1. About Bill (home)
2. About Bird Lives!
3. Review & Kudos
4. Excerpt from Chapter One
5. Bill's thoughts on Jazz Fiction

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In 1968, Moody was guest drummer with the Gustav Brom Jazz Orchestra at the Prague International Jazz festival, and became caught in the Soviet invasion later that summer. After two more years in Europe, touring and recording with Maynard Ferguson, Jon Hendricks and Annie Ross, Moody returned to Los Angeles to join singer Lou Rawls, and later, pianist Earl Fatha Hines.

For the next next twenty years, Moody played the hotel-casinos in Las Vegas. While there, he began writing for such publications as Jazz Times, Cadence, The Armchair Detective, Popular Culture Journal, and edited LV: The Magazine of Las Vegas. Along the way, he earned an M.A. degree and began teaching at UNLV. For eight years, he was also a Jazz DJ on the university radio station KUNV-FM.

Moody's first published fiction was "The Resurrection of Bobo Jones," in the anthology B Flat, Bebop, Scat (Quartet Books, London). Other short stories include, "The Rehearsal", "Jazzline" in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and "Grace Notes" (Slow Dancer Press, London, 1999). The Jazz Exiles: American Musicians Abroad, based on his experiences in Europe, was published in 1993 by the University of Nevada Press.

Bird Lives! (Walker and Company, 1999) is the most recent in a series featuring jazz pianist-sleuth Evan Horne, which began with Solo Hand (Walker and Company, 1994), and was followed by Death of a Tenor Man (Walker and Company, 1995) and The Sound of the Trumpet (Walker and Company, 1997). Death of a Tenor Man has been optioned for film and is in development with director Steve Jones.

Moody had appeared on NPR's "Sunday Morning" and makes frequent appearances at mystery conventions around the country. He teaches creative writing at Sonoma State University, and continues to be an active jazz performer.