CM Simpson: Writer & Gamer

The Chronicles of a Dark God trilogy is coming! And Jake at JCaleb Design has created some wonderful covers for it. What's the Trilogy About? When an ancient deity begins to make its presence felt in the city of Kericliff, an unlikely group of heroes rise to meet it: a rejected priest and his barbarian protector, a wizardess and her apprentices in fear of their lives...and a messenger from a distant land. Together they must travel to Wildejun, attend a swap meet of the gods, and then work together to discover and overcome an ancient evil, before it can escape its prison and return to power. Book 3: Dark God's Demise Finding their nemesis was one thing. Defeating it? Entirely another... Cover art by Jake at JCaleb Design .  

 Some of you might be familiar with my short work - and some of you may not, but I've been gathering my short stories, poems and flash into themed collections, and slowly getting them ready for release. The first of these will be A Collection of Dragons , which will be released later in the year. It's complete and is queued for a final edit and formatting. In the meantime, its cover has arrived, this one designed by Jake at JCaleb Design.  

The first cover for the month, completed yesterday, is for this month’s release, The Songster & the Pirates . You would not believe just how hard it is to find winged women not looking like they’re designed for an erotica cover! Artists – wish list: winged women turned so they can be positioned looking out at something in the background, and looking tough and determined, not like sex kittens. I can’t be the only author or cover designer looking for that kind of thing. I purchase mainly from Dreamstime, too, for the curious. The pieces that went into this cover were purchased from Dreamstime and consist of: planets and asteroids art by Sdecoret , spaceship art by Junichi Shimazaki , and an angel photographed by IrinaKharchenko . Once a space merc, now a singer, Taran keeps her identity as a siren secret. When spacewolves join the audience at her current gig, she knows what they’re looking for. The only question is can she slip away, before the wolves and her past can...

This is the new cover for the first volume of this year's collection of works created or prepared for publication in 2013. Rather than just repeat the covers of the published short stories for a quilt-like effect (as I did last year), I decided I wanted a background and just a few of the elements from the other covers, and to do that, I needed a background that would allow me to tie the covers of the two volumes together. Usually, I go to Dreamstime, but I had seen a photograph on Facebook by Greta van der Rol . It encapsulated what I had in mind. My only regret is that I couldn't show more of it, but you can find the whole photograph, here . Covers from the short stories incorporated in this collection are as follows. As you can see, not every story could be represented.

Here is the cover I created for my anthology this month: An Anthology of Blades is available from Smashwords, Kindle, Kobo, iTunes, and DriveThruFiction And here is the cover I created for Ellie Moonwater's next release on behalf of C.M. Simpson Publishing:

A new financial year has begun, and I have assessed what I planned to achieve by the end of the year. After doing the ‘first-of-quarter’ set-up, this is what I achieved for the very first week in July 2013. Overview New words produced: 414 Old words revised: 0 Works completed: 0 Works revised: 0 Covers created: 1 (1-3 variations) Works published: 32 (2 formats each on OmniLit) Works submitted: 0 Competitions Entered: 0 Publishing Tasks Created 3 blog posts for this blog ; Created 4 blog posts for the C.M. SimpsonPublishing blog ; Created the print-on-demand and ebook covers for Carlie Simonsen’s Wings ; Uploaded all Carlie Simonsen and 90% of C.M. Simpson’s short story and anthology , and novel titles to OmniLit. New Arrivals The following ideas arrived this week: ShortStory60: about girls and knives; ShortStory61: about a very special kukri; ShortStory62: a Tzamesch story featuring a different kind of barbarian, Honz.

Here are the covers I created this month: PoD E-book Large Print PoD E-book Version E-book version Large Print PoD Large-Print PoD E-book version E-book version

 As well as writing stories, I create covers for them (and for the other writers at C.M. Simpson publishing. Here are the covers I created in April: E-book cover for 7 April 2013 release E-book cover for 7 April 2013 release PoD Cover for 7 April 2013 release E-book cover for 7 April 2013 release E-book cover for 13 April 2013 release PoD Cover for 13 April 2013 release E-book cover for Ellie Moonwater's 23 April 2013 release PoD Cover for Ellie Moonwater's 23 April 2013 release PoD Cover for 27 April 2013 release E-book cover for 27 April 2013 release E-book cover for 27 April 2013 release  

So, this week started out a little bit slower than I’d hoped, but that’s usually the way when you’re tidying up the loose ends of several tasks. Progress comes in many forms, and I’m starting to find that the writing is the easy part… but if you want to make a living off your writing, it has to be available for people to buy. Decisions, decisions… Tier 2 Goals Transcribed ChapBook15A—Dear Tiger from paper to computer. It gave me goosebumps… again. At just over 4,000 words, it’s now, or soon to be, available on Kobo, Kindle, Smashwords, iTunes, Nook and DriveThruFiction. Transcribed ChapBook14—Legacy of Dreams from paper to computer. At just over 6,000 words, it’s now, or soon to be, available on Kobo, Kindle, Smashwords, iTunes, Nook and DriveThruFiction. Backburner Goals ShortStory31—A Battle of Minds: revised, edited, formatted, covered and released. ShortStory30: revised, edited and formatted. ShortStory32: revised, edited and formatted. ShortStory33: revi...

Progress for the second week of December was good. Current Projects DarkFantasy1A: Revised Ch. 27-30; added 10,000 words. Completed at 86,000 words. Revised twice. Covers for print and e-versions created and formatted. Backburner Projects Nil, this week. I have been good, and focussed. Publishing Tasks Updated this blog thrice. Revised cover art for Eleanor Maine’s erotic time-travel romance, Hunters of the Nile . Cover is now more indicative of genre. See the post on the C.M. Simpson Publishing blog . Updated C.M. Simpson Publishing blog with two entries. Sourced photography for DarkFantasy1A-C covers. Designed covers for DarkFantasy1A-C . Created covers for DarkFantasy1A-C . Updated my blog and publishing blog pages with links to sale sites. Enrolled in Kobo Writing Life and began uploading titles. Uploaded DarkFantasy1A—Shadow’s Rise small print version to CreateSpace for final check. Craft Tasks Nil, this week, unless you count editing and...