"Oh Threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise"

A book of five short stories

1. "Oh threats of hell and hopes of paradise"

2. "One thing at least is certain, this life flies"

3. "One thing is certain and the rest is lies"

4. "The flower that once has blown forever dies"

5. "I sent my soul into the invisible some letter of the afterlife spell"

My stories (five) are told in the first person and inspired by the "Rubaiyat" of Omar Khayyam, the twelfth century philosopher and Edgar Allen Poe. They tell of rape, murder, a philandering preacher, an engineer driven to the gates of insanity by his perfectionist ideals and a despondent professor attempting to leave his legacy by trying to prove Carl Jung's theory of the collective unconscious. I have been writing on these stories for a few years as the spirit would move me to write. When someone asks me what they are about, or to summarize them, my brain sort of goes into neutral and I really don't know where to start. I generally try to change the subject since I can't summarize in 4000 characters or less what I had for breakfast this morning. If the inquisitive person is persistent I simply offer to let them read the book and then they change the subject. Actually, after meditating upon the "Rubaiyat" of Omar Khayyam and wallowing his quatrains around in my mind for a while, I generally end up writing a little. I think I'm much like Omar; still trying to deduce what this thing we call "life" is all about! My stories touch on things from the simple life of an Appalachian Mountains sharecropper, a dubious country preacher, rape, murder, an arduous and unnecessary flight from justice, snakebites and miraculous healings, the lynching of an innocent black man, and subsistence farm life to, the complicated motives of brainy engineers and chemists attempting to leave their legacy to science by proving knowledge can be transmitted genetically; thereby, proving Carl Jung's theory of the collective unconscious to be valid.

John Fee Gibson was born and raised in the Appalachian foothills of Southeastern Kentucky. He moved to Ohio as a young man where he graduated from The Ohio State University. He was employed in the metals removal industry for several years as a tool and die maker, designer, and computer aided drafting and machining engineer. He received his teaching credentials later in life and held teaching positions with the Southern Ohio College, the Community College System of Kentucky, and the Public Schools of Ohio. Mr. Gibson presently resides in Fairfield, Ohio and is retired.

keywords: Fiction, Short Stories, Rubaiyat, Omar Khayyam, Carl Jung, Life, Murder, Rape, Preacher, Engineer