Ask Wednesday: Stone Arnold on coming across us

Looking to hang out

By Morris Dean

Today's interview was conducted by email chat, one question and answer at a time. [Our questions are in italics.]

Mr. Arnold—
    Call me Stone.

Of course! Stone, tell our readers how you came across us.
    I was researching online and happened across your blog on something like page 10 of Google search. The key words took me to a story I recognized.

Which story?
    I don't remember. But the writer has several stories on the blog and they seemed familiar.

Who are you talking about? Which writer?
    I noticed very few of your writers use their real names. If I give you the alias, I'll bet you won't give his name.

Stone, we believe that most or all of our writers do use their real name. But, then, some of them we haven't met....
    Okay. Then let's just enjoy getting to know each other. What would you like to know about me?

Well, maybe you could start by telling us where and when you were born.
    I see, you want to go back to my beginning. Very well, I was born in Junction City, Kansas on December the twenty-sixth, 1948. I never knew my father. He could have been one of any number of soldiers at Fort Riley. My mother had a soft spot for young soldiers.

You seem to have handled it well. Did growing up without a father have an effect on your life?
    You might say that. At fourteen I ran away from home. They caught me and I ran away again. That was when my mother turned me over to the State and I became their ward. At seventeen a friend and I took off. He went east and I went west. I was lucky and caught a trucker going to San Jose. Never knew what happened to my friend.

How did you live? A seventeen-year-old boy alone on the streets, it had to be hard.
    It was hard for a time. Then I met a very creative Army Recruiting Sargent. He signed me up and it got me three hots and a cot. For a while anyway. Then it was off to Vietnam.

So you were in Vietnam. Would you like to tell us anything about your time there?
    No.

Care to explain why?
    I told you I don't want to talk about that—there's nothing worth remembering.

Well, then, how long did you stay in the Army?
    I was in for five years. Got wounded on my third tour of duty in Nam and they discharged me.

We guess you could be called a hero.
    What I can be called is alive, nothing more....

What have you done to earn money?
    I've traveled a lot. I have a trade that's in demand in many parts of the world.

Is that something you can talk about?
    No, sorry about that.

Oooo-kay...You seem well-educated. You sent us the electronic image of the dust jacket of a book you say you wrote. You must have gone back to school?
    I found when you're wounded and waiting to heal, college on the GI bill is a good place to hide out.

As far as we can tell from the dust jacket you sent us—our adult-education Spanish is pretty rusty—the action of Fuego del Diablo [The Devil's Fire] moves around a lot. Does that reflect your own life?
    The war had made Americans very unpopular overseas. I'd told everybody I was from Canada. By then I had long hair and looked like a hippie, so even if they knew I was an American, they played along. I hitched all over Europe, didn't return to the States until the war was over. I worked my way back home on a Russian freighter. Got off as it went through the Panama Canal. Then I played around in Mexico for about three years. My first novel was based on those times in Mexico.

Is that why you had this novel published in Spanish?
    My publisher is in Mexico. It made sense to publish the first one in Spanish. Then with my second one I thought it would be safer to stay where I was.

You x'd out the author's name everywhere on the image you sent—why was that?
    I used a pseudonym, which it's better to just let burn up in the flames....

Why no photo of yourself anywhere?
    Having my picture on anything would hamper my day job.

And you wouldn't send us a photograph of yourself....
    Sorry about that.

Why didn't you just send us the whole book?
    I don't have a copy anymore and I don't know if there are any still out there. Only a small number were printed, and they didn't sell very well in Mexico. The novels were just something I did to kill time while recuperating. Therapy maybe. They didn't really matter and they didn't pay the bills. But don't you just love that cover?

Kind of garish, we think...Do you plan to bring your novels out in English anytime soon?
    We're talking to some people. We'll see where that goes.

Are you working on anything right now?
    I have a couple of projects in the works. A new novel and a screenplay.

Is the screenplay an adaptation of one of your novels, or something new?
    Something new. I'm not ready to talk about it yet.

May we ask where you live?
    Let's just say I'm a citizen of the world, and let it go at that.

What about marriage and children?
    No kids. Married once, but she was killed.

Killed? Oh. How did she die?
    It was the damnedest thing. I came back from a two-month job overseas, a little bashed up as usual, and all we did for two weeks was lay around, get reacquainted, and let me recover. Then she wanted to go to the opera. So we went. As we were crossing the street, we were both hit by a speeding car. I survived; she didn't.

Did the driver stop, or was he identified?
    He didn't stop, but he was identified...finally.

That's good. But we're very sorry about your wife, Stone...Any questions we haven't asked that you'd like us to?
    Not for now. I'd just like to hang around for a while, maybe get to know some folks.

All right. Thanks for taking the time to chat with us. See you around.
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Copyright © 2013 by Morris Dean

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