…was because of their banana policy? Seriously, who doesn’t love a good source of potassium?
Okay, all jokes aside, it wasn’t because of anything nefarious or shady. Ani Lumberhead , who founded the website and runs the Facebook pages, seems like a great guy. He’s got a lot of passion and love for the horror scene and you can really tell. Him and his partner in crime, along with a talented editor, pulled off bringing Gruemonkey onto the world wide web. A feat that many hopefuls never pull off.
I was there right in the beginning of the first batch of writers. Things were constantly shifting and changing as the website tried to find it’s feet. Things were wild west style, then became more focused and more limited. People left and others joined, pitched ideas back and forth. Management was open, honest, and most importantly upfront.
We got some big-name interviews and with them came a massive spike in views. Then nearly nothing, a pittance of clicks. Things weren’t being consistent and there were rumors tossed around about other websites poaching/sabotaging. I don’t know much about that but I do know that after that, and a big staff change, things started to move in a direction I didn’t like.
See, in the beginning, everyone was informed that no pay would come until the site took off. When that happened and management could afford to pay the writers in cold hard cash, everyone would draw a paycheck. Until then the only pay would come in the form of exposure.
Now, I had been burned by that before; however, I liked the site and it felt good to try and be on the ground floor of something that could go big. So I did a few articles and pitched an idea for a weekly feature. I was giving it the old college try as they say.
Then the site was restructured into becoming, more or less, an aggregate site. Now the original content was still there, but much of the content seemed to link to other sites with other articles. I felt that the spark which had first drawn me had become a very different sort of fire. In the end, I figured it just wasn’t for me. So when the call came out as to who was down to stay on-board, I took a lifeboat.
I know it has been a while since I’ve written for them and it seems a little out of the blue to post up why I left after so long. (I’ve not been active on the site since December) but someone mentioned to me yesterday that they’d not seen anything from me on Gruemonkey and I realized that I’d never given a proper reason why. So there you have it, just to put things to bed.
I know it sounds a little anti-climactic. No ill will, no drama, no secret underhanded dealings. Just didn’t like the direction. Best of luck to them, truly.
Stay frosty out there
