CM Simpson: Writer & Gamer

I've got my October cover early - and I love it! 365 Days of Flash Fiction is scheduled for release on October 4, 2014, and pre-ordering from Smashwords in early September 2014.

This week, we’re looking at an eighth kind of cinquain—the Didactic Cinquain. Unlike the other forms, this one doesn’t use a syllable count as a base. Instead, it relies on a word count for each line. The first line of this cinquain is a noun—which also acts as the title, the second line consists of two adjectives describing the title, the third line consists of a three-word phrase further describing the title, the fourth line has four words describing feelings about the title, and the fifth line is a single word, usually a synonym, that references the title subject. For those of you who are new to this series, a cinquain is a five-line poem that has a set number of syllables (or word types) per line. Sometimes the title of a cinquain acts as a sixth line. Cinquains were invented by Adelaide Crapsey was an American poet who was inspired by the rules of Japanese poetry to create her own poetical form, the cinquain. Here’s an example, originally written for a poetry coll...

A better week, this week, but I’m not as sick and I’ve had a couple of mornings on the bus, which seems to be where most of my writing gets done during semester. Overview New words produced: 3,140 Old words revised: 0 Works completed: 19 (all for inclusion in longer works) Works revised: 0 Covers created: 0 Works published: 0 Works submitted: 0 Competitions Entered: 0 Tier 1 Tasks Annual 13: Added 470 words Annual 14: Added 1,953 words Publishing Tasks Created 4 blog posts for this blog; New Arrivals The following ideas arrived this week: Poem360—Trolls: a didactic cinquain about trolls; Poem361—Starships: a didactic cinquain about space colonisation; Poem362—Dragons: a didactic cinquain about dragons; Poem363—Pixies: a didactic cinquain about pixies; Poem364—Dreams: a didactic cinquain about dreams; Poem365—Defiance: a didactic cinquain about being different and choosing your own road; Poem366—Goblins: a grammar cinquain about gob...

The cover for the second volume of short stories and poems from 2013 is now complete. Here's what it looks like. The Year Just Gone is scheduled for release on 28 June 2014.

So, this week I learned why four nights of midnight in a row were not good for you – even when you sleep an hour or two later than usual, and especially when you get up at 5 a.m. the next day for your day job. Let’s just say that doing that is a bad idea, and doing it while still recovering from the flu is an even worse idea. In order to avoid falling completely over with the flu – again, I had to go to bed earlier all week. And I had to study for a couple of mini-tests. Not a lot of writing got done this week, and none of it made it onto the computer, so I have a little bit of notebook work to go through, and some ideas that are crying out for development. On the up side, I am feeling a lot better, although still run-down and still with some flu symptoms. The study is almost back under control, and I’m looking to getting my writing flowing smoothly—no catch-up until mid-semester break. Overview New words produced: 0 Old words revised: 0 Works completed: 0 Works r...

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.

I created the following covers in April 2014: To be released: 21 June 2014 To be released: 28 June 2014 To be released 4 October 2014