CM Simpson: Writer & Gamer

This week’s verse moves from  a futuristic urban fantasy horror verse to a sci-fantasy verse about a new colony awaiting its fate. It is taken from 366 Days of Poetry , a collection of mixed-genre poetry released in 2016. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------   Waiting for Judgement Here we stand, the land sweeps away, falls from the mountains, becomes the plains. The ragged plumes rise of the forested hills that descend to the beach front, where the waves never still. We wait for the judgement. It’s not ours to say if the planet can be home to us, or if we’re to be sent away. That decision lies with the creatures here before, the dragons who came to our aid, who answered when we called. So we wait for their judgment, while the pirate ship’s hot corpse smokes, and slowly blackens, a memorial of sorts to the first piece of teamwork...

This week’s short story takes us from an Australian-set urban-fantasy tale of dinosaurs and discovery to the science-fiction tale of a starship's pilot and crew crashing into another dimension. Welcome to Lord of the Vortex, which remains one of my favourite tales from all the tales I've told.   Vortex travel—you don’t ask, and I won’t screw up the explanation; closest thing I can get to it is that I pilot a transdimensional skipping stone through the edge of a vortex from one point in space to another, and it gets you where you want to be. Well, most of the time. Just not this time. This time, we’re crashing, and I don’t know where we are. Lord of the Vortex is available as a stand-alone short story at the following links: books2read.com/u/m2Xrv7 . You can also find Kristine Kathryn Rusch's latest free short story over on her blog: kriswrites.com . Why don't you go and check it out?

LAST WEEK, Simone revealed she had found new allies in the form of a group called Odyssey. This week, Tiger reveals he's safe, but grounded on a planet. Chapter 5 Excerpt – Hunted Dear Simone Got your letter. Can’t tell you where I am, or where I’m going to be, but that’s because I just don’t know. FedExplore tried to nail me down once they knew I’d gotten off Deskeden on the shuttle, but then they got too busy to move me. I got myself out of the holding cell, and into the orbital before they even knew I was gone. Those things down on the surface? They haven’t made it up here, yet. I’m not even sure they know how. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- The complete series is available as short, individual ebooks, and will become available as an omnibus, later this year. In the meantime, you can find them on this blog, until one week after the last chapter in the last book of the series has been...