CM Simpson: Writer & Gamer

Anthology1 has a name. It’s had a name for months, but I haven’t wanted to share it, until I was sure I could actually complete it and get it off the ground. Anthology1 is called An Anthology of Dragons . It is just over 13,690 words long and contains three short stories and two poems, written over a period of 18 years. The pieces range from pure fantasy (although without the ubiquitous wizard) to contemporary speculative, and haiku-esque. Over the next few days, I’ll share the cover, first paragraphs and lines from stories and poems, and let you know when this sucker goes live. In the meantime, I’ll be formatting for upload and preparing Anthology2 and Anthology3 for release, while I rewrite DarkFantasy1 and complete CrimeNovel1 and RomanceNovel1… amongst other things.

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’...