CM Simpson: Writer & Gamer

Today's poem. Yes, there was a poem, yesterday, but it didn't make it onto the blog. Things were a bit busy. It will be in the next poetry anthology, though, so keep an eye out for that towards the end of this year, or the beginning of next. In the meantime, I played with the start of an old nursery rhyme, and wondered what form it might find in a future where star travel and colonisation was a regular 'thing'. Sing a Song of Colony Sing a song of sixpence, sing a song of flying high sing a song of airfares of dreams up in the sky. Sing a song of pennies of dollars not well spent sing a song of dreams lost of hulls swift-breached and rent. Sing a song of credits of cash in bits and bytes, of journeys made at long last of planetfall and sight. Sing a song of new homes of colonies ‘neath stars people making new lives from our Earth travelled far.

Luck Among Servants  is now available for pre-order on Smashwords and Amazon, and will also be available from DriveThruFiction and via Draft2Digital distribution. I’d always considered myself one of the lucky ones, lucky that the slavers had taken me and left my family, lucky to have found a master as kind as the one I had, just… lucky, so, when my master asked me to ride one of the many-legged spurline on an early morning errand, I considered myself lucky to have the honour. I never thought what it might be like when my luck ran out, and my master wasn’t around to intervene…

  A Caution on Gathak’nor When I started to write this, I was thinking of writing a nonsense poem. Instead, I ended up with a cautionary tale inspired by speculation of what the poetry of the future might be about, if it followed old Earth patterns of verse, and the storytelling tradition—and by the idea that not all the worlds humanity reaches will be friendly and benign, even if they look habitable. This verse was written on April 15, 2017, to celebrate National Poetry Month , and as the April 15 entry for Another 365 Days of Poetry . I spasmed in the Gathak’nor and tumbled down the hill. In the wake of dandelions, the bluebells seemed to spill clouds of pus and whitened bone, as I found the river bank and tumbled o’er the brink into a torrid torrent rank and, in case you’re wond’ring, why I was walking Gathak’nor, when the planet is forbidden and will remain so evermore, t’is because I found a signal, something faint that called, and I ro...

Finally, I have also made the first release for May available for pre-order. When the plane carrying P.O.S. Officer Schaeffer goes down, it’s no accident. She and her partner lose the prisoner they’re escorting to trial, and the local elves nearly lose their lives protecting the unicorns and a grove of dryads. With the aircraft and its passengers on the ground, Schaeffer has to secure her prisoner before the woman can create any more mischief—and with dusk closing, the local unicorns seeking vengeance, and the trolls beginning to stir it’s not going to be easy. A Matter of Justice is set in a world where magic has returned, pixie dust is the new drug of choice, and humans live side by side with creatures of legend. With new crimes forming around new resources and new markets, the Paranormal Operations Squad, walks the edge of two worlds, trying to bring justice to both.