Where does inspiration come from: Caleb Pirtle
I don’t personally know any writer as prolific as Caleb Pirtle. His mind is just bursting with inspiration, most of which he derives from his own life experiences. I’ve read several books by him and have been completely captivated by the characters and the settings. They feel so authentic because Caleb has been around the folks of East Texas all his life. He distills their traits and personalities down and creates characters who spring to life on the page, full of quirks, foibles and luck of both varieties. He stirs in mystery, ulterior motives, life-threatening situations, murder and a generous helping of luck, both good and bad.
In addition to having penned over two dozen books, Caleb started his writing career as a newspaper reporter, which led to being the travel editor for Southern Living Magazine. He’s also written a film script and a mini-series. The man’s creativity knows no bounds!
When I asked Caleb to share what inspires him to write these indelible stories, I learned he was literally born into his role as astute observer. The hard scrabble of indifferent Texas terrain became the foundation on which his stories grew into larger than life characters that seem so real, you feel like you know them.
It’s my pleasure to share his inspiration for those stories:
I grew up in the East Texas oil patch. The first sound I remember was the creaking and the groaning of overworked pump jacks coaxing black gold from deep within Woodbine sand. The first images I remember were those derricks climbing into the night sky, silhouetted against the distant rumble of thunder and flashes of jagged lightning as storms pounded the piney woods.
I sat for years and listened to oilmen tell the story as they pieced together those years when the Great Depression threatened to turn Kilgore into a ghost town and cotton fields into a wasteland The town survived because of one man who searched for oil and one woman who dare to let him drill his well on her land.
Dad Joiner rode into East Texas by train, quoting the Bible as passionately as any brush arbor evangelist, promising to drill for oil and vowing he would tap into a “treasure trove that all the kings of the earth might covet.” He had forty-five dollars in his pocket, and he was quietly buying up oil leases from hungry farmers and homesteaders who thought that a dollar an acre was big money. After all, a dollar an acre separated the poor from the dirt poor, and maybe a tired old man with slumped shoulders actually did have the ability to find enough oil to lighten their load and wash away the harsh times.
Dad Joiner sat down with Daisy Bradford and, with as much poetry as his old heart could muster, explained how fortunes made from oil could greatly benefit the impoverished region that was suffering from the curse of the Great Depression.
His words painted vivid portraits of new schools, new hospitals, new museums. Hunger would have to pack up and go somewhere else because tables would be full for a change, he said. There would be jobs for men and groceries for babies.
Dad Joiner could make it happen, he said. All he needed was leases on her land. The old wildcatter could drill anywhere he wanted in East Texas, but it was her land that sheltered the oil. Her land could make a difference.
Daisy Bradford was a good and Christian woman, and his plea suddenly gave her a new purpose in life. She and Dad read the Bible together and breathed a silent prayer as they watched the sun drop down behind the pines. Daisy Bradford leased him 925.5 acres for fifty cents an acre. It was the least she could do to chase away the misery and poverty that had settled down like vermin around the farmsteads of her neighbors. Now all Dad Joiner had to do was find $462.75 to pay her.
The story has stayed bottled up inside me for years. I finally summoned up enough nerve to tell it in my Boomtown mystery series: Back Side of a Blue Moon, Bad Side of a Wicked Moon and Lost Side of an Orphan’s Moon.
The discovery of the East Texas field was the stuff of fiction. The series is pure fiction, a great deal of it is based on stories, gossip, and rumors I heard as a boy. I took the facts, re-shuffled them, and came up with my own stories. But there are a lot of Kilgore and Henderson stuffed inside those words.
There was never a hint of romance between Dad Joiner and Daisy Bradford. He was too old. She was too religious. In Blue Moon, however, Doc Bannister comes to town searching for oil, and he is the genuine con artist and flimflam man that everyone in East Texas believed Dad Joiner to be.
Eudora Durant owns the land. She’s poor. The land’s poor. Her abusive husband is missing. The whole town of Ashland believes she killed him. It’s a story perfect for love.
We meet Eudora this way:
EUDORA DURANT KNEW there must be a hundred or more good ways of dying, some better than others, some worse, and she wondered why she had insisted on taking the slowest path possible to the grave. She couldn’t blame anyone for her lot in life. All she had to do was look in the cracked mirror beside her bed from time to time, and she knew where the blame fell, and it landed squarely on her shoulders. Eudora possessed a winsome smile as warm as mid-day in August. Feel bad? Feel blue? Feeling sorry for yourself? Just wait ‘til Eudora comes walking by and smiles at you. You’ll be cured between good and morning.
Here is the way Doc entered the story:
DOC BANNISTER WAS an illusion. Waskom Brown had him pegged a long time ago. But then, Waskom Brown was the only daddy Doc ever had, and Doc was twenty-five years old before he crossed paths with old Waskom in a Hot Springs house of ill repute, and Doc would be dead as hell if Waskom hadn’t come along when he did. Doc was on the run, traveling from one con to the next scam, and the back roads could run out pretty fast for a man during the patchwork years of the 1930s.
Back Side of a Blue Moon is the story of two people fighting the odds, hoping to survive heartache and hard times. Will they find oil? Maybe. Will they find love? That’s the only reason the novel was written. I didn’t know one way or another until the last sentence had been hammered into place.
In addition to having penned over two dozen books, Caleb started his writing career as a newspaper reporter, which led to being the travel editor for Southern Living Magazine. He’s also written a film script and a mini-series. The man’s creativity knows no bounds!
When I asked Caleb to share what inspires him to write these indelible stories, I learned he was literally born into his role as astute observer. The hard scrabble of indifferent Texas terrain became the foundation on which his stories grew into larger than life characters that seem so real, you feel like you know them.
It’s my pleasure to share his inspiration for those stories:
I grew up in the East Texas oil patch. The first sound I remember was the creaking and the groaning of overworked pump jacks coaxing black gold from deep within Woodbine sand. The first images I remember were those derricks climbing into the night sky, silhouetted against the distant rumble of thunder and flashes of jagged lightning as storms pounded the piney woods.
I sat for years and listened to oilmen tell the story as they pieced together those years when the Great Depression threatened to turn Kilgore into a ghost town and cotton fields into a wasteland The town survived because of one man who searched for oil and one woman who dare to let him drill his well on her land.
Dad Joiner rode into East Texas by train, quoting the Bible as passionately as any brush arbor evangelist, promising to drill for oil and vowing he would tap into a “treasure trove that all the kings of the earth might covet.” He had forty-five dollars in his pocket, and he was quietly buying up oil leases from hungry farmers and homesteaders who thought that a dollar an acre was big money. After all, a dollar an acre separated the poor from the dirt poor, and maybe a tired old man with slumped shoulders actually did have the ability to find enough oil to lighten their load and wash away the harsh times.
Dad Joiner sat down with Daisy Bradford and, with as much poetry as his old heart could muster, explained how fortunes made from oil could greatly benefit the impoverished region that was suffering from the curse of the Great Depression.
His words painted vivid portraits of new schools, new hospitals, new museums. Hunger would have to pack up and go somewhere else because tables would be full for a change, he said. There would be jobs for men and groceries for babies.
Dad Joiner could make it happen, he said. All he needed was leases on her land. The old wildcatter could drill anywhere he wanted in East Texas, but it was her land that sheltered the oil. Her land could make a difference.
Daisy Bradford was a good and Christian woman, and his plea suddenly gave her a new purpose in life. She and Dad read the Bible together and breathed a silent prayer as they watched the sun drop down behind the pines. Daisy Bradford leased him 925.5 acres for fifty cents an acre. It was the least she could do to chase away the misery and poverty that had settled down like vermin around the farmsteads of her neighbors. Now all Dad Joiner had to do was find $462.75 to pay her.
The story has stayed bottled up inside me for years. I finally summoned up enough nerve to tell it in my Boomtown mystery series: Back Side of a Blue Moon, Bad Side of a Wicked Moon and Lost Side of an Orphan’s Moon.
The discovery of the East Texas field was the stuff of fiction. The series is pure fiction, a great deal of it is based on stories, gossip, and rumors I heard as a boy. I took the facts, re-shuffled them, and came up with my own stories. But there are a lot of Kilgore and Henderson stuffed inside those words.
There was never a hint of romance between Dad Joiner and Daisy Bradford. He was too old. She was too religious. In Blue Moon, however, Doc Bannister comes to town searching for oil, and he is the genuine con artist and flimflam man that everyone in East Texas believed Dad Joiner to be.
Eudora Durant owns the land. She’s poor. The land’s poor. Her abusive husband is missing. The whole town of Ashland believes she killed him. It’s a story perfect for love.
We meet Eudora this way:
EUDORA DURANT KNEW there must be a hundred or more good ways of dying, some better than others, some worse, and she wondered why she had insisted on taking the slowest path possible to the grave. She couldn’t blame anyone for her lot in life. All she had to do was look in the cracked mirror beside her bed from time to time, and she knew where the blame fell, and it landed squarely on her shoulders. Eudora possessed a winsome smile as warm as mid-day in August. Feel bad? Feel blue? Feeling sorry for yourself? Just wait ‘til Eudora comes walking by and smiles at you. You’ll be cured between good and morning.
Here is the way Doc entered the story:
DOC BANNISTER WAS an illusion. Waskom Brown had him pegged a long time ago. But then, Waskom Brown was the only daddy Doc ever had, and Doc was twenty-five years old before he crossed paths with old Waskom in a Hot Springs house of ill repute, and Doc would be dead as hell if Waskom hadn’t come along when he did. Doc was on the run, traveling from one con to the next scam, and the back roads could run out pretty fast for a man during the patchwork years of the 1930s.
Back Side of a Blue Moon is the story of two people fighting the odds, hoping to survive heartache and hard times. Will they find oil? Maybe. Will they find love? That’s the only reason the novel was written. I didn’t know one way or another until the last sentence had been hammered into place.
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