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Tom Stone

Goodreads Author

Born

in Baltimore, MD, The United States

Website

http://tomstone-gr.com/.

Genre

Memoir, Historical Fiction, Travel

Influences

Saul Bellow; W.G. Sebald; Thomas Mann; Graham Greene; MFK Fisher; Patr ...more

Member Since

April 2008

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/wwwgoodreadscomprofiletoms

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TOM STONE has pursued a multi-faceted career as a novelist, travel writer, historian, and stage- and screenplay writer. Simultaneously, he has had a very successful career in the professional theater as a director, lighting designer, and stage manager.
While at Yale, where he gained a BA in English Literature and an addiction to the theater, he spent his summers toiling backstage at the prestigious Green Mansions Summer Theater near Lake George, New York. Contacts he made there garnered him a job as an Off-Broadway stage manager, and the following year he became an assistant stage manager for Jerome Robbins’ Ballets: U.S.A.
After a decade of working as a stage manager and assistant director for Robbins and Harold Prince on the original pro
TOM STONE has pursued a multi-faceted career as a novelist, travel writer, historian, and stage- and screenplay writer. Simultaneously, he has had a very successful career in the professional theater as a director, lighting designer, and stage manager.
While at Yale, where he gained a BA in English Literature and an addiction to the theater, he spent his summers toiling backstage at the prestigious Green Mansions Summer Theater near Lake George, New York. Contacts he made there garnered him a job as an Off-Broadway stage manager, and the following year he became an assistant stage manager for Jerome Robbins’ Ballets: U.S.A.
After a decade of working as a stage manager and assistant director for Robbins and Harold Prince on the original productions of “She Loves Me,” “Funny Girl,” “Fiddler On The Roof,” and “Cabaret” as well as the now-legendary efforts of Robbins’ American Theatre Laboratory (for which he wrote the play “Work in Progress,” he took a sabbatical from Broadway with the intention of spending a single summer in the Greek islands writing a first novel. As the Greek Fates would have it, he stayed twenty-two years. In the process, he married the French painter he met on Patmos, became a father of two, as well as a teacher of English and Theater at Anatolia College in Northern Greece, and a lighting designer and director for the Greek National Theater.
While in Greece, he finished and published his first novel, “Armstrong,” in addition to numerous books and articles about living abroad. These include “The Essential Greek Handbook,” “Greece: An Illustrated History,” “ Patmos: A History and Guide,” and “The Greek Food & Drink Book.”
In 1992, with his children in U.S. universities and his marriage moribund, he returned to Broadway via London and Vienna while working as resident director with Harold Prince’s new, Broadway-bound musical, “The Kiss of the Spider Woman.” But breaking completely back into the theater after so many years proved impossible. So, when one of his short stories was optioned for a TV movie, Tom headed west and soon found work writing film scripts for hire. As of this writing, ten of them are the market but none have as yet been produced.
Meanwhile, he devoted the greater part of his writing time to writing books. His memoir of living on Patmos, “The Summer of My Greek Tavérna,” was published by Simon & Schuster in 2002 and was selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club and Quality Paperback Club in 2003. It has been translated into eleven languages, including Dutch, German, Danish, Hebrew, and Mandarin (Taiwan). After having been under option by Fox Searchlight Pictures in 2012, it is now in development with Grove Entertainment.
In February, 2008, Tom published “Zeus: A Journey Across Greece in the Footsteps of a God.” It became a Main Selection of the History Book Club and the QPBC, and this led to his on-going appearances in three segments of the History Channel’s series on mythology, “The Clash of the Gods.”
(Now no longer in print, “Zeus” has recently been resurrected as an e- and print-on-demand book titled “Chasing Zeus” and is available on Kindle and B&N as well as various other sites. Meanwhile, Tom has fashioned a stand-alone companion volume out of the large amount of material the publishers asked him to remove from the original edition because it far exceeded the contractual limit. This includes some 58,000 words of text (the length of a 200-page book) and 141 images and maps. It is available on Kindle for $1.99, the lowest price Tom could manage because of the large amount of images. Its title is: “Zeus: An Addendum.” )
In 2012, Tom fashioned what he thinks of as “an annotated novel.” Based on the legend of the Cretan Minotaur, its purpose is to both entertain readers and provide them with endnotes, images, and maps explicating the sources of the legend. Tom has recently republished the novel in two separate Kindle e-book editions. The one co ...more

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Average rating: 3.37 · 738 ratings · 101 reviews · 23 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Summer of My Greek Taverna 3.25 avg rating — 582 ratings — published 2002 — 25 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Zeus: A Journey Through Greece in the Footsteps of a God 3.81 avg rating — 126 ratings — published 2008 — 13 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	THE CURSE OF THE MINOTAUR: A Tale of Ancient Greece 3.85 avg rating — 13 ratings — published 2011 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Greece: An Illustrated History 3.38 avg rating — 8 ratings — published 2000 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Armstrong 3.75 avg rating — 4 ratings — published 1973 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Essential Greek Handbook: An A-Z Phrasal Guide to Almost Everything You Might Want to Know About Greece 4.67 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 1998	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	PATMOS: A History & Guide and A Companion to "The Summer of My Greek Taverna" 4.33 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 2014 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	So The One Could Find Its Way it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 2 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Greek-English English-Greek Dictionary and Phrasebook really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 1998 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Arble Arche Story: futari no jouou 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 2015	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Ulysses Annotated: Notes for James Joyce's Ulysses

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Apr 10, 2015 10:52AM

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The Goldfinch

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Apr 10, 2015 10:53AM

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Stephen Crane: A Life of Fire

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Mar 25, 2015 10:21AM

Quotes by Tom Stone (?)

“Within a week of the girl's sacrifice, the clouds above Ólympus had broken up and spread south. Soon, a steady rain fell upon the plains and mountainsides, producing just enough downfall to fill the wells and cisterns but not ruin the crops. The natives, who had been appalled at the sacrifice, were overjoyed. Embers of hatred and fear still smoldered in their eyes, but there was also, now, a flicker of respect.”
― Tom Stone, Zeus: A Journey Through Greece in the Footsteps of a God

tags: jarring, words-that-burn-into-your-brain

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Topics Mentioning This Author

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The Seasonal Read...: Summer Challenge 2012: Completed Tasks - DO NOT DELETE ANY POSTS IN THIS TOPIC	2637	934	Aug 31, 2012 09:02PM
The Perks Of Bein...: Team Neptune	1292	423	May 03, 2018 04:50AM
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Tom’s Quotes

“I admire him … idolatry: from Ben (‘Old Ben’) Jonson’s eulogy for Shakespeare printed in his Timber, or Discoveries (1640): ‘for I lov’d the man, and doe honour”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

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