Thursday, August 28, 2014

Sneak Peek 4: 365 Days of Flash Fiction


Science fiction, fantasy, dark fantasy, speculative fiction and a touch of horror, this collection plays with just about every genre it can lay its hands on. C.M. Simpson explores new worlds, new settings and lets loose some ideas that just needed to be gotten out of her head. 
If short stories are your thing—and the shorter the better—you can find tiny tales from a wide variety of genres in 365 Days of Flash Fiction.

Some of them have been produced in answer to challenges put out by other writers, like the tale of Hasken’s choice:

Hasken’s Choice

This was written in response to Chuck Wendig’s Flash Fiction Challenge set on 30 August 2013. I had no title, no idea what the story would be, but I randomly rolled my setting and was given “a penal colony set up by space-faring elves”. This is what came out. It was posted on my blog on 2 September 2013.

The first guard doubled over at 1800 hours. Dusk. According to one movie, ‘magic hour’. None of the inmates had heard of the movie, let alone seen it. If they had, they would have recognized old history – an entire species wiped out by the ingenuity of man. No wonder the elves had been angry.
The dragons had been a trap – an elven trap, vengeance on the human race, any race who dug so far into the world for nothing more than mineral wealth. In truth, it had probably been a trap meant for the dwarves, the world-eating hives of kesteringus, or the Venusian mole men who murdered creatures of fire and acid whenever they could.
Knives in the gut, Hasken thought, seeing the figure topple as he set another seedling firmly into its pot. Poor bastard.
Hasken had not approved of the idea, and the others had exiled him to the potting sheds. No one liked the sheds; they were death traps for most months of the year, but this month Hasken was lucky. He wasn’t dealing with spike-throwing anthrogens, head-biting kalloskathies, or symbiotically-linked carnivores. This month, he was dealing with sap-covered, thorn-encrusted, stink-oozing floriskanths. Nothing a good pair of protective gloves and a gas mask couldn’t deal with. Piece of cake by comparison.
The second guard fell off her hadrosaur at 1805. The hadrosaur stood, staring out at the horizon, while its rider curled into a ball, groaning at its feet. Hasken caught his glove on the thorns, swore as he carefully disentangled his fingers from the grasping points, ungluing the glove from binding sap. A cuff over the back of his head reminded Hasken cursing was forbidden.
Hasken apologized, crooning gently. Some of the other inmates were deliberately cruel, earning exile from the potting sheds. Most avoided the duty where they could. Hasken was one of the few who relished it. He waited for the guard behind him to move on. The guard did not.
Looking up, Hasken saw the guard staring out through the fence at the hadrosaur. Hasken supposed he should do something about that, but didn’t. He hadn’t agreed with the plan. It was stupid and cruel; it sickened him and he wanted no part in it. Not even the small one being offered. He followed the guard’s gaze, gasping as though just noticing the beast and its fallen rider.
1811.
The guard moved like lightening, slapping a hand on the emergency alarm, and jamming a long-barreled pistol against Hasken’s head.
“Don’t move.”
“The skanth,” Hasken said, locking himself in place, resisting the urge to sweep the pistol away and jam the thorny sap-coated seedling into the guard’s gut. He’d been accused of murder, had indeed committed it, and had never regretted it. The death wasn’t why he’d been imprisoned.
The dead man hadn’t been able to admit sabotaging the air processor, and Hasken was only half-way through repairing it when the ship’s security team caught him. Half fixed, half broken – it all looked the same to the captain, especially when the dead man had been meant to be in the life support area, and Hasken had not.
Why was he there?
A deterioration in air quality and change in the sound from the engines pumping the air, whenever that technician was on shift.
How had he noticed that?
The fact he’d been carrying his own testing equipment had only been held against him. The fact his room shared a wall with the plant equipment, ignored. What had he hoped to gain blackmailing the shipping line?
In the end, Hasken had been jailed for murder and sabotage. He’d been hoping to reach Earth, put some of his theories into practice, regrow something on the wastes, replant… Bad luck to have found an elf-hating saboteur on the cruise line for which he’d gathered a fare. Bad luck to be implicated in one of the most serious of space-lane crimes.
“Finish it, but slowly.”
Once the guard had stepped back, and was dividing his attention between watching the door, watching Hasken and watching the hadrosaur beyond the fence. Hasken set the floriskanth seedling in its pot, tamped down the earth, and disentangled his fingers before setting the pot beside the others. When he was finished, he placed his hands on his thighs and stayed, kneeling on the floor.
At 18:16, the third guard crumbled, releasing his grip on the shock chains keeping his velociraptors in check. Screams rose from the prisoners harvesting tubers two enclosures over. The elf guard swore. At 18:17 he groaned, and dropped to his knees, keeping the pistol aimed at Hasken’s head by sheer force of will.
At 18:18, Hasken watched and made his move as the pistol wavered. He rose, turning as he gained his feet, avoiding the first dart. The guard did not get to fire a second; Hasken kicked the gun from his hand, while reaching behind a row of floriskanth seedlings and potting tools.
“Here’s something I prepared earlier,” he muttered, pulling out the tuber he’d stashed there earlier. It was the only antidote he knew.
The guard had curled in on himself, by the time Hasken reached his side. Pulling the elf into his lap and locking him against his chest with his forearms, Hasken tilted the elf’s head back, relieved when the guard’s mouth opened in a groan. With a grunt of effort, Hasken twisted the tuber so that it broke, crushing the fibers at its core and releasing a mixture of seed-encrusted pulp held together in mucous-like sap.
Any runnier, and he’d have failed but, by the time the raptors had quelled the uprising in the field, and reinforcements had taken back  the buildings where inmates were still struggling with locking mechanisms biometrically attuned elsewhere ,Hasken had guided the oozing mess between his captor’s lips. Not a single prisoner made it past the inner fences, but only one guard survived.
Hasken had sworn he would never again be caught with a dead body on his hands.


365 Days of Flash Fiction is scheduled for release on October 4, 2014, and pre-ordering should be available soon.

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Sneak Peek 3: 365 Days of Flash Fiction



Science fiction, fantasy, dark fantasy, speculative fiction and a touch of horror, this collection plays with just about every genre it can lay its hands on. C.M. Simpson explores new worlds, new settings and lets loose some ideas that just needed to be gotten out of her head.

If short stories are your thing—and the shorter the better—you can find tiny tales from a wide variety of genres in 365 Days of Flash Fiction.

Some of them are tales of fantasy, not quite traditional, but not quite modern.

A Jendavik Homecoming


Started on March 18, 2014, for 365 Days of Flash Fiction, this piece was completed on March 23. It describes a homecoming that is a little more exciting than anyone would want it to be.


I was tired and the afternoon sun was setting. My hopes of reaching Jendavik before dusk were fading. Why Jendavik? Because it was home, and I had not been home in a very long time. And why before dusk? Because Jendavik stands in the midst of the troll lands. If I did not make the gates by dusk, there was a fair chance I might not see the dawn. I looked around. The pines rose, thick and dark. If I’d had a horse, I’d have spurred it into a canter. As it was, as jog was the best I could do. By the time my hand touched the iron binding the gates, I was sprinting, having discarded my pack, my sword and my jacket on the stony ground. The guards were just brave and good-hearted enough to hold the gates and let me in, leaving the troll-kin, howling and hungry, pounding at Jendavik’s doors.


365 Days of Flash Fiction is scheduled for release on October 4, 2014,  and pre-ordering should be available soon.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Sneak Peek 2: 365 Days of Flash Fiction



Science fiction, fantasy, dark fantasy, speculative fiction and a touch of horror, this collection plays with just about every genre it can lay its hands on. C.M. Simpson explores new worlds, new settings and lets loose some ideas that just needed to be gotten out of her head.

If short stories are your thing—and the shorter the better—you can find tiny tales from a wide variety of genres in 365 Days of Flash Fiction.

Science fiction, fantasy, dark fantasy, speculative fiction and a touch of horror, this collection plays with just about every genre it can lay its hands on. C.M. Simpson explores new worlds, new settings and lets loose some ideas that just needed to be gotten out of her head. 
 
If short stories are your thing—and the shorter the better—you can find tiny tales from a wide variety of genres in 365 Days of Flash Fiction.

Some of them are tales of urban fantasy, but not the romantic kind. Take this tale of pixies, for example:

The Pixies at Wickman’s Cave


Written on February 16, 2014, for the February 11 entry of 365 Days of Flash Fiction, this piece expands on the pixie dust world. Enjoy.


Pixies! Who needs ‘em?
I saw a half dozen headin’ into Wickman’s caves, but not under their own steam.
See? I like potholing. Caving deep, man.
I was off to Wickman’s for a bit of a delve, but what I saw stopped me cold. Pixies, man, bein’ carried in cages, janglin’ like fairy bells gone wrong as they were taken into the dark.
Blokes holdin’ the cages were bad ass, but even they were bein’ careful not to touch the sides. Pixies bite… and that’s not all. Usually, I steer clear of the little mothers, but there was something real wrong seein’ them caged like that. Figured they could do with some help.
Anyways, I saw what else was bein’ carried into that cave and I set my phone to 000, left a message and hid the damn thing under a bush so the police could track it to the cave, and then I set about findin’ another way in.
This wasn’t my first time to Wickman’s. I know the system pretty well. I knew a back way. Only one cavern I could think of would be big enough to hold that many cages and the industrial-sized microwave they just dragged in. I might not like pixies, but no way was I goin’ to let them do that to the little varmints.
I got into the rear of the cavern and watched them set up. Watched ‘em test the fryer on one of the pixies and figured it was one too many. There weren’t goin’ ta be no more… well, not if they all went home and left the work ‘til mornin’.
I watched ‘em string lights and then bring in more pixies, start stackin’ cages along the rear wall. Ducked my head until I was below light level. Waited some more.
No one leaves guards inside. I learned that from… well, never you mind. These guys weren’t no different. I watched ‘em leave, unstacked the first two cages and headed back up to the surface. Set ‘em up by the edge of the hole and headed back in. Came back with two more.
By then, the first two were mighty pissed. I got the gist and started openin’ doors. I had a piton and hammer in my gear. It made short work of the locks. Trouble is, it looks the same when you’re reachin’ for the door as it does if’n you jes’ closed it. The unicorn hit me hard from behind before the pixies could let it know I was helpin’. Good thing the damn mules can heal as well as hurt. I’da been a gonner otherwise.
So, the unicorns took out the guards at the front, and made sure no-one else came in unless they had cop ID. Who knew they were aware of what those looked like? But they did. It went faster after that, although I nearly got myself shot for monkeying around the cages when the special squad arrived.
The pixies flew between them and me until the squaddies didn’t seem inclined to ventilate me no more, and then I discovered I was some kind of hero. Only thing was, I had to postpone my Wickman climb a whole month while they cleaned the rest of the mess up.
Not cool, man. Not cool.


365 Days of Flash Fiction is scheduled for release on October 4, 2014,  and pre-ordering should be available soon.

Monday, August 4, 2014

Sneak Peek 1: 365 Days of Flash Fiction



Science fiction, fantasy, dark fantasy, speculative fiction and a touch of horror, this collection plays with just about every genre it can lay its hands on. C.M. Simpson explores new worlds, new settings and lets loose some ideas that just needed to be gotten out of her head.
 
If short stories are your thing—and the shorter the better—you can find tiny tales from a wide variety of genres in 365 Days of Flash Fiction.

Some of them are tales of fantasy mixed with science fiction and a touched by speculative, like this one:

Bellberries and Chime Beetles


I was thinking of my young adult science fiction novel, in which a little girl is the first to eat a very blue berry. It wasn’t complete at the time, and it’s set in a universe without this kind of dragon, but it built on the idea of a small, blue dragon very nicely. This piece was written on November 16, 2013 for the November 8 entry of 365 Days of Flash Fiction. It is exactly 210 words long.


The little dragon shimmered like sapphire, tucking its wings neatly against its sides and cocking its head as it approached the child seated on the grass. She was eating bellberries, shaking each one so that the seed rattled, and giggling at the different notes ringing from each. Her fingers were stained blue and rivulets of juice were painting azure streaks down her wrists, chin and neck. Her brown eyes widened as she noticed the creature before her. It made a trilling chirp, asking for what it needed. The little girl smiled and held out her half-eaten berry, but the dragon turned its face away. Hesitantly, it laid a claw on one of the seeds carefully arranged on the grass in front of her. Frowning, the girl picked it up and held it out. The dragon churred, carefully taking the hard-shelled seed from the child’s tiny hand—and then it bit down hard, causing the beetle within to jangle with fear. The little girl laughed, clapping her hands, as the dragon crunched the sweet-sounding delicacy between its teeth. It could see a long and happy friendship ahead, one remarkably free of hunger. Usually it had to wait until the chime beetles emerged. In sufficient amounts, bellberry flesh was poisonous to dragons.


365 Days of Flash Fiction is scheduled for release on October 4, 2014,  and pre-ordering should be available soon.