Are you suffering from Holiday Newsletter Envy? I have the solution

Christmas means soon you will be feeling lower than dirt after reading the holiday newsletters of relatives and friends, the creeps.

These newsletters are filled with glowing accomplishments that exceed anything you can conceive, much less actually do.

But that doesn’t mean you are doomed to second-class newsletter citizenhood. You too can circulate a stunning holiday missive that will have your friends sucking for oxygen like a carp thrown ashore by a passing bass boat. How?

You lie.

For instance, check the following newsletter I will distribute in my Christmas cards this Yule season.

The year 2004 held glad tidings and large possibilities for the Stone family, and it is likely 2005 will only build on our ego-shattering accomplishments.

Let us begin with news of Muffy Squab Abercrombie, our youngest daughter, who won five gold medals at the Athens Olympics despite entering only four events. She took first-place victories in the categories of speed-crocheting, women’s synchronized shrieking, shopping and marksmanship with a potato gun. And that mysterious fifth gold medal? Well, the scamp used her potato gun to subdue a querulous South Korean weightlifter who felt he’d been robbed of the gold in the men’s snatch-and-hernia competition and grateful Olympic officials awarded her the medal in his stead.

Our other daughter, Roe-Versus-Wade, recently obtained simultaneous doctorates in anthropology, nuclear medicine, cosmology and semiotics from Harvard, Yale, Cambridge and the University of Phoenix Online. She plans to pursue a career translating IRS tax codes into a dead Teutonic tongue.

Our son, Throckmorton Smythe Uppington, was recently knighted by the Queen of Denmark for thwarting a sinister plot to use Olestra in the making of pommes frittes, disrupting toilet paper commodity prices. He plans to assume ownership of a villa on the palace grounds once he has accepted the Nobel Prize for isolating an anti-carcinogenic agent in a nearly extinct newt he discovered inhabiting the toilet of his dacha in Murmansk.

My wife, Janet Reno, who is secretly a woman, has also been busy in the prize-collecting department, having won the Oscar, the Pulitzer, the Publisher’s Clearinghouse, the CDC’s Friends of the Paramecium Award, and the NRA’s Hit Me With Your Best Shot Award for a pamphlet, video and children’s interactive nasal inhaler that tells the story of Waldo the Lonely Bacteriophage who has developed an immunity to antibiotics and must be put down lest he create a global pandemic.

As for moi, in 2004 I converted a certain notorious terrorist to Christianity, which will be announced on an upcoming reality television series titled “Bora-Borans in the City.”

And there you have it, my lessers. We hope you and yours achieve equally satisfying though less ambitious goals for the new year!

This was originally published in the Dec. 11, 2004 edition of the Northwest Florida Daily News and is used with permission.

About the author:

Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”

Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.

As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.

Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .