CM Simpson: Writer & Gamer

January's short story is now live. Set in the Lunar Wolves section of the Odyssey universe, it brings several of the series and settings of this universe together, providing a major link between them. Featuring Delight (from Odyssey), Melerom (from Melerom Leads the Dance ), Felicity Jones and her lizardine consort... or is that vice versa (from The Reptile's Blade ) and linking events from Serpents' Souls and Dragons' Hearts , with Abby, a major character in The Transporter's Favour , the fourth book of the Mack 'n' Me 'n' Odyssey i series, this story takes place in the Lunar Wolves arena (see Bid the Moon Goodbye , or Earth & Lunar Dreaming ) . It also introduces what looks like another character who needs his own series - and I'm very excited to see it go live. You can find links to all the major retailers HERE . Captured by the space wolves and held aboard their battle cruiser, Miguel doesn’t think things could get worse—and then he...

LAST WEEK, Simone hid a package. This week, things caught up with her... Chapter 2 Excerpt – The Secret Letter From: Simone Michaels, Boarder 9652, Mail Room 23, Locked Bag 359, Box 908, Delta Quadrant, Midpoint Campus, Ambron’s Interstellar Academy, FedExplore Inc. Mail Room 98, East Melbourne Mail Complex, Australia, Terra Firma Date: 12 August 3049 Dear Tiges THEY MOVED ME!!! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- The complete series is available as short, individual ebooks, and will become available as an omnibus, later this year. In the meantime, you can find them on this blog, until one week after the last chapter in the last book of the series has been posted, at which point this series will be taken down, and a new series serialised on site. books2read.com/u/4Awrze books2read.com/u/mgrxdR books2read.com/u/4DoG8D books2read.com/u/b5Mng1 ...

Writing is happening, but slowly. In amongst the editing and blogging, I’ve just finished a second short story for the month. Set in the Mack ‘n’ Me universe between The Depredides Dance and Mack ‘n’ Me: Blaedergil’s Host , this short story is a novella-length tale of one of the many missions they ran between Books 1 and 2 of the Mack ‘n’ Me ‘n’ Odyssey series. These are the first 500 words – before they go through the editing process: Rogue Retrieval The last person I expected to see when I stepped into the restaurant with the first meals of the night, was Mack—yet there he was, large as life, and twice as mean. When I caught sight of his seven-foot figure leaning against the wall just inside the entrance, it was all I could do not to drop what I was carrying and bolt for the alley out back. He was waiting for something, and somehow I didn’t think it was for the concierge to check the bookings in case there was a free table. The way his eyes moved over the patrons e...

This is the third new feature for this blog—or semi-new, if you’d prefer, given I’ve touched on it, before. This year, every Wednesday, I’ll be taking a poem from one of my three poetry collections—including the one to be released later in the year—and putting it on my blog as a free read. This week’s verse is from Another 365 Days of Poetry , a collection of mixed-genre poetry to be released later in the year, once both collection and cover are complete. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Waking Dead   I heard them screaming Screaming? Screaming. Screaming fit to wake the dead. The dead? The sleeping dead. The sleeping dead who waken Waken? And from their sleeping rise. The dead that rise to walk the earth. The Earth? The ground beneath our feet. Beneath our feet, as the whole world turns, the earth that lets them sleep until the dead do seek to rise, and with the living, compa...

For the second new thing I’m trying this year, I’m taking a leaf out of Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s book, and putting up a short story so people can read it for free for one week, before it gets taken down, and another story put up. Since I couldn’t decide what story to put up, I’m going to show them in alphabetical order by title, so this week’s short story is one of my earliest: A Battle of Minds: Someone wants VR combat star Danzer dead—and they’re more than happy to kill him in the middle of a public arena and take the audience with him. When security personnel for the VR games insist on overseeing the match between him and his most dangerous opponent, no one knows if it will be enough. Will Security succeed in their intervention, or will their efforts result in more than Danzer losing his life?   A Battle of Minds is available as a stand-alone short story at the following links: https://www.books2read.com/u/mqOKvb You can also find Kristine Kathryn Rusch's latest fre...