CM Simpson: Writer & Gamer

Here are the books I've read this month. It's a bit of an eclectic collection but variety is the spice of life, right?

This month, took a science fiction twist and, with a couple of weeks of flu and back trouble keeping me in bed, quite a lot got read. Here are two of my favourite authors: Ann Aguirre and Mike Shepherd, whose work I have read, and will gladly read, more than once.

Have you ever been really enjoying one thing, when you got a craving for another? Well, that's what happened this month when, in the middle of reading the Dick Francis novels I own, I had a sudden craving for Ann Aguirre's gritty space adventure science fiction. And then, I couldn't help but think I might need to read some of Mike Shepherd's naval science fiction. Choices, choices, choices. Here's what I ended up reading this month:

As well as reading the likes of David Weber, Lois McMaster-Bujold, Anne McCaffrey, Alan Dean Foster, Elizabeth Moon, Andre Norton, John Christopher, Ben Bova, Robert Silverberg, Roger Zelazney, Tanya Huff, Rob Thurman, Jan Clarke, Tara K. Harper and Mike Shepherd, I also read romance and this has led me to discovering a number of other authors I really like, Nalini Singh among them. Recently, however, I read a novel called Grimspace . When I bought it, I thought it was a science fiction romance, one of the genres Writing Head #2 is writing. As there’s not a lot out there, I thought I’d read a little of what was. I would not call Grimspace romance. It has romantic elements and a very short (not too explicit) sex scene, but it is primarily one of the best science fiction action adventures I have ever read – and I’ve read a lot. Grimspace is definitely up there with works I’ve read by mainstream authors, and Sirantha Jax as memorable and tough a character as Alan Dean Foster’...