Instagram One Liners

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I recently discovered the InstaQuote app, and I now have what some may call a soft addiction.

This is the app which takes your text and polishes and accents it with any mixture of graphics, colors, fonts, and pictures that you wish – it’s perfect for someone who writes stories one slow string at a time, just like myself.

I’ve been putting together several shots using quotes from stories on Fable-Fiction-Fairytale and unfinished works such as A Moon Too Far, which has all of one paragraph written for it, perpetuating my predilection for scribbling a handful of lines for a story and leaving it in my digital folder until the tenth of never.

I throw up all of them on Instagram, so feel free to follow me by clicking on the massive camera on the right-side menu, or you can check me out via http://instagram.com/gpmerwede. Also, don’t forget to hit the Twitter link and follow me for even more doses of half-thought wisdom.

 

Cycle Breaking

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I’m attempting to break the cycle of not posting; so, here we go.

I had extravagant plans for the new domain that I built out – midgets riding unicycles, fire swallowing trolls, ringmasters dressed in black winged helmets, ping pong playing plank-legged pirates, and an entire bacchanalia of angels, demons, and in-betweens – but I hit a snag and decided to transform it into something entirely different than originally imagined.

What is that? I haven’t a clue; well, that’s a lie. I have a clue, but not a design nor a vision. But if I keep drinking this black whisky, an imaginative sensation is bound to spill from my mind.

I’ve also decided to keep Werewolves & Shotglasses operational – yes, WordPress, I see your “RENEW NOW! PAY HERE!” link – and I will be making some twinks and tweaks moving forward; big surprise, I know.

So what’s in store? Removing a few pages that I feel clutter the space. Adding a new page of ongoing episodes concerning my brotastic neighbors. Revamping the Gatsby & Californication sections as they tend to be the most popular; you speak, I listen, man of the people.

I’m sure I’ll change my mind as I move along – I always do – but I’m excited to get this all going again. I’ve been absent for too long and need to pump life back into this baby.

Let’s kick the tires and light the fires.

Post Winter Blues

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     View of Hoboken from my apartment window

You may have noticed that I spun out Stereoheart in a rather lowkey manner a few weeks ago. It was the first Fable-Fiction-Fairytale post in more than four months and I don’t have any others on the backburner – nada, nothing, zilch, zero – although my alliteration skills have remained rather ripe.

I will certainly be attempting to churn out a few more tales as the summer quickly falls upon us, but I’ve been without time for the past few months and/or slowly dying of every throat illness conceived by bacteria.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been writing much of anything lately. The posts have been few and far between, the flash fiction has slowed to a deathly drip, and even my unfinished manuscripts haven’t felt the sting of my keyboard. I’m wholly unimaginative – even as I write this, I’m struggling to find my voice.

It’s a frustrating issue, this whole not being able to write thing. Every now and again a stroke of creativity riles up my mind, but I’ve been unable to transition these scenes from mind to manuscript. The stories are still in there somewhere, they rattle and roll around, I can hear them, I assure you, yet they’ve yet to find the opening to reality. Like a magic eight ball, I need to keep shaking my mind until I get the answer I want.

I hope to gain momentum as we barrel into the warmer months, but I make no promises, I only make mistakes. I’m much better at those.

Fable-Fiction-Fairytale: Stereoheart

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StereoheartTune to any wavelength on my stereoheart and you will hear nothing but static.

It is not a simple white noise, but a myriad of ghost whispers and foolish fallaways that haunt these dials. Many have twisted them only to discover emptiness, becoming muddled and drowning themselves in the analog quicksand. My voice of warning does little, it is lost to the static just as fleetingly as those whom it was meant to save.

I can hear it sometimes, the featherweight fiddling of a piano within the broken noise as if a memory of what once was. But it does not stay long, revealing itself ever briefly before fading beyond my ears. And some days it does not sound like a song at all, rather it’s a voice – a woman’s voice – and, for a moment, I am no longer alone.

One Foot In The Grave

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Although I’ve been missing in considerable action in the past 30 days, I haven’t forgotten about this quaint corner of the interwebs.

I’ve secured hosting for a new incarnation of this site, whose fate has yet to be decided by the gambling gods within my mind, and also a fresh template that I am discovering is not as simple and straightforward as its designer promised it would be; it would help if the instructions weren’t written in Croatian English. I’ll put that in the designer’s comment box. The new site even has a name, which was confirmed by the creepiest voicemail in memory, one of those “watching me while I sleep” messages. But yes, we have a name, despite the site itself looking like Dresden after the firebombings.

The other reason for my prolonged absence has been my having one foot in the grave. February was a mess of terrible weather, strep throat, amoxicillin, muscle relaxers, anti-inflammatories, and a bucketful of cough syrup. I fully expected March to erase the shortcomings of February, yet we were crushed with more snow and I was closet-banged by a stretch of exhaustion from which I’m still attempting to recover.

But personal complaining aside, I hope to have the new site – if my Croatian holds up – live by the end of the month. I commend whomever the hell continues to visit because I’m getting decent numbers for 30 days without a single post.

Let’s all thank Celestial Eyes and Californication for that.

 

 

Two Week Hiatus

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As the title is more than just a clever name, I haven’t made much of a peep in the past fourteen days.

Honestly, time didn’t seem all that fleeting – I’m rather surprised at myself for letting posts slip that far apart, and it shows in the poor visitor showing – but I’m more or less back on track for what is my ultimate goal of revamping Werewolves & Shotglasses.

Sorta.

A more proper post will follow in the coming days; I just wanted to touch base and let it be known that I haven’t died of vomit convulsions from watching the show “Girls”.

Not yet, anyway.

Journalistic Skills, Or A Lack Thereof

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It has come to my attention – and undoubtedly the attention of those who frequent W&S – that I lack an ability to write proper, journalistic articles.

This isn’t so much a shock. I routinely scoff at my own postings, especially those from some time ago, and question what I was thinking when I pressed the ‘publish’ button. I can easily foresee that I will be removing a number of articles once I transplant, migrate, run for the border with the newest incarnation that I have yet to reveal – not because I’m keeping you on your toes, but because I’m still choosing theme colors like Martha Stewart at Linens N Things.

But I like to think that this fortifies, or even verifies, my chosen path toward fiction writing more so than non-fiction. I’m not saying that I will be successful, or that my fiction is better than my non-fiction, but I sure as hell have a much more fun time writing it.

I tried my hand at journalism once.

In an effort to generate more revenue streams – not that I make any revenue from this site – so really, in an effort to generate one revenue stream, I tried-out for a social media company free lance position in which I would publish articles on trending issues. Given 24 hours and told to discuss Google’s newest algorithms, I locked myself away and wrote it all the way up the flagpole and waited to see who’d salute.

Not a single hoot, holler, or “go fuck yourself”.

Altogether disappointing, but when I reread what I delivered, I now notice that I most probably bent or damn near broke every proper writing law when it comes to journalism. I was proud of the piece, but my writing style is not always celebrated – see my plethora of rejected submissions. All of this added to the fact that I’m not cut out for following the status quo; never was, probably never will be.

And that doesn’t bother me. Not one bit, not at all.