C.M. Simpson's Blog, page 183

Progress Report: Week 2, June 2014

I did a little bit of catching up last week… and then I went back to studying for my exam. Most of my writing was transcribing a young adult novel from its hand-written form. And I hit my 30,000-words-for-the-month goal—yay!OverviewNew words produced: 581Old words revised: 7,254Works completed: 0Works revised: 0Covers created: 0Works published: 1 (5 platforms)Works submitted: 0Competitions Entered: 0Tier 4 Tasks
TweenNovel1A: added 7,254 words
Publishing Tasks
Created 11 blog posts for this blog;Formatted and uploaded C.M. Simpson: Short Stories and Poems from 2013: Remnants to Recent Years (1988-2012) to Amazon, Smashwords, DriveThruFiction, and OmniLit.
New ArrivalsThe following ideas arrived this week:

Poem384 (The Ice Queen): a dark fantasy poem about an ice queen;Poem385 (Have all the Dragons Gone and Died?): a fantasy kyrielle about the loss of dragons

Australian Birds: Superb Fairy Wren (Malurus cyaneus)

This little lady came to visit. She and her friends pop by on occasion, but they always flee before I can get them all on camera. This is a superb fairy wren.





You can find more information on the superb fairy wren at:

http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/species/Malurus-cyaneus

Poetry Challenge: Introducing the Kyrielle

The kyrielle is a French poetic form dating from medieval times. It sometimes consists of couplets, or couplets paired into a quatrain usually linked by a chorus or refrain. The chorus may be as short as one word, or take up a whole line.
Each couplet is usually four lines long, and each line consists of eight syllables. Different rhyming formats are used. If the poem is written in couplets it has an a-A, a-A format. If it is in quatrains, it might be rhymed in  a-a-b-B, c-c-b-B or a-b-a-B, c-b-c-B format, with the capital letters signifying a rhyme ending a chorus line.A kyriells should be no less than three quatrain stanzas (24 lines) long.An example of a kyrielle is below.
Have all the Dragons Gone and Died
Long ago, they lived in caves,as did mankind; we were their slavesWe feared them once, all men and IWhy ever did the dragons die?Where did they go, the dragons bold?Where did they go, when they grew old?There is no sign of them on high.Whenever did the dragons die?
When the men moved from their cavernsbuilt their castles, built their tavernsThe dragons stayed away, but whyWhy ever did the dragons die?Why did they vanish from our halls?Why did they stop, ans’wring our calls?Why did they cease their midnight flight?Whyever did the dragons die?
We cannot find them. We don’t know.Where they went, where we now must go.We miss their voices and their fireWhere did the dragons go to die?Where they have gone, so must we, too,Our lives are bonded, our souls true.When they left us, our souls did cryPray not all dragons went to die.
Why don’t you give it a try? Try writing at least one sestet for each day of the week. You can find out more about how to write sestets from the following sites:http://www.ehow.com/how_16708_write-kyrielle.htmlhttp://www.public.asu.edu/~aarios/formsofverse/reports2000/page3.htmlhttp://www.forwardpoetry.co.uk/post/how-to-write-a-kyrielle.htmlhttp://www.squidoo.com/the-kyrielle-and-how-to-write-onehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyriellehttp://allpoetry.com/poem/8724799-How-To-Write-A-Kyrielle-Sonnet-by-Discoveriahttp://www.prose-n-poetry.com/display_work/7943

C.M. Simpson: Short Stories and Poems from 2013 - First Volume now available fore pre-order

The first volume of C.M. Simpson: Short Stories and Poems from 2013 is now available for pre-order on Smashwords. It will become available from Kindle, Kobo, itunes and Drive Thru Fiction on around 21 June 2014. This collection wraps up a lot of my early stuff, polished and edited for the collection, and collates all the short individual work, I completed last year, even if it's not yet released.

Books Read in May 2014

Here are the novels I managed to read in May. I wanted a change of pace after Harry Harrison, so I went from other worlds to alternate worlds. Laurell K. Hamilton is a mistress of dark paranormal urban fantasy and another of my favourite authors. She had me reading long after I'd gone to bed.




















You can find out more about LAURELL K. HAMILTON at the following sites:

http://www.laurellkhamilton.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurell_K._Hamilton
http://www.randomhouse.com/features/lkhamilton/

Australian Birds: Crested Pigeon (Ocyphaps lophotes)

This little guy is about as paranoid as it comes. I'm thinking if I wasn't hanging over a fence to photograph it, it would have been gone. The bird-finder on Birds in Backyards identifies it as a Crested Pigeon.






You can find out more about crested pigeons at the following site:

http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/speci...

Books Read in April 2014

Yeah, it's a little late. Don't ask. Here are the books I read in April this year. If you've seen them featured before, it's because I enjoy them so much I just have to keep going back to them. And if they seem a little diverse, don't worry, that's just me. I enjoyed these tales by Harry Harrison, an early master of science fiction.








You can find out more about HARRY HARRISON at the following sites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Harrison_%28writer%29
http://www.michaelowencarroll.com/hh/
http://harryharrison.wordpress.com/
http://web.archive.org/web/20120722083614/http://www.empmuseum.org/exhibitions/index.asp?articleID=936

Poetry Challenge: Introducing the Sestet

A sestet is a poetical form developed by Petrarch, who is more ancient than even me. A sestet is made up of two verses, each six lines long. Sestets may have different rhyming pattern, but have varying rhythms. They can either be free verse (with no rhythmic pattern or set variation of stressed and unstressed syllables, or in iambic pentameter).
The two most common rhyming schemes were a/b/c/a/b/c for the first stanza and a/b/c/c/b/a for the second stanza, or a/b/a/b/a/b for both stanzas. One variant rhyming scheme was a/b/a/b/c/c/.Shakespeare was known to use sestets in his work.An example of a sestet is below.



The Ice Queen
From high up in the mountains tallThe ravening ice queen comesHer voice echoing, cracks bone like iceMakes our strongest towers fallOur dead will rise, and our hearts grow numbAnd beneath her feet we flail, fleeing her like mice.
Our heroes are long gone, either dead or flownOur warriors are shattered, their life-blood spentOur people run; nowhere to hidethe undead growing like a tidelapping over buildings, bodies broke and bentand over all the ice queen rules; souls and spirits for her throne
You can find out more about how to write sestets from the following sites:http://voices.yahoo.com/how-write-sestet-3549549.htmlhttp://www.writeawriting.com/poetry/sestet/

Progress Report: Week 1 June 2014

I had two end-of-semester tests this week and took time off work to study for them. The following words were achieved once the study was done—a kind of warped reward. Of course, the only way to get the words down, was to go through my older records and transcribe them to digital form. I’m still not sure if that’s cheating or not, but it’s still a task that needs to be done, and I have salvaged more than a few ideas that bear more development. The new ideas were all written on the bus, while travelling to and from work. I really like the bus.
 
Overview

New words produced: 2,147
Old words revised: 20,418
Works completed: 0
Works revised: 0
Covers created: 0
Works published: 0
Works submitted: 0
Competitions Entered: 0

Tier 1 Tasks
Annual 13: Added 376 wordsAnnual 14: Added 1,1771 words
Publishing Tasks
Created 2 blog posts for this blog;
New Arrivals


The following ideas arrived this week:  Poem379—My Books are like Lovers: a reflection on the place books hold in our lives;Poem380—The Salt of the Earth: about people;Poem381—In the Morning Dark: about riding the bus in the morning;Poem382—When our Children are Gone: about life;ShortStory309—Chelovan’s Risk: a piece of flash fantasy fiction incorporating dragons;ShortStory310—The Lions of Melicia Came From the Sky: a piece of flash science fiction about a crash landing;ShortStory311—Aderok and the Spider: a piece of flash science fiction about a spider;ShortStory312—Banking on the Snow: a piece of flash thriller fiction;ShortStory313—Persuasion: a piece of science flash fiction about a deal;ShortStory314—I’m not Writing about You: a piece of flash speculative fiction;ShortStory315—The Bus Driver and the Pixie: a piece of flash urban fiction;


The following ideas were found, dusted off, extended and assigned a number in the work file:
FantasyNovels 2B-2E RPGAdventure24A: An urban adventure designed to take characters from 1-20.

New Cover: 365 Days of Poetry as C.M. Simpson

I created this cover for 365 Days of Poetry. The background photograph belongs to Greta Van Der Rol and you can find more of her work on Can Stock Photo and at Redbubble. 365 Days of Poetry is scheduled for release on November 1, 2014.