Tag: writing

Latest News, Short Fiction

Week 598 – Spread Your Wings And Ragdoll Too, Crap Cocaine And Mr Bowman Would Have Had Their Backs.

gwencron

PLEASE NOTE – WE HAVE BEEN HAVING TROUBLE WITH THE SITE FOR THE LAST THREE DAYS SO WE ARE NOT WORKING THE WAY THAT WE NORMALLY DO. HOPEFULLY IT WILL BE SORTED SOON – Hugh, Diane, Leila.

Week 598 has arrived!!

I’ll leave the lists to Leila but I realised this week that I have a few tunes that I go back to when I need to calm down.

Strangely, my favourite one is one of the last that I’ll ever hear. Well that’s not true as I’ll be being cremated. Maybe it will calm my being / spirit / soul or the fuck all that I’ll have become. Weirdly it’s a piece of classical music. I don’t know much about classical but there are a few pieces that I enjoy. I will be accompanied into the after-life or the fuck all there with Delibes ‘Flower Duet.’

Continue reading “Week 598 – Spread Your Wings And Ragdoll Too, Crap Cocaine And Mr Bowman Would Have Had Their Backs.” →
All Stories, Editor Picks, General Fiction, Humour, Latest News, Short Fiction

593: Limping Mind Games

ireneallison12

-1-

The dumbest question to ask a kid must be “What do you want to be when you grow up?” (Often preceded by “So”). For me the best answers for that are “How the fuck should I know, I’m seven”; “Lizzie Borden” and “Anything that takes me away from you.” But I never used any because even at that young age I knew it was an insincere “points winning” question usually asked by some dweeb whose aim was to screw my mother.

Continue reading “593: Limping Mind Games” →
All Stories, Editor Picks, Latest News, Short Fiction

Week 591: Natural Born Quillers

ireneallison12

Birthday Well Wishes

Happy 250th Independence Day to America! (and to everyone also born on this date, Eva Marie Saint at a whopping 102 and Elliott the Header Pigeon who is attending the Extreme Cigarette Butt Eating Contest in Philadelphia this holiday weekend ). It may not be in season for some to say nice things about and to America, but the U.S.A., like most places is far more good than bad and is a collection of people–not just one person. To all who sneer, I suggest you read what J.C. had to say on the subject of stone casting. And although it is further ironic that the UK should wish the former colonies happy birthday, just think how chaotic things would be if the Revolutionary War had gone the other way. PM Trump anyone?

Now, On with the Show

Asking writers why they write is pointless. It’s the same reason why kleptos steal and killers kill; it is a mental compulsion, sometimes good sometimes bad and always somewhere along the borders of insanity. Some people have the writing disease way worse than most. The bad off will cut words into their skin if they have no other way of getting the job done (and for the visual artist, Van Gogh’s ear-ectomy definitely got a lot more than a thousand words across). Most of us can control ourselves to the extent we can wait until a saner method is handy. But the answer is always the same. Writers write because they are writers. Birds bird. Lizards lizard. Maggots get compared to unsavory people. Writers can go through long periods of inactivity (for some that may be weeks, for me not even a day), but there will always come a time when it must happen, or (to quote Hemingway) we state: “I feel fucked inside.”

Continue reading “Week 591: Natural Born Quillers” →
All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller, General Fiction, Short Fiction, Writers Reading, Writing

Dirty Glass by Hugh Cron – Adult Content

gwencron

“Dirty glass…Fuck!”

…The first time that Martin had really focused on a dirty glass was decades back, in another one of his lifetimes. He’d had a few lifetimes and each had caused him a different level of grief.

Martin thought back to that morning at 8.00am, when he had been told that he had to check on a property. He found that depressing, fuck all was said about checking on the resident, no, he had to check on the property.

He pulled up beside the row of Maisonettes and sighed as he saw that the main entrance door was hanging off its hinges. He headed into the building. It always made him laugh that this was a building that you had to go inside, to go upstairs, to then go outside to get to the front door. He rattled the door. He could hear some mumbling and drunken giggles, “I hope that’s a lovely lady with nice tits!!”

Continue reading “Dirty Glass by Hugh Cron – Adult Content” →
All Stories, Editor Picks, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Week 581- Have You Never Been Melodramatic

ireneallison12

I am not a cynical luddite, but I believe everyone ought to have a little oldfashionedness in her for the sake of maintaining a soul. Still, progress isn’t completely evil. It brings more good than bad in medicine (at least it does when you compare modern TB and smallpox statistics to the way things were a hundred years ago). But I’m also convinced that as an animal, one whose evolution is influenced by long-term realities, we are not wholly prepared to accept sudden changes. Moreover, being small we are overwhelmed by reasons to feel worthless and dumb; and when it becomes clear that a ten-year-old can do more with our phones than we can, let’s just say it is not good for the self esteem. (Then again I can drive a stick and parallel park without an AI, so there you little Weaselings!)

For at least 99% of human history we lived the same way. It was hard to win a living from the soil and when we managed to light a fire with rocks and damp kindling and somehow outlasted another winter we felt like whatever the word for rock star was way back in the Middle Ages.

Continue reading “Week 581- Have You Never Been Melodramatic” →
All Stories, sunday whatever

Sunday Whatever – A True Tale of Stories Literally by Dale Wiliams Barrigar

literallystories2014

“No one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modeled, built, or invented except literally to get out of hell.”

– Antonin Artaud, Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society

“We are all of us alone.” – Harold Bloom

“As long as I’m learning something, I figure I’m OK.”

– Hunter S. Thompson

            “Stan, don’t let them tell you what to do!” – Harold Pinter

            “NO EASY WAY TO BE FREE.” – The Who, “Slip Kid”

Warning to the Reader: The following essay will sometimes appear to jump and leap from thing to thing with no apparent reason. As in life, there is a reason, even if it isn’t apparent. While under the influence, the author believes this discontinuous form is a part of the modern condition. Thank you. – D.W.B.

Continue reading “Sunday Whatever – A True Tale of Stories Literally by Dale Wiliams Barrigar” →
All Stories, Short Fiction

Godfather JoJo By Hugh Cron (Adult Content)

gwencron

Gregor hesitated at the door of ‘Till Dawn Night-Club’. He took a deep breath and walked in. Two rather large gentleman walked over to him.

“Don’t think you should be here pal! We’re fucking shut.”

One stood in front of him and the other guy moved slightly to his side.

He took a deep breath, “I know. I’m not here for any trouble, I was just wanting to speak to JoJo.”

“Is he expecting you?”

Gregor looked round at the other man.

“No…”

‘Well fuck off then!!’

Continue reading “Godfather JoJo By Hugh Cron (Adult Content)” →
All Stories, Editor Picks, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Week 573: An Elegy For a Friend and the A to Z of Adjectival Slight

ireneallison12

A friend from my youth died recently. His name was Kim. We were close through our twenties until he moved to Japan (due to marriage). The only contact we had for decades was the occasional Facebook “happy birthday like” (I fell out of using Facebook fairly quickly; too many ads and idiots, but the premise is a good one). I considered writing letters, which I (without modesty) am pretty good at writing. Maybe I should have–but to paraphrase James Taylor “I didn’t know where to send them to.”

Continue reading “Week 573: An Elegy For a Friend and the A to Z of Adjectival Slight” →
Editor Picks, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Week 571: Andy Fought the Law, and, Well, Andy Won

ireneallison12
Andy

Since late 2017 I have been feeding a Feral Cat named Andy Hisster (his image above, circa 2019). Simple math tells me that Andy, full-sized upon my meeting him, must be close to ten years old, which is a good age for a housecat and flat out Methuselah for a wild boy. And make no mistake, Andy is a wild wild wild one.

Continue reading “Week 571: Andy Fought the Law, and, Well, Andy Won” →