Image courtesy of Flickr user Dennis Church by way of a Creative Commons license. https://www.flickr.com/photos/dfc_pcola/
When I want to experience nature in the flesh NATURE’S flesh, that is, not mine – I don’t hike in the woods. I go to the golf course. Such was the case the other day when Scott, my golfing accomplice,… READ MORE
Image courtesy of pxfuel.
Lately, torch-wielding mobs have been gathering at my front door, demanding to know what I want for Christmas this year. These mobs are in luck, because after thinking about last year’s very sad Christmas, when I received mere thousands of… READ MORE
In this photo the author (left) greets a visitor to the Northwest Florida Daily News' booth at a local festival. As you can see, the author is overjoyed by the warm - make that cold - greeting the visitor had to offer, which probably resulted in even more gray hairs appearing in his head. Photo courtesy of the Northwest Florida Daily News
This morning I thought we would take an intimate look at eye crud, but a vastly more important issue has since arisen: Apparently I’ve reached that point in life when, in order to continue looking young, I must give Mother… READ MORE
Image courtesy of MGM/UA.
“Pumpkinhead” Starring Lance Henriksen, Jeff East, John D’Aquino and Florence Shauffler. Directed by Stan Winston. 86 minutes. Rated R. Amazon Prime. Del’s take They had me at the cicadas. If I remember the South for anything it will be sluggish… READ MORE
Image courtesy of Quinn Dombrowski by way of a Creative Commons license. https://www.flickr.com/photos/quinnanya/
As a homeowner, I have had my eyes opened to a range of marvelous new experiences, many of them requiring the absence of money. One such experience is a clogged drain. In the halcyon days of my youth, a clogged… READ MORE
Who knew I had such deep thoughts?
Filmmakers would have you believe every hour of every day is fraught with adventure. The typical cinematic day begins with an illicit love affair followed by a mysterious telephone call, a car chase and a narrowly thwarted assassination attempt.
But life rarely imitates art. This occurred to me recently as I was standing in an office supply store. The clerk had just told me IBM manufactures a ribbon cassette that is compatible with my Royal typewriter. That made me happy – inordinately happy. And I didn’t know why.
After all, small success stories such as these are not the stuff of which entertainment is made. Had I not been taught by 25 years of watching television and movies that a person could not be truly happy unless he were realizing his most extravagant dreams?
It had been a good day, so far, and as I went over the events that had made it that kind of day, I began to remember something many of us often forget under the barrage of video and celluloid fantasies.
That morning, I finally discovered a place where our writers’ group could meet. I belong to the Redneck Riviera Writers Group. We get together twice a month and compare notes on the business of writing. We had been meeting at people’s homes, or local eateries, but it soon became obvious that if we were to expand beyond our current membership of five people, we would have to find a permanent meeting place. After a fruitless search, we found a new home at the YMCA, courtesy of Joe Lukaszewski. That made me feel good.
Something else nice happened that morning. I found a book of Ramsey Campbell short stories I hadn’t known existed. I’m a student of the short story and Campbell is a bona fide master. The book should be fascinating.
I also picked up what I think will be the perfect gift for a friend. It, too, is a book of short stories, but these are special. I had never seen the book outside of the one copy I’d been hoarding for myself. Now she can enjoy it too.
Pop artist Andy Warhol died recently. In one of his obituaries I came across a reference to a movie of his titled “Sleep.” The movie depicted a person sleeping. That’s it. Two hours of a person sleeping. The entertainment virtues of the film are less than dubious and the artistic virtues debatable, but I think I understand what Warhol might have been saying.
The small, mundane successes and failures - things that would end up on the cutting room floor – are the body and texture of life. They are what make life an endlessly fascinating experience. Spilling coffee on the living room carpet. Finding a letter from a friend in your mailbox. The thousand things that you forget a day after they’ve happened. They are what get us through accomplishments to crises.
So it was a pretty good day. Not great, but not horrible. Just something to be thankful for.
This column was published in the Sunday, January 10, 1988 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 .
Who knew I had such deep thoughts? Filmmakers would have you believe every hour of every day is fraught with adventure. The typical cinematic day begins with an illicit love affair followed by a mysterious telephone call, a car chase… READ MORE
This is the Sunday, Feb. 7, 1988 edition of the Northwest Florida Daily News featuring the new name and new look. Image by Del Stone Jr.
Our newspaper, the Daily News, has embarked on an ambitious redesign project which I am overseeing, and this has given me the opportunity to investigate many important design questions, foremost among them the question of how much am I going… READ MORE
Image courtesy of Concorede Pictures.
“Chopping Mall” stars Kelli Maroney as Alison Parks, Tony O’Dell as Ferdy Meisel, Russell Todd as Rick Stanton, Karrie Emerson as Linda Stanton, Barbara Crampton as Suzie Linn, and Nick Segal as Greg Williams. Directed by Jim Wynorski. Rated R… READ MORE
The sadists I work with on the wired desk have a game they play from June 1 to Nov. 30.
They know I am fascinated by hurricanes. They see my tracking charts featuring the scribbled admonition that he who steals this chart will die of earworms.
Worst of all, they know I am always anxious to study the satellite photographs.
We receive three satellite photographs each day. The first is transmitted at about 4 a.m., the second at 4 p.m. and the last at 9:30 p.m. Each has its own idiosyncrasies. The morning photo has poor resolution. The afternoon photo is usually sharp, and more closely represents the extent of the cloud cover. This is the photo we publish in the newspaper. The night photo exaggerates the cloud cover, but it can give you an idea of trends in a storm’s movement.
At any rate, I want to see them all. Enter the sadists.
My desk used to be next to the Laserphoto receiver and I could quickly intercept any photographs entering its collection tray. But now my desk is located across the room. Now I must rely on the good graces of the wire desk to supply me with satellite photos.
Ha ha ha ha ha, boy am I a schmuck. Relying on the good graces of the wire desk is like hiring a 40-foot python to babysit small children.
The game goes like this:
1. I am sitting across the room, minding my own business, when suddenly I hear the telltale click of a Laserphoto being cut and fed into the collection tray. All eyes on the wire desk also turn to the Laserphoto machine, as if were a slot machine that had just rung up four cherries.
2. Somebody on the wire desk leaps up and snares the photo.
3. A triumphant “AH HA!” rings across the newsroom.
4. The satellite photo is held so that everybody on the wire desk may see it, but not I.
5. Suddenly, everybody on the wire desk becomes an expert at interpreting satellite photography. “Looks like a suspicious cloud mass in the Caribbean,” they shout in delight. “Yes sir, I see evidence of a circulation in that cloud mass,” or, “Are those spiral bands beginning to form in that Atlantic disturbance?”
6. They sneak peeks at me and titter like schoolgirls. They want me to get p and come over there and try to beg for the photo, but I know they’d pass it from person to person in a perverse game of keep-away, so I refuse to act like I’m interested.
7. They raise the stakes by saying in loud voices, “Uh oh, this looks like a Category 5 storm to me. I don’t think we better let Del see this. I think we should tear this up and burn it. Del wouldn’t be interested, anyway.”
8. The final act in the game involves my capitulation, where I must prostrate myself and shout, “Come on you slimes, gimme that satellite photo. PLEEEZE?” This always is greeted with malicious merriment, especially if I have to get down on my knees and grovel.
Now isn’t that sick?
This column was published in the Playground Daily News sometime in the 1980s, possibly 1986, 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 .
The sadists I work with on the wired desk have a game they play from June 1 to Nov. 30. They know I am fascinated by hurricanes. They see my tracking charts featuring the scribbled admonition that he who steals… READ MORE
Image courtesy of De Paolis In.Co.R. Studio.
“The House by the Cemetery” Starring Catriona MacColl, Paola Malco and Ania Pieroni. Directed by Lucio Fulci. 86 minutes. Not rated. Del’s take “The House by the Cemetery” is a film only a horror purist could love, and love it… READ MORE