CM Simpson: Writer & Gamer

Here is another of the eight-legged critters in my garden. This one startled me by running down the trunk of the tree I was pruning - again in late autumn. Needless to say, I was instantly distracted. This is a huntsman - the first one I've seen out in the garden. (Usually, they're running across a wall, or the ceiling.) I'm not sure if it's male of female. It stayed out for quite some time, so I took a lot of shots from a whole lot of different angles over the course of about an hour and a half. We encountered each other in the late afternoon. And the spider stayed around as the sun gradually faded. It was quite late by the time I went inside to cook dinner. It was a wonderful way to spend an afternoon.

Here are the covers I created this month: PoD E-book Large Print PoD E-book Version E-book version Large Print PoD Large-Print PoD E-book version E-book version

This month saw the start of an attempt to read all the Dick Francis novels I own. Dick Francis wrote over 30 novels in his lifetime, and I count him amongst the best authors I've come across. Whenever I read his work I am inspired to try to write as well as he did. I have only 10 gaps I need to fill in my Dick Francis collection, pending any more co-written work put out by his son Felix. This month, I read the following books:

This week I released two more chapter books as Carlie Simonsen: One science fiction paranormal, and one paranormal urban. Without further ado, here they are: E-book cover Print-on-Demand cover The Dog’s Way is a teen paranormal urban about a boy who finds unexpected help with bullies. The Dog’s Way is the first book in the Running with the Pack series. When Michael jumps a brick wall to escape from Jacko and his group of thugs, he didn’t need to find a pack of dogs waiting for him on the other side. Pinned down by the biggest of them, Michael counts himself lucky that the dogs are more interested in Jacko than him. Unfortunately, with Jacko on the other side of the fence, that’s not going to last forever. And what’s he going to do then? The Dog’s Way is about discovering who you are, and learning to face your fears with whatever you can find inside. The Dog's Way can be found at Smashwords , Amazon-Kindle , Kobo, Nook and iTunes . E-book cover

It has so far been a busy week. I have finally started releasing the stories I've been working on over the last week. There are, so far two new short stories and one short story re-release: Gulvane and the Dragon is my newest work. I wrote it this year. And here is what it's about: Preparing for a new era in his life, the wizard Gulvane walks the corridors of his mind, remembering the eras locked behind three doors. Forester, Fighter, Assassin. Behind each door lie the memories and skills of who and what he used to be, inaccessible, unless he chose to return to the professions he had left. Uncertain of where his life will lead him, or of what he will become, Gulvane wakes to find a dragon standing over his bed. Now, what would a creature such as that want with an elf like himself? Gulvane and the Dragon is currently available as a stand-alone short story, but will eventually be incorporated in An Anthology of Mythical Creatures , and the collection, Short