CM Simpson: Writer & Gamer

The Possibility of Peace The Wendig Terribleminds Challenge this week was to mix two randomly-rolled sub-genres into one tale of 1,000 words and submit it by November 1st, 2013. My two sub-genres were: Space Opera and Psychological Horror, so I went and visited the universe of one of my novels in progress. Not sure how I went, but here’s what came out. The world burned, the dimension subject to an unholy conflagration that sent plant life into riot and forced its creatures to take on heat-resistant forms that glided slick and smooth through shadows, or skittered in blatant adoration of the sweltering conditions. I was glad I’d brought the ice, gladder that my suit was already compensating. This was not the ideal place for a rendezvous. Shadows floated at the corner of my eyes, mankind’s equivalent materialising from pathways leading into the clearing, their forms glistening as though slick with sweat. Perhaps, they were. “You had something to say.” It’s not much o...

The latest Wendig Terribleminds Challenge revolved around an article in an on-line magazine. I thought of spiders, of moths, of beetles and, finally, I thought of fairy rings, and this is what I came up with. Enjoy: A Choice of Colour Shiloh saw the first tower ring as she stepped out onto the porch. The sight made her heart beat faster. She hadn’t counted on being found so soon. Glancing around, she breathed a sigh of relief. Nothing above the door. Nothing on the opposite lintel. Careful now, Shiloh looked down, butterflies stirring restlessly in her stomach, her toes instinctively curling away from the innocuous palisade of white in her front of her feet. That one had nearly worked. Taking a cautious step backward, Shiloh stood in the doorway, taking stock of the day. Grey, pre-dawn light softened the world outside, drawing long shadows on the red earth beyond her front porch. Cool air touched her skin, something to be relished before the sun rose and the air becam...

Here we go again, another week gone, but progress has been made. Current Projects Novella1A for PenName1: Revised Prologue through Chapter4, and added 2,000 words. DarkFantasyNovel1A: Completed revised outline spanning three chapters of work, changing perspective, correcting timeline and tightening the focus. It’s taken me a week to work out how to approach this section of the rewrite. Added 2,500 words. Publishing Tasks Created 2 blog entries for my blog and 0 for my publishing blog Did a brief analysis on the last six-and-a-half months of sales and found a huge, but predictable, genre difference. Craft Completed ShortStory51— A Partnership for flash fiction challenge due Monday 19 November 2012. This story will also feature in Anthology19 , which, I’m planning for early-mid next year. New Arrivals ShortStory51—A Partnership , in response to this week’s terriblemindsflash fiction challenge .

First the Theory behind the Tale: Welcome to my third week of taking up Chuck Wendig's terribleminds blog Flash Fiction Challenges. This week's challenge was to incorporate the randomly generated sentence "A novice revenges the rhythm" into a piece of writing less than 1,000-words long. Here is this week's process.   Okay, so when I started this, I was very aware I was working in a limited time frame. For a start, I only had time to really look at it today, after finishing my novel. So, at first I was going to write a thousand-word story, exactly 1,000 words like last time , and that reminded me of the hundred-word challenges I'd participated in before. I was also going to use the mandatory line "A novice revenges the rhythm" somewhere in the middle of the story, but when I started writing, it wanted to be first on the page... and that's when the whole project changed. It stopped being a hundred-word prose piece. You might have notice...