Stanley Morton

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It's hard to believe that it's been more than four years since Stanly Morton, known as Stanman on this site and others, passed away. He was reviled by some, tolerated by others, and accepted as a writer by a few. Some authors here actually met him, others would have avoided him at any cost. Stan was a short person. I believe he was about 5' 7". He weighed about 450 pounds, and he had numerous health problems. One thing, though, was that he read every story posted here, and commented on all of them. Erin said he had made over 20,000 comments while here. His comments were always pleasant, never derogatory. He loved my novels, which unfortunately I had to unpublish from this site. He was especially fond of some characters from "The Cynthia Chronicles", and he always wanted to have them join the characters in my non-fantasy books.

There were some very nice comments made after Stan's death. He was a terrible writer when I first came to this site. He did improve. Perhaps he didn't always give credit for the origins of some of his stories. He caught a lot of heat on FM for some of his stories. Towards the end, he published all sorts of things at FM. He must have known his end was near, Then he was gone.

For some reason I felt I needed to write a tribute to him, even if it was a bit left handed. I included some of his favorite characters of mine, and I sent him off to what I felt was a fitting end for him. My short story is titled "Stanman - The Final Journey." I felt it was the least I could do for someone who had both a strong and negative effect on the readers here. If you haven't read it, you might enjoy it.

Comments

Thank you for posting this

WillowD's picture

Soon after I seriously started reading stories here I noticed that many or most of my favourite older stories had a nice comment from him. Eventually I did a little searching on this site to try to figure out what he was up to these days. If I remember correctly, the last post on his blog indicated he had offended some other users. Then his frequent posts stop without explanation.

Thank you for telling me what happened and for giving me a better idea of what he was like as a person. I think I would have quite liked him if I had been here sooner, when he was still around.

Awe inspiring

Did he really read and comment on every new story on this site? I find that quite awe-inspiring.

In comparison, I’m so picky about what I start reading and only finish one tenth what I start. He must have been a very warm-hearted man. I know he always left nice comments on my work, but hadn’t realised the sheer scale of his encouragement.

Our thoughts are with him.

Charlotte