M Thomas Apple Author Page

This is the third preview of my upcoming collection of short stories and poems, Notes from the Nineties. In the first part, I explained the background behind the first story and poem pair, Cois Fharriage and Ag an gCrosaire. In the second part, I took a look at some of my experiences in Japan that informed Asian Dreams and Training the Mountain Warrior.

The first story in the anthology takes place in Ireland; the last, in Japan. But I’m from Upstate New York (NOT White Plains and Yonkers; those are downstate for the rest of us), so many of the stories in the middle of the book take place there. Most such stories were originally written for my undergrad or graduate thesis, from ’93 to ’96 (hence, the name of the book, actually…).

“The Lost Bunny Shrine of Annandale” was not written back then. However, the events do take place in the mid-’90s, and the style (I hope) is similar to those stories.

The main event — finding a post dedicated to a bunny rabbit in the middle of the woods — actually occurred. The details are fuzzy (most of the night was…) and of course I’ve changed around the names of the conspirators, as well as combined two or three people into a single character with some exaggerated personality quirks. But there is, in reality, a bunny shrine in Annandale. And we did find it. Among other things.

Yes, there was very little to do at times while at college. It’s probably hard to imagine a world without the Internet now, but that’s the way things were in the early ’90s. Think of a small college campus of a thousand acres or so, in the middle of a rural county with the nearest town about 3 miles away…with no car…no cell phone, no email, no FaceBook, no Twitter, no Instagram (thank GOD), no Pinterest or Tumblr, no…nothing.

(One roommate of mine had a Sega Genesis, to put things in their proper time frame…)

Now add beer and creative, bored, horny teenagers.

Voilá.

What are you waiting for? The Lost Bunny Shrine awaits…