CM Simpson: Writer & Gamer

I’m thinking most of you will have already worked this out, but I’ll note it here, anyway. Occasionally, you’ll get a news window pop up when you open PoGo. Sometimes this is annoying, but you can just swipe it away and not look.   And, sometimes, you’ll see that the pokeball symbol at the bottom of the screen has a red dot on it. See? Well, if you tap on the symbol, you get to go to the screen where you can choose to go to the shop, or check on your pokemon, or check out your pokedex, or just see how many items you have. There are a couple of other options in that screen, now, too. They are located in the upper right-hand corner. You’re probably already aware of the ‘settings’ button, and the ‘tips’ button. They’ve been there a long time. I’m not sure when the ‘news’ button arrived – probably last year, but I didn’t notice. Anyway, when you have the red dot on the pokeball symbol, you will notice that the ‘news’ option has red lettering, to let you know that the...

My short story, Memory’s Vampire , released today. Not all vampires feed on blood. The ones we hunt take your memories before they take your life—and now they are hunting back. We’ve been compromised, and I don’t know who to trust. That comes later. Right now, I just want to make it back to my body alive.

This last week, I have been publishing—ALL this last week—which drives me absolutely crazy, because I’d rather be writing… Plus it gives my mind far too much time to think about things. This week, I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t getting enough done, that there were things I could do better, and my non-writing chore list has grown. I started this year with some goals. They’re going to get done, but they’re going to look a bit different. Firstly, I don’t like having perfectly good anthologies and collections lying around doing nothing, so to speak. They need to be out in the wild where my readers can decide if they’d rather buy short work singly, or in a single collection. I’ll do a more in-depth post on the changes I’m making there, but you’ll start seeing a format change in progress reports from here on out. Secondly, I discovered I work better in blocks, and, while that’s frustrating because it means there will be blocks of time when I’m not writing, it will also mak...

Last week, it took me a little bit to recalibrate my routine to put the exercise back into it. I did a couple of long days, but the rest varied from 5-8 hours at the desk. Some would still argue that that’s too long. I’m starting out, all over again; the hours will be a bit long while I get my feet under me. Anyhow, this report is late, because I focused on publishing this week just gone, and completely neglected the blog. Tomorrow, you will see the progress report for February, and Monday, you’ll have the progress report for this week. What can I say, but change is… interesting.   Progress: February 18-24, 2018 New words produced: 14,934 Outlines and Notes: 4,848 Words compiled: 28,157 ( The Tiger Letters Omnibus, The Wings Omnibus ) Works completed: 18 (1 short story, 1 chapter book, 8 poems, 8 flash fiction) Works edited: 0 Covers created: 1 ( C.M. Simpson: Short Work from 2017, Vol. 1 ) Works published: 0 Works released: 1 ( Dear Tiger: I Don’t Think I’m Hum...