CM Simpson: Writer & Gamer

This is the third new feature for this blog—or semi-new, if you’d prefer, given I’ve touched on it, before. This year, every Wednesday, I’ll be taking a poem from one of my three poetry collections—including the one to be released later in the year—and putting it on my blog as a free read. This week’s verse is from Another 365 Days of Poetry , a collection of mixed-genre poetry to be released later in the year, once both collection and cover are complete. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Waking Dead   I heard them screaming Screaming? Screaming. Screaming fit to wake the dead. The dead? The sleeping dead. The sleeping dead who waken Waken? And from their sleeping rise. The dead that rise to walk the earth. The Earth? The ground beneath our feet. Beneath our feet, as the whole world turns, the earth that lets them sleep until the dead do seek to rise, and with the living, company k

For the second new thing I’m trying this year, I’m taking a leaf out of Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s book, and putting up a short story so people can read it for free for one week, before it gets taken down, and another story put up. Since I couldn’t decide what story to put up, I’m going to show them in alphabetical order by title, so this week’s short story is one of my earliest: A Battle of Minds: Someone wants VR combat star Danzer dead—and they’re more than happy to kill him in the middle of a public arena and take the audience with him. When security personnel for the VR games insist on overseeing the match between him and his most dangerous opponent, no one knows if it will be enough. Will Security succeed in their intervention, or will their efforts result in more than Danzer losing his life?   A Battle of Minds is available as a stand-alone short story at the following links: https://www.books2read.com/u/mqOKvb You can also find Kristine Kathryn Rusch's latest fre

This year, I’m trying something new – serializing a chapter book series. I’ve started with the first series I completed as Carlie Simonsen: the Letters Across Space series. Chapter 1 Excerpt – Dear Tiger From: Simone Michaels, Alpha Centauri Home Room, Losandro’s Interstellar Academy, Mail Bag 4029, Galmon Mail Center, Emerald Moon, Tychon Date: 22 Landing 3049 Dear Tiger Today was a great day, well, as good as any day gets when I’m stuck here on the moon, and mum and dad are away. I hope the expedition goes well for them, because, once the base camp is set up, I will be able to stay with them for the school break. They write to me often, and I am so looking forward to seeing them again. Actually, I’m lying. It’s been a terrible day. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- The complete series is available as short, individual ebooks, and will become available as an omnibus, later this year. In the meantime, yo