CM Simpson: Writer & Gamer

This week’s verse moves from a speculative fantasy verse about the coming of trolls and knights to an unsuspecting world, to an urban fantasy verse about someone's first encounter with a fairy and a troll. It is taken from Another 365 Days of Poetry , a collection of mixed-genre poetry released in 2019. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Lesson Learned The fairy shimmered in the pond, as it flew from tree to tree. The fairy shimmered in the pond, but it would not fly to me. I looked up to watch it pass, caught the briefest shine of fairy dust, but when I looked into the pond, it had passed and I could not see. I was sure I’d seen a fairy pass, in the still depths of the pond. In truth it passed me well above, the lily pads and long fern fronds. In truth it passed me well above, but it faded from the eye, so only in the pond’s still depths could I watch the fair...

This week’s short story takes us from the urban fantasy world of pixie dust smugglers and policing t o a science fiction crime-fighting adventure. Welcome to Rogue Retrieval . I was doing okay, right up until Mack arrived, with Delight and Pritchard in tow. Retrieved for a rescue mission, I was in more trouble than I knew, and, as if that wasn’t enough, Mack had an agenda of his own. Well, of course, he did… Rogue Retrieval is available as a stand-alone novella-length short story at the following links: books2read.com/u/3RVnPG . 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, Tiger revealed he'd lost contact with Simone, but had found out more about the mutagen she'd been infected with. This week, Simone tells him she's finally allowed to go home, but that she still feels like there's something strange going on... as if Odyssey isn't telling her everything. Chapter 11 Excerpt – Going Home Hey Tiges, Sorry about the silence. I didn’t realise it had been so long. Haskell is teaching me how to control the beast inside my head. He’s Delight’s hunter. He says my beast sounds a bit different to his, but that every hunter has one, and that we each see the beast differently. He even says there have been hunters whose beasts have taken their bodies hunting without their brain’s permission. Sound familiar? Except that my hunter takes my brain along with it, when it gets hold of my body. Not my definition of fun, by the way. Anyway, part of what he’s been teaching me is that hunters can’t just snuggle ...