Wednesday, January 31, 2018

The Story Behind the Story: A Man Called Rabbit

Have you ever wondered where an author gets his or her idea for a story? The stories in  Apparitions: Twisted Tales and Yarns by Jimmy L. Capps and Linda Capps Fisher are based on family yarns of strange happenings, dreams, nightmares, personal experiences, or imagination.

Over the next few weeks, I plan to share the stories behind the stories in Apparitions. ~ Linda

“A Man Called Rabbit” by Linda Capps Fisher
(excerpt)

Rabbit kicked the door open and pointed the gun at the men sitting at the table. “This is a stick up. 

Take off your shoes and britches. Lay face down on the floor.” Rabbit mimicked John Wayne to disguise his voice and lend authority to his words.

Their slowness irritated him, so he prodded them with threats. “I don’t want to kill nobody, but I will if I haff to. You!” he yelled at a young man with fiery red hair, “Put the money in this gunny sack.”

Rabbit barked more orders, and the boy gathered up pants and shoes tossing them off the porch and into the ravine below.

###

The idea for the fiction story, “A Man Called Rabbit,” began with memories of a friendly neighborhood poker game.

We lived in the Ozarks, twenty miles from nowhere. Neighbors were sparse and miles apart by way of dirt, potholed roads. There wasn’t much to do for entertainment, so the men gathered occasionally for a game of poker.

It certainly never occurred to anyone at the game that somebody would have the audacity to burst in and rob them. In the first place, guns were commonplace and everyone knew how to use them. The place was hard to find down unmarked country road and only a limited number of people even knew about the games. No one who lived in the hills had much money, and it certainly wasn’t a high stake game.

To think that a robbery could happen so close to home made an impression on my young mind. Unlike in my fictional story, the robbery was reported, but the crime was never solved. Who knows, it may have been the man called Rabbit.

Read “A Man Called Rabbit”  in Apparitions, available in Kindle and print versions on Amazon.  

Thursday, January 18, 2018

Apparitions: Stories Behind the Stories--The Light on the Ceiling

Have you ever wondered where an author gets his or her idea for a story? The stories in  Apparitions: Twisted Tales and Yarns by Jimmy L. Capps and Linda Capps Fisher are based on family yarns of strange happenings, dreams, nightmares, personal experiences, or solely based on imagination. 

Over the next few weeks, I plan on sharing the stories behind the stories in Apparitions. ~ Linda



“The Light on the Ceiling” by Jimmy Capps
(excerpt)

We were staying the night at Pap and Granny Whittier’s. It was cold outside, and a bunch of the old folks had gathered up at Pap’s house; they did that back then. We were all sitting around the wood stove as they told stories, each trying to out-lie the other. After “hoop snakes” and “baby stealing panthers” had their run, the subject of the “ghost light” came up.

I remember at the time, I wasn’t eager to hear about any ghost light, but what could I do but listen? I couldn’t change the channel, and I was too scared to go into another room.

As they explained it, the ghost light showed itself the night before someone in the family was to die.

###

We grew up hearing stories about our Grandpa Whittle seeing a bright light before deaths in the families. In this story, Jimmy captures the feeling that we had as kids hearing the about the spooky light. It was one of the stories Grandpa told that scared us, but we begged him to tell us..

Sometimes the light was on the ceiling, but I remember one story when Grandpa and my uncle were coon hunting and the light shined down on Grandpa. The light scared my uncle because, although he’d never seen it, he knew about the light. “I thought Poppie was going to die!” he told us. He asked Grandpa to move, but as my uncle told it, the light moved with Grandpa.

Grandpa wasn’t scared, just sad. He knew there were be a death in the family.

Jimmy weaves a fictional story on the basis of a “ghost light” written in the style our Grandpa and uncles spun the yarns of our youth. The story is told in two parts: Jakes’s story and Sis’s story.

Read “The Light on the Ceiling” in Apparitions, available in Kindle and print versions on Amazon.