CM Simpson: Writer & Gamer

My post-apocalpytic, dark urban fantasy short story just released. It's available from Smashwords, Kobo, Amazon, Omnilit, and DriveThruFiction in most ebook and PDF formats. It is not yet available in print form, but will appear in future collections. A Legacy of Elves EBook Cover The sun was setting and the trolls were out when we discovered the chapel. From the get-go it seemed almost too good to be true, but we needed refuge from the trolls. Between them, the dust smugglers, the pixie and the unicorns, we mighta bitten off more’n we could chew, but if we could survive this little fracas, we just might have found ourselves a home... we really needed a home… A Legacy of Elves is a short post-apocalyptic story set in a world where civilisation has been all but wiped out by a tsunami of magic, plague and natural disaster. Trolls and other creatures of legend and fairytale roam the land, and human survivors must build a new life, but everything comes at a cost, and...

After last week’s change of routine, led to less writing than I’d anticipated, I worked to adjust my routine a little more. I focused on getting 10,000 steps done in the morning, and that worked out all right until the 38 degree celsius day hit. I also found that on days when I took long walks in the morning, I struggled to get into the rest of the day, although this was more due to the heat than the exercise. It’s very hard to write when the temperatures reach 28-38 degrees Celsius (82.4-100.4 degrees Farenheit) or more. (We have no air-conditioning, you see.) All my walking was done in the very early morning and I made sure I was home by 09:00 at the latest. I did not go walking on the 38 degree day. I am noting an improvement in my health, productivity and alertness, which dropped off after the third consecutive day of not walking, so the walking has to stay. Also, at the beginning of this week, I made the following decisions: I would finish the chapter books I had started...

Today, U.S. A. time, the third book in Carlie Simonsen's Otherworld Adventures series releases: Rocky wakes up from stasis, and realises he’s nearly home, but he hasn’t been awake for five minutes when things start to go wrong. His little sister’s teddybear is missing, and it’s not the only thing. A cat has gone missing from the animals’ deck. And then his sister goes missing, too. Can Rocky find her, and maybe Teddy and the cat, before the ship arrives and all three are lost forever? Rocky and the Great Teddybear Rescue is the third book in the Otherworld Adventures series, which is set on Rocky’s journey to the new world, where his parents will farm alongside the aliens who have asked them to help.

This week, I changed things up a bit. In the first couple of challenge weeks I confirmed I don’t do so well writing more than 2,000 words on one project at a single sitting, so this week I experimented to see if I could find a working method that works for me and still allows me to achieve the goals I need to achieve. I also knew that at the end of this week the books I needed to pre-read for my university courses would arrive, and that everything would change next week—but in a way that would be more realistic for the university year. I also had to focus more on publishing, as writing the stories is one thing, but getting them out to my readers is completely another. Hate to admit that publishing took up most of my time, this week. Overview   New words produced: 6,272 Old words revised: 0 Outlines and Notes: 0 Works completed: 5 Works revised: 0 Covers created: 1 Works published: 1 Works submitted: 1 Competitions Entered: 0 Bloggery: 680 Unive...