From the Amazon Author Page…
My Latest Novel…
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.
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
- A RenΓ© Magritte Parody: His Invisible CatRene Magritteβs Invisible Cat and why you canβt see himβ¦ Walking into a room of Rene Magritteβs paintings is like entering a workout gymnasium for your brain. Nothing expected happens with Rene Magritte, even when you expect the unexpected. By David Stone…
- …And Night, Meditation #10, from the last section of “A Million Different Things”….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 David Stone Assorted Ideas, Large…
- A Million Different Things Make One …And Night: Motivation Habits MeditationAnd 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 that there is someone a…
- Enigmatic Epigrams, BABY, IT’S YOU, Chapter 1Enigmatic Epigrams is the first chapter of my novel, BABY, IT’S YOU. It was published in September 2020. Featured Rivercross and the Quiet Green Light The Votes, the Conflicts, and the Sudden Exit of Margie Smith and Fay Christian Theo…
- Black Cat Parody: How Roy Lichtenstein Changed Art, Then and NowRoy 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 short burst of comic book parodies….
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…
Novels started early too. My first, scratched out on lined, school paper, featured an interracial romance, but in a million years, I can’t tell you where that idea came from. Certainly not from experience, but race relations were a hot topic then, the early Sixties. Maybe I absorbed something.
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…
Click to play.
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…
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.
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.
The Cat Books
- Navigating Apps with Changes in Memory: Join Our StudyWeill Cornell Medicine seeks older adults with mild memory loss for a study on improving navigation apps. Participation is valuable, and compensation is provided. Join us!
- Camouflage or Catouflage? Ai Weiwei Artwork in Four Freedoms Inspired by Wildlife Freedom FoundationAi Weiwei’s installation “Camouflage” on Roosevelt Island features cat patterns, emphasizing how animals, unharmed by human crises, suffer the consequences of such events.
- New York Times Wins My First Annual Dimwit Health Reporting AwardThe New York Times’ anti-alcohol article misrepresents health risks, failing to provide essential context and maintaining bias, while neglecting more pressing public health issues.
- What Shapes American Conspiracy Theories?In a recent New York Times article, the claim that television shows like the X Files created paranoid conspiracy theorists in America is challenged. David Stone argues that distrust in government stemmed from historical events, notably the 1963 assassination and subsequent cover-ups. He asserts that skepticism existed prior to such entertainment influences.
- East or West Coast: Where to Have Your Beach WeddingPlan your dream beach wedding! Discover top East and West Coast destinations, compare unique vibes, and explore expert tips to ensure the perfect day.
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A Different Kind of Bet
For years, Roosevelt Island did not behave like a system constrained by limits. Internally, the budget was often treated less as a boundary and more as a reservoir to be used.
Hello, I’m ordering the Kindle version of ‘Tangled Up in Abraham Hicks’. Many years ago I ordered their dvds, it was sort of fun to watch. Then I saw the expensive priced cruises they offered. While her fans gave her more money, most likely while they book their interior closet size cabins, I felt 100% sure that Esther would not have a mere balcony (that is for peasants), but rather the largest suite on the cruise ship, including a private ‘butler’. When I told a friend that I considered Abraham just ‘for entertainment purposes’ she wrote me an angry letter ‘hinting’ that Abraham was her catalyst for spiritual growth, and she was a big advocate for ‘The Pleidians, the enlightened beings from the galaxy, assisting humans on earth for big things coming to our planet. Anyway, my whole point in writing you is that I look forward to reading this book, and also, to please possibly check out Sara Landon, who claims to channel ‘The Council’. The hysterical part is she starts channeling in a (Scottish?) accent, duplicates some key phrases from Abraham/Esther, and then always speaks in her regular voice and dialect after about 5 minutes. It must be difficult for her to keep up with the phony Scottish or Irish accent. Sara Landon wants to be the next Esther, and is promoted by Mike Dooley, the other Hay House author/lecturer. I am so glad to see anyone writing about this topic of channelers. Thank you.
Interesting stuff, Renee. There always have been pretenders. In fact, Esther and Jerry pretty much stole their whole schtick form Shiela Gillette. Their philosophy is dumbed down Seth. So, no surprises there. The gist of “Tangled Up in Abraham Hicks” is about how I found them inspiring at first, then saw the desperation when Jerry died from leukemia. The wild rationalizations blew the lid off. Eventually, among the research finding was an earlier, much more depressing Abraham in the two “New Beginnings” books. (Unlike their claims, these were early trial runs that failed. They projected a scary end of the world scenario, much like the doomsday religions. Only after that failed to make money did the all new Abraham arise.
Thanks and enjoy the read.