CM Simpson: Writer & Gamer

Day 1 of Conflux 8 was full of activity and broadened my understanding on not only techniques or styles, but of the publishing industry itself. I headed into Day 2 with hopes for more of the same—I was not disappointed. Conflux 8—Day 2 0900-1000: Using lessons from apocalypses past in your fiction with Ian McHugh He made me cry—or rather, the presentation on the Lakota, on top of the other tragedies and localised apocalypses, made me cry, but I challenge any one to put themselves in the shoes of this people and not be touched and angered and hurt on their behalf, and I challenge any writer to put themselves in the post-apocalyptic zone and not come away emotionally limping. If you do, go back over your manuscript and make sure you’ve captured what you want out of this genre of disaster and tragedy and conveyed it so your reader is pulled right in. And this is the point Ian made very well when he said ‘It doesn’t matter if your apocalypse is fast or slow or what the death cou...

Lunch on Day 1 of Conflux 8 was over almost before we realised it and many of us had to scramble to make the first after-lunch panel on time. Something I’m going to have to remember to have a better handle on at Conflux 9 . Several interesting panels ran after lunch, but I couldn’t attend them all. Here are the ones I was able to get to, and each one was well worth it. 1300-1400: Romance Writers of the Apocalypse with Tracey O’Hara , Nicole Murphy and Jodi Cleghorn Panelists (from left to right): Tracey O'Hara, Nicole Murphy, Jodi Cleghorn. This panel consisted of a few of the many writers making up the Romance Writers of the Apocalypse blog. The blog was born out of a Twitter conversation about the need to get fit, have fun and write smart. They each spoke about the different ways they got into writing and/or publishing. Jodi Cleghorn spoke about how the lyrics of ‘Deck the Halls’ and the anthology that resulted brought her to the independent publishing field. ...