that is one small step from thinking you are someone, so the fact that my granny didn’t appear from across the veil to chide me for getting above myself means…maybe I was right!
Do you have any advice for other writers?
Write the book you want. It’s reaaaaaaallly unlikely you’re the one and only person in the world who wants to read that book (and if you are, this is probably the only way you’re going to get it). It’s also reaallllly unlikely that you can write, edit, market, and publish fast enough to ‘write to trend’. To do that you really need to be very disciplined (many indie authors are, not me but many) AND have access to a big publishing house’s publication docket for next year AND their marketing plans.
Do you write any other genres?
I write romantic suspense, urban fantasy, paranormal romance, AND contemporary romance. I would LIKE to write a romantasy, but I have a publishing schedule to stick to before I can even have a look at that!
My brain is sort of a penny mix bag of ideas. It’s up to fate whether what comes out is a hundred and thousand or a cola bottle!
What book/s are you reading at the moment?
I am ACTUALLY just between books right now! I have just finished Bottle-Shock by Kim Fielding (so good! I love her books!) and am currently dithering over what to read next.
I am currently working on a paranormal romance novella, so it’s got to be contemporary or crime. I have a couple of dark romance mafia books, a hockey romance by Olivia M. Green, and a re-read of Summer of Hush by R.L. Merrill. So I’ll probably pick tonight when I fight the staffies for some sheets in the bed!
What novels do you adore/re-read?
Anything by Tamora Pierce, Sympathy for the Devil by Holly Lisle, and J.T Edson books…I don’t know, man. I love a Western, OK? I used to order all his books from the library and they all ended up coming from the Maze prison, so I’d have to wait for the inmates to be done with them and I’d get these weird, prison smelling books mixed in with my Arthurian legends and Anything about the Morrigan books.
Oh, speaking of which, Simon R. Green books. I once terrified the man at a Fantasycon by a: accidentally flashing him, b: being weird in his general vicinity, c: being on the same floor at him at the hotel so I THINK he thought I was stalking him. However, he is awesome and I love his books.
Which other writers do you follow?
Kim Fielding, R.L. Merrill, Gregory Ashe, C.S. Poe, RJ Scott, KC Wells, Rhys Ford, Kelex, E.L Ough, R.A Frick, Kota Quinn, CD Rachels… 😀 I’m forgetting people! But those are some of the ones I’ve checked in with this week!
Are any of your characters based on you or people you know?
OK, I don’t usually but…there’s one cousin out there who probably would be annoyed if he read a certain book. On the other hand we don’t talk anyhow and he’s a bit of a turd. So he does read it I’ll know that a: he wants something and b: to block his new number.
I mean, genuinely he’s a trial.
Do you have a favourite character and/or book you’ve written? Who, what and why?
*covers their ears* These are my babies, how can you ask me something like that right in front of them?
It’s a genuinely hard one to answer! Every book was written to scratch a certain itch and they usually do that pretty well (for me, at least) so they’ve all got their own strengths. Top of the head though…
Digging Up Bones is always going to make a strong showing! Bone to Pick was the easiest book I’ve ever written, the characters all rocked up already named and fully formed. I had to make the plot make sense, but I didn’t have to spend any of my time getting to know people.
Night Shift was one of my favorite worlds. NO ONE thought it was a good idea, when I described the world to them everyone made this dubious face and asked who it would appeal to. I ignored them all because I just loved it so much. There’s SO MUCH world building on my computer that I didn’t even need to use for the trilogy, so one day I’ll have to go back there!
Finally…Take the Edge Off. It’s sorta secretly a fanfic. There was a show I watched that absolutely squandered the prickly chemistry between their rough-edged bad boy and the sleek, supercilious rich bad boy. The minute the two hooked up with their MILQUETOAST love interests on screen I…well, sulked a little bit! Then decided that if the show runners didn’t like the idea, I still did! So I grabbed it and made it my own.
Do characters and stories just pop into your head, or do you take your time thinking about and planning them?
Bone to Pick I’ve already talked about! Most books don’t come in that fully formed, but I am notoriously a pantser. So usually I get SOME SORT OF IDEA – it could be a character, it could be the world, sometimes it’s been the plot – and then I noodle in the rest of the book around them.
Night Shift was the world.
Cash in Hand was the character.
Collared was just that first scene about the dead man on the bed.
Every Other Weekend was an entirely different book that the main characters came into, looked around, pointed out the dry rot, and refused to be part of so I had to start over! 😀
I don’t really plan out a lot. There’s a rough outline – plot, character arc, a few interesting notes – but if I spend too much time on an outline or a character arc my brain will decide that it’s done its job and nope out of the actual writing part. I just feel like I’ve already basically written it, so why not find something new and exciting instead?
Do you get emails asking why characters didn’t get together and whether you’re going to write more about them?
Yes! Mostly for Digging Up Bones, Dead Man Stalking, and Night Shift. I DO have plans, but I need to work my way through this year’s publication schedule first. I have promised myself to be disciplined. There’s been a lot of stuff going on in my life the last few years that hasn’t been great for…you know…the auld brain and all. But I can’t wallow forever, so my nose is firmly to the grindstone!
How often do you write? Do you have a schedule?
Every day. That’s just me, though, I don’t stand on it as the only way to be…an auteur! I know people who don’t write anything for months and then just hammer out thousands of really well-shaped words in one great big burst of creativity (I once watched Andi Lee sit on a sofa and type 5000 words of a short story on her phone before dinner. With her thumbs alone! You know I love her because we were sharing a room and no one tried to smother her in the night!
Me, on the other hand, if I don’t write one day I’ll have an excuse not to write the next. Then once I get out of the habit I’ll come back and get all up in my own head worrying I can’t write anymore. Then I’ll go and bake some terrible cupcakes or start an ambitious garden project instead.
So I make it a point to get at least some words in.
I don’t have a schedule though. The dogs set that!
What are your writing and personal goals for 2026 and beyond?
OK! It was Match Made, finishing the Digging up Bones trilogy, an paranormal romance trilogy I’m working on NOW, and then Hex Drive to close out the year. Next year I’m doing Dirty Hands, paranormal romance trilogy linked to this years, and the next Lost and Found book. …then a new schedule
!
Are you a cat person or a dog person? Tell us about your pets.
Both! I currently have two staffies. There’s Jax, my angel boy who has never done anything wrong ever in his life (except MAYBE be a witness to the unexpected and inexplicable explosion that claims the life of every toy he’s ever had). And there’s Izzy! Who barks at statues of the Virgin Mary and is scared of the sound of Church Bells.
OK, there’s a chance she’s a demon…but she is also a little cuddle bug!
I also grew up with dogs! My mum had three German Shepherds when I was a kid, her first was Lady who’s the inspiration for Bourneville. When I was a kid I used to think my mum loved Lady more than me, but my mum always said that I shouldn’t think that. She loved us both the same.
However, I have also had cats and I adored them. There was Cromwell, who was a big, knuckle-headed tomcat that just turned up one night and decided we were cool enough to hang with. He wouldn’t stay though, and even when we tried to keep him in he’d make a dash for it and manage to get out between someone’s feet.
Then one day he turned up with a kitten. Murdock was six weeks old and tiny. He was nearly carried off by a seagull once! We got Murdock inside and then Cromwell left and we never saw him again. I always hoped that one of his other families convinced him to be an inside cat.
We kept Murdock, who grew up to be a massive big tabby that our vet accused of being a cairn in a dog suit. We got Jackson, another tabby, to keep him company. Unfortunately Murdock wasn’t too keen on that idea and chewed all of Jackson’s whiskers off in the night. Eventually they got used to each other. They were in their twenties when they died.
Vegas was a little black kitten that broke into the house when my mum was doing laundry and hid for 24 hours until we found him. By that point it was too late to rehome him, we were attached. He was also a big, chunky boy and he loved to sit on your lap when you were on the toilet. He was 23 when he died.
If you were stranded on a desert island, what three things (or people) would you want there with you?
The Five! Me, Rhys Ford, Penny, and Andi Lee. If we can bring people back from the dead for it, then Jenn too. Steve is grandfathered in as Penn’s partner.
The Five of us (and Steve) have been friends for over over thirty years at this point, but we live on different sides of the world so we don’t get together in one location very often. We’d have the best time on a desert island. Me and Andi are kinda useless on practicalities, but Penny is a really good carpenter and Rhys knows how to fish (do NOT go to an aquarium with her unless you want to know how many of the pretty fish are worth eating!).
Thank you.
Digging Up Bones Series
Author: TA Moore
Publisher: Rogue Firebird Press
Cover Artist: Tammy Moore
Book 1: Bone to Pick
Book 2: Skin and Bone
Book 3: Down to the Bone – Releases June 22, 2026
Book 4: SWIPE (a standalone story)
Deputy Cloister Witte has a dark past and a cute dog. He’s happy to talk about the dog.
Genres: Contemporary MM Romantic Suspense/Police Procedural
Tropes: Enemies to lovers, workplace romance, black cat/golden retriever, grumpy/sunshine, best dog in the world
Themes: Coming to terms with your past, dealing with trauma, accepting other people’s acceptance.
The stories are best read in order.
Overall Heat Rating for the series: 3.5 flames
POV/Tense: third person POV/past tense
BOOK DETAILS
BOOK 1
Book Title: Bone to Pick
Length: 261 pages
Release Date: Second Edition 2024 (originally 2017)
Buy Links
Cloister Witte has a cute dog and a dark past. He’ll talk about one.
Blurb
Cloister Witte is a man with a dark past and a cute dog. He’s happy to talk about the dog all day, but after growing up in the shadow of a missing brother, a deadbeat dad, and a criminal stepfather, he’d rather leave the past back in Montana. These days he’s a K-9 officer in the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department and pays a tithe to his ghosts by doing what no one was able to do for his brother—find the missing and bring them home. He’s good at solving difficult mysteries. The dog is even better.
This time the missing person is a ten-year-old boy who walked into the desert in the middle of the night and didn’t come back. With the antagonistic help of distractingly handsome FBI agent Javi Merlo, it quickly becomes clear that Drew Hartley didn’t run away. He was taken, and the evidence implies he’s not the kidnapper’s first victim. As the search intensifies, old grudges and tragedies are pulled into the light of day. But with each clue they uncover, it looks less and less likely that Drew will be found alive.
BOOK 2
Book Title: Skin and Bone
Length: 251 Pages
Release Date: Second Edition 2024 (originally 2019)
Buy Links
Cloister Witte has a cute dog and a dark past. He’ll talk about one.
Blurb
Janet Morrow, a young trans woman, lies in a coma after wandering away from her car during a storm. But just because Cloister found the young tourist doesn’t mean she’s home. What brought her to Plenty, California… and who didn’t want her to leave?
With the help of Special Agent Javi Merlo, who continues to deny his growing feelings for the rough-edged deputy, Cloister unearths a ten year-old conspiracy of silence that taps into Plenty’s history of corruption.
Janet Morrow’s old secrets aren’t the only ones coming to light. Javi has tried to put his past behind him, but some people seem determined to pull his skeletons out of the closet. His dark history with a senior agent in Phoenix complicates not just the investigation but his relationship with Cloister.
BOOK 3 – NEW RELEASE
Book Title: Down to the Bone
Length: 90 000 words
Release Date: June 22, 2026
Buy Links
Cloister Witte has a cute dog and a dark past. He’ll talk about one.
Blurb
Deputy Cloister Witte has a dark past, a cute dog, and an FBI agent. It turns out that all of them are going to cause him problems.
When Cloister Witte disclosed that he was dating FBI Agent Javi Merlo he’d expected it to cause some complications. Dating in the workplace always did. He’d just expected it to be red tape, conflicts of interest, and the occasional asshole who thought his sex life gave them a remit to be funny. A concerted campaign by SSA Everett Kincaid, the new head of the LA office of the FBI, to get Cloister fired hadn’t made the list.
Yet here he is, with his case history and his childhood trauma both under review.
The problem is that Cloister is good at his job, and his K9 Bourneville is even better. So when an employee from the Plenty sub-office of the FBI goes missing, Larkin can’t afford to sideline them anymore. As they get to work Cloister starts to suspect that Larkin’s conviction his organized crime task force is the real target is as off-target as his suspicions about Cloister.
Meanwhile, for Javi Merlo the case is an opportunity to redeem himself. All he has to do is turn a blind eye to how Larkin bends the rules. If he goes along with it he could bring down a major criminal organization, and restart his stalled career…or he destroy his relationship with Cloister and the legacy of his dead mentor.
As rumors of corruption spread, Javi must choose between ambition and the man he loves.
BOOK 4
Book Title: SWIPE ( a standalone story)
Length: 215 pages
Release Date: Second Edition 2024 (originally 2019)
Tropes: Lust at First Sight, Secret Identity, Motorcycle Club, Bad Ideas, Secrets and Lies
Ii is a standalone story and does end on a cliffhanger.
Buy Links
Plenty’s a hotbed of crime, but the men are even hotter.
Blurb
A Novel of Plenty, California
As one of the top trauma surgeons in Plenty’s ER, Dr. Taggart Hayes knows how to fix broken things—fractured legs, ruptured spleens, allergies, and traumatic brain injuries. He can put them back together good as new.
A broken heart, though? That’s a bit trickier. Especially when it’s his own.
When Tag swipes on the photo of the hot man in the dating app, he just wants a distraction from the wreck that used to be his life. A one- night stand with a safely inappropriate stranger, no names, no feelings, and no complications.
But the headless photo on the app belongs to a man who isn’t so easy to forget the next day… or the next week. And it becomes increasingly clear that Bass is neither safe nor uncomplicated. Drawn into the dark, criminal underworld his lover inhabits, Tag has to decide if the cure for his broken heart is worse than the disease.
EVERY COP had their own bible of superstitions.
Down in vice, cockeyed Jimmy Daley swore that every time he pulled in one particular red-haired hooker, the week went to hell. Lieutenant Frome would never admit it out loud, but whenever he hit red at the Mendes and Third intersection, he brought a black mood to work with him. When Deputy Kelly Tancredi was pregnant last year, her biggest complaint was that her lucky bra was uncomfortable.
Cloister knew it was going to be a bad night when the devil winds came rolling in from the desert. It was a given that Southern California was always hot, but the winds parched it dry as well. You couldn’t even sweat without it turning to salt, and where it wasn’t salty, it was sandy.
It was more than just batterers and brawlers pushed over the edges of their own worse natures, though. The winds blew in the sort of bad shit that stuck in your nightmares—little corpses, bruised thighs, questions that never got answered.
Worst thing was, there was no calling in superstitious in the Plenty Sheriff’s Department. You knew everything was going to go to hell, but all you could do was turn up for work and wait for the shit to hit the fan.
Three hours into the midnight shift, and Cloister was still waiting. Maybe he was wrong, but the drunk-and-disorderly collar of a barefoot meth head didn’t weigh on his conscience that much.
Ignoring the yelled orders to “Get down!” and “Put your hands where I can see them!” the weathered, desert-dried-out man had scrambled out of a broken window and run across the parking lot. He ran like an Olympic athlete in the weeds, with his arms pumping and his head thrown back so the tendons in his neck strained under his faded blue tats. It wasn’t going to do him any good, but he put his all into it.
“Why do they always run when it’s hot as hell?” Cloister asked. Nothing ran like a guilty conscience, whatever the weather. Besides, his partner wasn’t one for much chat. Cloister stooped and unclipped her collar in one smooth, practiced motion. She perked up, and her shoulders tensed under her thick ruff of tan-and-black hair, but she held herself back. Cloister put the command snap in his voice. “Fuss!”
She went.
Cloister had worked with a lot of dogs over the years, from his stepdad’s hunting pack to an idiot-savant spaniel in Iraq—it ate rocks but could find explosive residue after five days—but none of them had a prey drive like Bourneville. The black shepherd went off the blocks like a greyhound and cleared the window in a long, clean leap—low enough to make Cloister wince as the shards of broken glass in the frame brushed through her fawn stomach fur. She hit the ground running.
He flicked the leash, wrapped the heavy nylon around his wrist, and took his turn through the window. He felt the constriction of the bulletproof vest as he ducked, and the glass caught in the heavy canvas fabric of his trousers as he folded his six-foot-two length through the dry-rotted wooden square.
Across the parking lot, the meth head scrambled up and over the chain link fence. The barbed wire at the top caught his shirt and ripped it off, leaving a flapping, bloodied rag dangling. He kept running and dodged behind a row of houses.
Bourneville didn’t lose a step as she jumped onto the hood of a parked truck, not even stopping to measure the distance. She stumbled over her paws on landing, nearly cracked her chin, and then was up and off again.
The fence rattled as Cloister hit it, and it swayed as he scrambled up and over. He caught his hand on the wire, and a spur dug into the meat under his thumb. The jab of pain made him grimace, but he didn’t slow down.
He dropped onto the other side and followed the wolf brush of Bourneville’s tail down the back of the houses. The shout and scuffle of the raid at the drug house faded behind him. The habit of risk assessment made him drop his hand to his gun, and his fingers found their familiar spots in the molded plastic grip.
The Heights wasn’t a bad area of town. It was just poor. Unlike some of the other deputies, Cloister had grown up in a place where it was important to know the difference. Poor still meant closed curtains and minding your own business because the sheriff’s gratitude didn’t have the half-life of the local gangs’ resentment.
Couldn’t really blame them. They had to live there, raise their kids there. The last thing they wanted was trouble.
So Cloister kept his hand on his gun, but the gun stayed on his hip.
At the end of the alley, the meth head grabbed a recycling bin and spun it around to shove behind him. It tipped over and spilled bundles of cans and crumpled plastic bottles onto the ground. The obstacle gave him a second’s head start on Bourneville as the dog scrabbled briefly to dodge the skidding box. He gained a few more when Cloister had to kick it out of the way.
It was enough for Cloister to lose sight of Bourneville for a second as she skidded around the corner while he skidded on a piece of greasy plastic wrap. He swore under his breath, put on a burst of speed, and nearly tripped over Bourneville as he raced around the corner to find her just standing still.
Her head was cocked to the side, and she watched the meth head with a confused look. Cloister couldn’t blame her. The scrawny man—all bone and muscle under shrink-wrapped skin—had grabbed a little girl’s bike from the garden. It was pink and still had training wheels on, but the guy was trying to ride it to freedom. His bare feet balanced on the narrow pedals, his skinny ass was in the air, and his knees pumped furiously. All that effort didn’t do him much good. There was more side-to-side motion than forward, but he seemed committed.
“Jesus,” Cloister muttered.
He glanced down at Bourneville, and she looked up at him with the “what now?” tilt to her head that meant her training had briefly been derailed. Her head went to one side and then the other, and her fuzzy black ears flopped.
“Yeah, I’m with you, girl. This is going to be fun to write up.”
TA Moore is a Northern Irish writer of romantic suspense, urban fantasy, and contemporary romance novels. A childhood in a rural, seaside town fostered in her a suspicious nature, a love of mystery, and a streak of black humour a mile wide.
Coffee, Doc Marten boots, and good friends are the essential things in life. Spiders, mayo, and heels are to be avoided.
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