Kelly Moore (writer)

Kelly Moore is an American author and former civil litigator. Her 1988 book Deadly Medicine, which focused on the crimes and trial of serial killer Genene Jones, was a New York Times bestseller for seven weeks.^[1] Amber House, the first installment in her young adult fiction series, co-written with her daughters Tucker Reed and Larkin Reed, was published by Scholastic's Arthur A. Levine Books imprint on October 1, 2012.

Biography

Moore was born at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station, site of the 1937 Hindenburg disaster, on August 30, 1956, the fourth child and only daughter of Commander Lundi Addison Moore and his wife Delores "Lore" Moore (née Pike). Moore and the family relocated constantly throughout her youth, finally settling in California. There Moore attended Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, California, and then Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, California. According to interviews, Moore became fascinated by the nearby Winchester Mystery House during her time in the city; Sarah Winchester's infamous mansion would later influence Moore's first novel, Amber House.^[2]

Moore pursued a law degree, graduating from UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law in 1982. She relocated to Los Angeles to practice civil and family law. At a holiday party in 1983, a mutual friend introduced Moore to actor Dan Reed; the two would go on to co-write the New York Times bestseller Deadly Medicine, moving to Texas in 1984 to research and investigate the sixty infant deaths associated with pediatric nurse and convicted killer Genene Jones.^[3] The couple worked closely with one of the leading investigators of the case, who helped the writers to shed light on the administrative failings of San Antonio's Medical Center Hospital.^[1]

The couple's first child, Aisling Tucker Moore Reed, called Tucker, was born in Los Gatos, California, in 1989, two days before the Loma Prieta earthquake that devastated the Bay Area. In 1991, a feature-length television adaptation of Deadly Medicine aired on NBC, starring Susan Ruttan and Veronica Hamel.^[4][5] At this time, Moore and Reed attempted to adapt Amber House into a television show. When the two failed to sell the project on their own, Reed suggested Moore approach his sister-in-law, Maureen Grady, in 1994. Moore collaborated for a time with Grady and Grady's friend, actress Nancy Harewood, but the project was abandoned by 1997.^[2]

In August 1994, Moore began work at T. Patrick Freydl & Associates; among the clients represented by the firm was Guess model and Playboy Playmate of the Year Anna Nicole Smith. Together, both Moore and Smith parted company with Freydl in the spring of 1995, with Smith retaining Moore as her personal representation. Moore represented Smith on a number of cases (including Smith v. New Yorker Magazine, Harry Winston v. Smith, Cerrato v. Smith).^[6][7][8][9] For Smith's battle with her stepson, E. Pierce Marshall, over claims on her late husband's estate, Moore brought Marshall v. Marshall (the landmark case that would be argued before the Supreme Court in 2006) to the law firm of Kinsella, Boesch, Fujikawa and Towle. Throughout 1995 and 1996, Boesch, Moore and lawyer Mark Brown successfully established that E. Pierce Marshall engaged in fraud upon the courts in an effort to conceal that he had conspired to defraud Smith of her rightful share of the Marshall estate; in 2013, the Ninth Circuit District Court affirmed multimillion-dollar sanctions against the estate of E. Pierce Marshall for these tactics.^[10]

Moore left the Smith case in 1998, divorced Reed, retired from practicing law altogether, and, with her three children (Larkin, born in 1993, and St. John, born in 1996), moved to Oregon.^[11] In 2009, Moore's eldest, Tucker, began to research Moore's genealogy, which can be traced through Commander Moore to Stephen Hopkins, Jamestown colonist and signer of the Mayflower Compact.^[12] Tucker located a box in the family attic which held Moore and Reed's earliest notes on and drafts of the Amber House story. Believing the concept well-suited for young adult literature, Tucker persuaded her mother to collaborate on a novel; Moore's daughter Larkin was later included in the collaboration, as well.^[2]

The ladies sold their novel (and two sequels) to the Arthur A. Levine imprint of Scholastic Press in 2011. Amber House was released to positive reviews on October 1, 2012.^{[13][14][15][16]} Its sequels, Neverwas and Otherwhen, are slated for 2014 and 2015, respectively.^[17][18]

Bibliography

• Deadly Medicine (1987, with Dan Reed)^[19]
• Amber House (2012, with Tucker and Larkin Reed)^{[13][14][15][16]}
• Neverwas (2014, with Tucker Reed and Larkin Reed)^[20]

References