David Stone: My Life As A Writer

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Originally from Binghamton, New York, David Stone is a New York City-based writer of novels, nonfiction books, online content on several platforms as well as a hard copy journalist and reviewer.

He is the author of the Travels With George series of cat adventure and travel books that are illustrated by his wife, cat artist Deborah Julian.

“My novels spring from a backdrop of the revolutionary Sixties, when the sleepy Post War American conformity and contentment were blown apart from more angles than you can count – civil rights, Vietnam, modern art, beats, hippies and the counterculture. My main character, Peter McCarthy, had his most formative experiences in the Sixties. But then, the energetic decade fell into the disillusion of the Seventies. Peter navigates his way through and beyond.”

Featuring My Greatest Hit as a Gag Writer

Does everyone grow up, knowing what they want to do, watching it emerge out of childhood and take form?

I did, but that’s all history now, and it’s as odd as it is clear. Odd because not one other person in the world out of the thousands I’ve met wanted the same thing.

It put me on a strange journey and one I’ve enjoyed more than anything I imagined.

An artist, a man, a failure, MUST PROCEED.

E. E. Cummings
The Tiny Room

A New Novel… Read it because I loved writing it

By the time I turned sixteen, I had a notebook of poems on the floor under my bed. Unfortunately, my sister tossed them when I was away on one of my teenage escapades.

Free Chapters – On Me

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  A René Magritte Parody: His Invisible CatOctober 31, 2021
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  …And Night, Meditation #10, from the last section of “A Million Different Things”December 29, 2020
  ….And Night, Meditation #10 is from the final section of my book, A Million Different Things: Meditations of The World’s Happiest Man, is all about time and how we learn to create past and future. By
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  A Million Different Things Make One …And Night: Motivation Habits MeditationDecember 14, 2020
  And Night, Meditation #11 is from A Million Different Things: Meditations of The World’s Happiest Man, and is concerned with motivation, habits and meditation. By David Stone The picture… The picture is persistently reinforced within us
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  Enigmatic Epigrams, BABY, IT’S YOU, Chapter 1October 28, 2020
  Enigmatic Epigrams is the first chapter of my novel, BABY, IT’S YOU. It was published in September 2020. davidstone1313 See author's posts
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  Black Cat Parody: How Roy Lichtenstein Changed Art, Then and NowFebruary 21, 2020
  Roy Lichtenstein’s black cat parody… Roy Fox Lichtenstein was one of the most interesting and peculiar artists of the 20th Century. He had a long career of innovative artwork but is best known for a

But my love for words as tools started earlier. I noticed it first when I was in the fifth grade in a Binghamton public school.

I wasn’t a good student, but I remember this first essay about people living on the moon — a decade before the first lunar landing. Not only was it a rare burst of enthusiasm breaking through the tedium, but it was also a hit.

My teacher, Mrs. Kenyon, made only a single correction. My use of the word “inhabitants” was too much for my age, and it was my first lesson in learning to write simply, like a conversation. It also explains my hatred for James Fenimore Cooper and a lot of the other pleasure-crushing density we were then forced to read in school.

My teacher liked my writing so much that, later, she assigned me to read another essay, this one on sassafrass trees, to a sixth-grade class.

Writing fiction…

And, sneakily, when I was sixteen, journalism popped up. It was unexpected because a recruiter suggested it when I considered joining the Navy in 1965. Whoever thought sailors wrote newspapers?

A little later, my admiration for Tom Cawley, a columnist for the Binghamton Press surfaced, and after we met, he wrote a three-part series that started with me. He thoughtfully, evenhandedly covered my commitment to resisting the Vietnam War and the hideous draft that went with it.

All of them — poetry, fiction, articles and journalism — fill up my professional life now. And it’s not as if there’s never been competition. From making a lot of money in technology sales to not much working with vocationally challenged adults, I’ve gained tons of experience and met countless unforgettable people.

A great journey.

But it’s writing, working with words, that came first. And never went away.

By the time I was 20, I’d read and loved a lot of e. e. cummings, Ezra Pound, Robert Frost, Carl Sandberg and many others, but out of all that, this line, not one from any poem, was the phrase I wanted to live with.

It didn’t say, “Never give up,” the standard prescription for success.

No, it said, “You can’t.”

A lesson learned countless times, brokenhearted, out of money, betrayed, stuck with unhappy choices. But you have to get on with it.

Do your best, take the risks and enjoy the pleasures. The pleasures are far more numerous, as it turns out.

The consistent thing, throughout my life, from my first aborted teenage novels and poems, is words. Words put together make sentences, verses, paragraphs, stories and revelations.

Words kept me sane and organized. They taught that they were nothing more than symbols, and symbols are conceptual, imaginary, dynamic. They are never real things but, for many, as close as they will ever get.

You can find all of my books and Kindle short stories on my Author Page. Every one includes a Read Inside feature. Look around. Maybe something will ring a bell.

Try a sample chapter: Lucky To Have Her

Some favorite fiction…

My most ambitious projects were always novels. In a novel, even though you hook into a world you know, you’re creating a universe in the mind of your reader.

That’s exciting because you go there too.

Here are a few favorites…

The World’s Luckiest… Happiest Man…

Some favorite poems…

My second love is poetry, partly I think, because almost nobody reads it, even though it can be the most intense, on-point hit ever. It reaches in and pulls something out. Then, you make it into verses.

Odd though it may seem now, I started writing poems in my mid-teens. Can’t remember what made me start. It was just there, I guess.

Seemed an odd mix though. Baseball and poetry…

Funny though, I never wrote anything about baseball in verse.

David Stone Writer and Journalist

That said, after freelancing journalism for years, I created The Roosevelt Island Daily, a local online newspaper here in New York City of which I’m the founding editor and publisher. I recently upgraded it: Roosevelt Island News

This blog, into which I’ve consolidated all the others I’ve been managing, is a work in progress where I hope to extend the boundaries of free speech and awareness.

Having been disappointed with once-promising article writing sites, like Squidoo, HubPages and Seekyt, I decided, as I have with so many other things, to make up my own rules to the broadest extent possible. WordPress lets me do that.

My books are on my Amazon Author Page.

Bestseller, all-time…

Notes from my Amazon Author Page…

Originally from Binghamton, New York, David Stone is a New York City-based writer of novels, nonfiction books, and online content on several platforms as well as a hard copy journalist and reviewer.

He is the author of the Travels With George series of cat adventure and travel books that are illustrated by his wife, cat artist Deborah Julian.

“My novels spring from a backdrop of the revolutionary Sixties, when the sleepy Post War American conformity and contentment was blown apart from more angles than you can count – civil rights, Vietnam, modern art, beats, hippies and the counterculture. My main character, Peter McCarthy, had his most formative experiences in the Sixties. But then, the energetic decade fell into the disillusion of the Seventies. Peter navigates his way through and beyond.”

Nonfiction:

I don’t know how to explain my nonfiction books, which I never expected to write. But there they were. I had to type them out and put them between covers. These were two of the most surprising, exhilarating experiences I’ve ever had.

The Cat Books

I’m lucky to be married to an artist who loves travel and cats as much as I do. I managed to recruit her to make my stories of George and Billy’s travels come alive in full-color (often funny) illustrations.

What’s on the David Stone Writer blog…?

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  What Animal Intelligence Reveals About Human StupidityMay 18, 2023
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  Humans Mistreat Other Animals. Let Me Count the WaysMay 18, 2023
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  The Conservative Struggle with the Spirit of the 60s: A Quest for ReconciliationMay 18, 2023
  The Hippie Movement of the 1960s and 70s was a time of cultural, social, and political upheaval. It left an indelible
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  Composting Human Bodies in New York Is Now Legal — But Not Quite Available YetMay 17, 2023
  Eggshells, apple cores and lawn trimmings aren’t the only things that can be composted — human bodies can be, too. When
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  How To Make Your Restaurant Stand Out in the CrowdMay 17, 2023
  Understanding how to make your restaurant stand out in the crowd is a great way to separate yourself from the competition. Learn how to do it here.