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.
An artist, a man, a failure, MUST PROCEED.
E. E. Cummings
The Tiny Room
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.
Try Some Free Chapters
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, at this writing, my main occupation is The Roosevelt Island Daily, a local online newspaper here in New York City of which I’m founding editor and publisher. I also recently launched a companion: 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.
Best seller, 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, 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…?
- Seawright Haynes Town Hall BombsThe Seawright Haynes Town Hall put together in haste and shared on Facebook last night bombed. It bombed as any informercial masquerading as a town hall would. By David Stone Assembly member […]
- Can We Fix The East River?Can we fix the East River? The trouble is, the East River isn’t a river. Rivers don’t change directions several times a day. Downstream flow lets true rivers rinse out, but the […]
- Invisible Gorilla? Southpoint Park Toxic WasteIs Southpoint Park toxic waste the invisible gorilla in the room in the redesign? It seems to have slipped everyone’s notice, and that’s the point.
- RIOC Chopped City Part 2RIOC Chopped City, Part 2, provoked by mealy-mouthed excuse-making and evasion, takes an objective look at the careless destruction of inkberry trees. RIOC’s grounds crew decimated a couple of hundred feet of […]
- Roosevelt Island Chopped CityOnce “Tree City USA,” the local New York neighborhood is now “Roosevelt Island Chopped City.” Devastation of local greenery, a years long process, accelerates and adds rudeness and intimidation to the mix.
Googled “Abe -Hicks ” and fraud and you popped up . Thank you for validation . Had a large confrontation with a friend today over Esther . I have seen her as a performer and a manipulator from the very beginning and trying to reason with people about her is akin to doing the same with a Trumpie . It was just what I needed to see . Again …. validation .
Yes, and it reminds me of the groupthink among evangelicals who love Trump, even with all the lies, etc. There’s a whole subset of people who crave a powerful person to attach to. It’s really not about any logical beliefs, which is why they’re so hard to talk to. It’s about the herd or, maybe, the cult.
Googled Young and Rubicam for strange reasons and found both Roy Eaton and you. While I was typing, my old green-eyed black cat sat on the computer . This too is strange. (Hobbs did not purr until he was seven). I have sword never to purchase another book but should I write a memoir it would be entitled ‘ Books in the Bidet’. Do you like wine?
Yes, we like cats and wine.
Thanks.