New Woodland Press Novel Attracts Attention Across Appalachia

CHAPMANVILLE, W.Va. - Inspired by the murders of Mared Malarik and Karen Ferrell in Morgantown in 1970, Full Bone Moon, a powerful new novel by G. Cameron Fuller and published by Woodland Press, LLC, continues to generate positive reviews and attract book-readers across the Appalachian states.

As his book again focuses on the puzzling, violent murders that once captured national attention, Fuller has announced he'll appear at Morgantown Barnes and Noble—to further discuss the work, meet-and-greet customers, and sign copies of the novel—on Sun., April 29th, from 2 - 5 p.m. He'll also use the opportunity at the bookstore to discuss various details relating to the original crime with visitors.

"It's great to come back to my hometown for this kind of event," said Fuller, now a resident of Charleston. "I'm especially appreciative that this new offering has generated such positive interest among readers."

Full Bone Moon is largely based on the actual co-ed slayings in Morgantown that took place over forty years ago. Fuller, who has been researching the actual case for the last few years, has penned a powerful work that employs the many rumors and speculation that swirled around the state after the killings, and continue to this day. Rumors of cult activity, high society complicity, police corruption and coverup, and FBI treachery are woven together in Full Bone Moon to take the reader on a wild ride—a fast-paced fictional thriller—through the Coed Murders as they could have happened.

As the back cover of the novel aptly describes, someone is killing university students. Again.
 
Six years ago, two WVU freshmen were last seen hitchhiking back to their dorms after seeing a movie in downtown Morgantown, West Virginia. Their bodies were later found in the dark woods south of town. E.P. Clawson was convicted of the murders, but Michael Chase, a reporter for the Herald-Dispatch, never thought Clawson was guilty — a belief that nearly cost him his career. 
Now the murders have started again. Female WVU students are disappearing, and their defiled bodies are found with ritual markings. Full Bone Moon, a new book by Woodland Press, follows Michael Chase as he tracks the ritual killers through the streets, underground tunnels, and forests of Morgantown.
 


"It's gratifying to see a Woodland Press title get this type of national attention and recognition—and it's especially exciting to see Mr. Fuller's work build such a name in Appalachia," said Cheryl Davis, of Woodland Press. "The book is an action-packed page-turner that continues to attract and satisfy readers everywhere."

Geoffrey Cameron Fuller’s first writing apprenticeship began when he showed a few pages of his first hand-written novel to his father, Winston Fuller, an associate professor of English at West Virginia University at the time. Geoff was nine years old.

“I was imitating what I was reading, science fiction adventure stories,” Fuller says. “He changed the opening words—All of a sudden—to Suddenly. He told me that words should sound like what they are describing. Suddenly is more immediate than All of a sudden.”

This early lesson taught Fuller, who writes fiction under the name G. Cameron Fuller and nonfiction as Geoffrey C. Fuller, that much of the work of writing entails rewriting, crafting words until they achieve a precise affect. In the ensuing thirty years, Fuller has worked in a variety of styles and genres—some for love, some for money. The range of Fuller’s craft led him to be the only person to win prestigious West Virginia Literary Fellowships in fiction, nonfiction, and memoir.

Fuller’s nonfiction has been published in local and statewide newspapers as well as in national magazines like Dirt Bike and Writer’s Digest, for whom he not only wrote articles on craft but also contributed to a regular feature, Writer’s Clinic. His nonfiction work has also appeared in trade journals, government white papers, and a number of text- and tradebooks.

But fiction remains closest to his heart. In addition to a long list of short stories and sudden fiction published over the years, his novel, Full Bone Moon, was published this year by Woodland Press.

“When I decided to try writing crime fiction, I chose to base the novel on a terrible crime that rattled the small town in West Virginia, where I grew up,” Fuller says. “In 1970, two WVU freshmen were hitchhiking back to their dorms after a movie. Their headless bodies were found three months later in the woods about ten miles south of town.”

A man, Eugene Paul Clawson, was convicted of the crime, but many people around the state, Fuller included, don’t believe he did it.

“There were a lot of rumors floating around the whole time I was growing up, and I wanted to use those rumors—of cults and police involvement, of official coverup—into a crime thriller in the tradition of James Patterson. Full Bone Moon is a page-turner with a touch of the paranormal. It’s scary but not graphic, more Hitchcock than Chain Saw Massacre.”

This year, Fuller also won first place nationally in the crime fiction category for Writer’s Digest, the same contest in which his wife, Karin, won first place in the romance category—the first time a husband and wife have both won at the same time in the Writer’s Digest fiction contest.

For additional information about G. Cameron Fuller, or to order his bestselling novel, Full Bone Moon, follow this link: http://www.woodlandpress.com/book/fiction/full-bone-moon