CM Simpson: Writer & Gamer

Mac k 'n' Me: The Transporter's Favour is Book 4 in the Mack 'n' Me 'n' Odyssey series. Mack 'n' Me: The Wolves of Alpha 9 is Book 5. According to Transporter's , Wolves was supposed to be released in January 2019, something it was on track to do, until my world slid sideways and then got busy in June 2018... ...which was when I went in to have a skin lesion checked - and then removed. It turned out to be precancerous, with me receiving that news on the same day my mum told me she'd been diagnosed with terminal cancer and wasn' t expected to see Christmas. That was pretty devastating. A week later, the doctor called and told me they hadn't removed the lesion properly and would have to reopen the nearly healed wound. Fantastic... especially when the second incision almost healed only to reopen a couple of hours after the stitches were taken out. Not so great. I followed that with a week of the flu and then gave myself a case of Tenn...

Well, the first week of April went well, right up until the seventh, when my back tweaked, and set me, literally, on my back. From that time, right through to the end of the second week of April, things got tricky. I could only sit for limited lengths of time, so I had to triage what I could and couldn’t do. Projects of a lower priority were dropped, including the work I was doing for National Poetry Month, and both the poetry and flash fiction collections. I also dropped the 30 Days of Writing challenges by Shut Up & Write, but didn’t stop writing every day; I just had to be more focussed, so I could hit my publishing deadlines. I’m hoping to pick up some of the short fall in the third week of April, but we’ll see how we go. My back is still not a hundred per cent, so I’ll be pushing it, but very, very carefully. In the meantime, here’s what got done over the last two weeks. Progress: April 1-7, 2018 New words produced: 28,466 Outlines and Notes: 3,792 Words...

Written for a collection due for release at the end of the year, and shared in honour of National Poetry Month: A Mystery of the Smiling Swamp Written on April 3, 2018, for the February 11 entry of Another 365 Days of Poetry, this fantasy piece is themed with trolls and swamps, and the mystery of a vanished hero. On the shores of the Smiling Swamp the trollman came and saw the livid roiling waters looking like Hell’s maw. In armour made of dragon hide, he came and contemplated the way the waters boiled and shook, until his curiosity was sated. The Smiling Swamp, a beast untamed, a wild land no one controlled, the troll knight stretched, his mind made up. He’d never wanted to grow old. He stood upon the shore and roared, his voice a rolling challenge that echoed through the swampy sward, forshadowing the trollman’s war for a land to be avenged. Blood flows green in the Smiling Swamp, but it flows red as well, and the gas that gives the m...

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.