CM Simpson: Writer & Gamer

In addition to the cute, we have the not so cute, and while I don't mind these guys outside, I have a problem with many of them being inside. This doesn't necessarily mean they get squished, but most get an assist in finding the great outdoors again. ...Unless, of course, you are a white tail - and a big one at that. This little lady was sitting above the kitchen door. She was just over an inch long. I've been told these are spider hunters, which may explain why she was working her way through a web. These guys and gals, however, almost always get a lift outside... usually in a plastic container. ... usually after they've finished stuffing their faces.

So, Friday night's dinner consisted of a recipe made up on the fly: creamy chicken, pumpkin and pine nut pasta: Creamy chicken, pumpkin and pine nut pasta This recipe successfully fed three, but would comfortably feed four and stretch to six. Ingredients: Pasta of your choice Prior to preparing the ingredients for the sauce, put the pasta water on to boil. While it is heating, prepare the following ingredients. olive oil - approximately 2 tablespoons (or enough for a thin layer in the bottom of your frypan) approximately 100 gm of pine nuts - more or less as you prefer 3 cloves of garlic - finely diced or crushed 1/2 teaspoon of ground black peppe 2 chicken breasts - diced to 2cm or 1 inch cubes 2 slices of butternut pumpkin (approximately 1 1/2cm or 1/2 inch thick) - diced into cubes 6-8 mushrooms ( with caps up to about 5cm or 2 inches in diameter) - sliced 1/2 red capsicum (pepper if you're in the States) - d...

I sometimes get out in the garden and photograph the creatures I find. Here are few of the visitors I photographed in February this year: Butterflies went nuts over one of the bushes flowering in our back yard but this was the only one that would settle long enough for me to catch.

I made a concerted effort to read more blogs this month. I read these from start to finish - in two sittings: Writing and the Writing Industry http://kriswrites.com/2015/02/11/business-musings-weird-misinformation/ : Kristine Kathryn Rusch on changes in the writing industry and misinformation; http://jakonrath.blogspot.com.au/2015/01/welcome-to-2015.html : J.A. Konrath on New Year's resolutions, indie publishing, Scott Turow and other bits; http://jakonrath.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/my-thoughts-on-amazon-debate.html : J.A. Konrath's thoughts on the shared worlds of Amazon and whether or not it's good for publishing; http://jakonrath.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/jack-daniels-associates-kindle-worlds.html : J.A. Konrath on his new setting for Amazon worlds; http://jakonrath.blogspot.com.au/2015/03/on-copyright-again.html : J.A. Konrath on what changes might need to be considered to bring copyright laws into the 21st century; http://kriswrites.com/2015/02/18/business-musing...

The birds continue to come to my garden to visit. Here are some of the beautiful visitors who arrived stopped by to take advantage of the bird seed and garden bounty during February and March of 2015: Some were young. And some were quite surprised to see me. Others weren't going to let the presence of a camera spoil a perfectly good meal. And there was plenty on the tree for all.

Anna and the Rock Dragons is now available in normal-print from the CreateSpace bookstore. When Anna heads out to her family’s country cottage for the holidays, she has no idea what lies in store. Chosen as the Key Bearer and Door Finder for a race of exiled dragons, Anna soon finds herself in a race against a mining magnate set to make his fortunes by turning the dragons into crystal, while being hunted by a nightmare from local legend. Will she survive long enough to find both key and door in time to help the dragons escape, and then live to tell the tale?

The new cover for my speculative disaster story, Ducky , has arrived!

At the very end of 2014, I wanted to have a goal for 2015, but I didn’t want something general like ‘write more books’ or ‘spend more time publishing’, and choosing something realistic and specific was hard to do without knowing what time constraints I faced. In the end, I went with ‘finishing what I’ve started’. This might sound like an easy goal, but I’ve been writing for over twenty years, and there is a lot of stuff I didn’t finish because I didn’t have a definite profit from it, or because life intervened and I moved or … whatever. Anyway, there’s a lot to finish, and by ‘finish’ I mean complete the writing of and publish, so I had to prioritise. This did not mean I sat down and found every piece I’d started and write it down—that’s an ongoing process and one I’d need a couple of weeks to do. I try to type up a couple of notebooks a month for that. I have already started a list and on are the older works that I’ve put the most time into and either completed, almos...

I focussed on releasing what I had written and studied much harder than I originally intended, and got very little writing done.    Overview New words produced: 3,619 Old words revised: 0 Works completed: 0 Works revised: 0 Covers created: 0 Works published: 0 Works submitted: 0 Competitions Entered: 0 Bloggery: 1,992     Publishing Tasks Created 2 blog posts for this blog; Created 1 blog post for the C.M. Simpson Publishing blog ; Created 1 blog post for the C.M. Simpson Art and Photography blog ; Reworked Anna and the Rock Dragons cover; Formatted, edited and released the large-print version of Anna and the Rock Dragons in print-on-demand format via CreateSpace; Formatted, edited and released C.M. Simpson: Short Stories and Poems from 2013, Volume 2 (The Year Just Gone) in print-on-demand format via CreateSpace.     New Arrivals The following poems arrived last week: Nil