JANUARY 2016
Last year’s anthology consisted only of the short stories and poems
worked on, created re-written or published in 2013. This year’s anthology
consists of all the short stories and poems that I created, or discovered in my
files and rewrote in 2014, including the pieces from 365 Days of Flash Fiction and 365
Days of Poetry that have already been included in Volumes 1 and 2 of last
year’s collections. The tales and poems are taken from completed anthologies,
and anthologies to come, from my blog, and from my notebooks. Most are
published, either individually or in a collection, but some are scheduled for
release at some time in the future. I have also included one short story
written under the pen name, Madeleine Torr.
This year’s anthology is three volumes long, and has been roughly
divided by the genres of the stories, poems and pieces of flash fiction that
each contains. Once again, the pieces are arranged in dative order. This volume
is focussed on mostly speculative pieces touched by darkness, with a single
piece of romance from my alter-ego.
This is also the last year I will be including unpublished work in the
annual collection of short work. The 2017 releases will only have work that was
released in the years the collection covers—or work released previously that
could not be included in another collection due to contract restrictions.
A Warning: These pieces might not be what you’ve come to expect
from reading my longer works, as my short pieces form the playground I use to
explore ways of putting words on paper to create different effects, or to
investigate new concepts and ideas. These pieces might not share the same tone,
register, genre or flavour as some of my other work, but I hope you enjoy them,
all the same.
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.
FEBRUARY 2016
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 some costs are more visible than
others.
MARCH 2016
APRIL 2016
MAY 2016
A collection of flash fiction, short stories, poems and essays where social commentary rubs shoulders with zombies, where poems both celebrate and criticise yearly celebrations and where short stories blend genres, where inspiration is usually grounded firmly in the world and times in which the words were written, but where imagination has occasionally run a bit amok, this three-volume collection consists of all the short work written, published, or prepared for publication by C.M. Simpson during 2014—and this volume focuses on work drawing on the real world, or the romance, horror, steampunk, urban fantasy, and speculative genres for inspiration or execution.
When
Rocky’s ship stops to resupply at Tallona’s First Moon, Rocky and his
classmates head down to the surface. Seeing moon dragons, ice beetles, dangerous
butterflies and flowers that grow on the moon’s surface seem like a good way to
spend a day. Rocky never expects to have to deal with moon raiders as well. When
his little sister runs away to protect the dragon eggs, Rocky’s troubles really
begin. Can he sneak out of the base, find his sister, and bring her back
without the pirates or moon base security ever finding out? All he knows is
that he has to try.
Rocky Rides
the Space Range is the fourth book in the Otherworld Adventures series, which is set on Rocky’s journey to the
world of Tallona, where his parents will farm alongside the aliens who have
asked them for help.
MARCH 2016
APRIL 2016
MAY 2016
C.M. Simpson: Short Works from 2014, Vol.2: Science Fiction |
C.M. Simpson: Short Works from 2014, Vol.2: Science Fiction |
C.M. Simpson: Short Works from 2014, Vol.2: Science Fiction |
A collection of flash fiction, short stories, poems and essays where social commentary rubs shoulders with zombies, where poems both celebrate and criticise yearly celebrations and where short stories blend genres, where inspiration is usually grounded firmly in the world and times in which the words were written, but where imagination has occasionally run a bit amok, this three-volume collection consists of all the short work written, published, or prepared for publication by C.M. Simpson during 2014—and this volume focuses on work drawing on the real world, or the romance, horror, steampunk, urban fantasy, and speculative genres for inspiration or execution.
Rocky Touches Down Ebook Cover |
Rocky Touches Down PoD Cover |
When Rocky finally reaches Tallona, he crash lands.
The cargo pod carrying his beloved pony Tank is dropped in, and radio
communications are lost with the colony and the space ship. To make matters
worse, there is a pack of velociraptors nesting right near the crash site. With
help a long way away, someone has to reach the horses and set them free, and
the only way to stop his little sister from trying to do just that, is to go
himself. Can Rocky sneak out of a dropship full of adults, reach the horses, and
then get to the colony before the raptors eat him? With the help of the alien
girl, Elita, he can only try.
JUNE 2016
Sean is finally home, but
everything he hoped for is gone. As far as he can tell, his life is over. His
dreams of becoming a garden designer seem done, because he can’t dig or weed.
He can’t see how he can be of any use in the School Gardens Program, he used to
help to run. And he can’t kick a ball, or ride a skateboard, so how can he
continue to be the buddy of a boy who loves to do both? And as for his
girlfriend, Angelica… well, Sean feels he has no choice but to send her away.
After all, she’ll be better off with a guy who can walk, won’t she?
Unfortunately, Angelica and his little buddy Brian have other plans. They just
need to get Sean to see that he’s not so useless after all…
Legacy of Hearts PoD Cover |
Legacy of Hearts Ebook Cover |
Legacy of Hope is a teen to young adult story about how Sean learns
to cope with losing his ability to walk, and to see that there is still might
be a way to do the things he loves. But even the strongest person needs a
little help to learn to hope again.
Dumped by her boyfriend,
Tomas, because she ended up in a wheelchair, Stella has to rebuild her life. If
she hadn’t met Ambrose in hospital, she might never have thought of playing
basketball again, but he was just a friend. She never expected to see him when
she got out. It comes as a total surprise, when Ambrose meets Stella after her
first basketball game in a chair. More surprising is his request to see her again.
Can Stella afford to let him keep visiting, or will he end up being just as
much of a disaster as Tomas had been?
Legacy of Hearts is the third book in the Wheelchair Adventures series, which is based around young people
getting their wheels underneath them, after they find themselves in
wheelchairs. JULY 2016
When planet-colonist, Joaquin, takes his daughter, Ry, into the autumn forest to show her the danger lurking amongst the trees, he does not expect to end the day fleeing for his life, nor does he think he can discover more about the spider-like orsovite, or what happened to his wife, one short year ago, but autumn is a time when the leaves fall, and secrets are uncovered.
When Tischa escapes from a warehouse of crooks bent on doing evil to boxes of mice, she’s only trying to escape. She doesn’t expect to encounter unicorns, or fairies, or a hot-looking elf that looks like he’s stepped straight off a movie set. Can she help them? Why, yes, yes she can, but, more importantly, can they help her?
When
werewolf, Chitin’s, nightly solitude is interrupted by a small child seeking
his help, he does not suspect that her plea will touch his dreams for the world
of his ancestors. He is determined to refuse her, but she is just as determined
to gain his protection, and leaves him little choice but to help—at least at
the start.
AUGUST
When a mysterious pod is found on the moon, and an
alien emerges, the press have a field day.
When Ramana Dewarth sneaks aboard a shuttle being
taken on an illegal research mission, she gets into more trouble than she ever
thought possible—and the space pirates weren’t the worst of it.
This science fiction short story takes us on
another journey with Odyssey’s not-so-delightful Agent Delight.
SEPTEMBER
Jamie has two names, and a whole bunch of secrets that
she keeps from everyone, including her employer, Odyssey—which is no mean feat,
given what that company does—but, when a mission takes her to Askreya, she has
to deal with an old dilemma, an old foe, and something entirely new, and her
secrets begin to come to light. Can she finish her mission, without everything
being revealed?
Vortex travel—you don’t ask, and I won’t screw
up the explanation; closest thing I can get to it is that I pilot a
transdimensional skipping stone through the edge of a vortex from one point in
space to another, and it gets you where you want to be. Well, most of the time.
Just not this time. This time, we’re crashing, and I don’t know where we are.
UPDATE
OCTOBER
People are disappearing on the close archaeological world of Jehornak, including an Odyssey operative’s sister, but that’s not why he’s there. It seems other people have gone missing, too, people with relatives rich enough to pay Odyssey to discover exactly what is happening in the mysterious cavern known as The Ballroom. However, when things go south on the mission, can Agent Delight keep her reputation, and make sure her operative comes out alive?
When Melerom escapes the aftermath of his people’s massacre of the humans on Jehornak, he sets himself up as a wealthy wanderer on the Odyssey luxury liners, and acquires the one thing every gentleman needs—a valet—but when his valet begins showing unusually perceptive spurts of initiative, Melerom realises the man is not everything he seems. The only question is, can the man be trusted to help him survive multi-billionaire, Frederico Coleman’s, next party, or betray him?
Being a bodyguard isn’t easy, not even when you’re the seventh son in a long line of seventh sons, not even when the magic comes when you call—and especially not when the man you are protecting is a treacherous, lecherous spoilt son of wealth and privilege, who betrays you for a pretty girl. Transported to the far north, Seppelitus must extricate himself from a deal between gargoyles, ogres and a demon lord, and then work out what he’s going to do about the dragon.
NOVEMBER
When his
flying ship, the Red Horizon, was
shot down, Tescher told no-one he had a woman on board. Three years later, he
returns to the ship wreck and finds Marianna not only survived the crash, but
left him a message. She found what she was looking for aboard his ship, and
she’ll wait for him at the Raptor’s Rest,
but once a year—tonight. Tight flying will get him there in time, but it will
take more for him to navigate clear of the criminal shores on which Marianna
has landed.
When
Grey, the colony’s Head Botanist, disappears, Kiralee worries. When he has not
returned after five months, she goes looking for him, for Grey is more than
chief botanist, Grey is a storyteller at heart, a believer in the importance of
the tale—and so was every single one of those who disappeared before him. Can
Kiralee discover where they went, before the stories are lost forever?
DECEMBER
What do you do when your brother betrays you, and you
end up on another world, in the employ of a company whose recruiting methods
leave a lot to be desired? Well, I guess you keep your head down, while you try
to figure out a way to get back home.
And I
sure miss home, right now.
366 poems of fantasy, science fiction, speculation and social comment, exploring the darkness, the future and the fear.
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