To build on the spirit of recent success, i have sent out two more Lampreyhead stories to editors.

Just finished another story. This one had been a chapter removed from my novel and features my character Fazgood the Mad Earl.

Number of submissions this year: 45
Number of acceptances: 1
Number of maybes: 1

I have two days off starting Wednesday before I am committed to my Mom's, where I never get any writing done.
What shall I work on next?

How do you know when you lost control of your story?

When your protagonist's choices are staying with a man who is being hunted by a murderous mass psychosis, or run off with Jude Law.

Trying to get a shortstoryization of "Hellmummer" going.
What annoys you about novelizations of movies?

Just ahead of their car and past the right lane, a tractor-trailer tumbled off an off-ramp and struck the shoulder not twenty feet away from them.
Glass and metal bits boomed across the windshield of Rich’s rental car like a wave of ice.
May had learned keep her window up an hour ago.
The trailer loomed.
Her date Rich glanced at all mirrors, stomped the gas, and flicked the wheel a quarter-turn to the left. The cab missed their rear bumper by inches.
    Rich said, “Did I do anything that time?”
    “No,” May whispered, pulling her cats-eye glasses down, watching the cars weave behind them, “You didn’t cause that one either.”
    “Three. Three accidents in under an hour. Statistically, this does not happen. Would you agree with that? That this is extraordinary?”  

This is page One:


The morning after my blind date said what she said, the sunlight came through my window bright and hot, and I was pulled from my bed by newfound purpose. I walked to Voodoo Harry’s and asked for tools for yet another sexual attraction spell. The teen with dreads smirked and got me red, black, and yellow candles; another industry-sized red candle molded into the shape of a vagina; a ten-pound sack of strawberry incense. But also plucked off the shelf: Black’s “Binding the Spirits,” “The Universe At Your Beckoning” by L.E. Weinstein, and Loomis’ “Eternal Powers, Primal Rewards.”
The only thing casting any magick had ever gotten me was a half-decent lottery win, and a tiny fleshy dead thing on my doorstep. No more asking nicely.
Back at my apartment, I sat before my rickety cherry wood altar, that goddam spiritual Chihuahua nesting in red-and-white valentines twenty-to-a-pack we got in school.

GET TO KNOW… BENJAMIN FRANKLIN!
By Tim W. Burke


“Geese are but Geese tho' we may think 'em Swans; and Truth will be Truth tho' it sometimes prove mortifying and distasteful.”
"A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain" (1725)

He first found solace by inventing primitive swim fins.
At the age of seventeen, Ben fled the cruelty of an impoverished childhood and a brutal apprenticeship as a printer. He became a fugitive. He was fired from five print shops in as many years. As an abused child and fugitive, Ben could have turned against society and become a criminal. But he put his sharp mind and keen ambition to our benefit, a benefit we now use every moment of every day.
He established his own print business in Philadelphia in 1728. He makes many friends and forms the Junto, an association of ambitious men and free thinkers. The Junto pooled their books into one collection, and through this library, Ben becomes a student of the esoteric learning from far-flung civilizations.

“By playing at Chess then, we may learn: 1st, Foresight, which looks a little into futurity, and considers the consequences that may attend an action ... 2nd, Circumspection, which surveys the whole Chess-board, or scene of action: - the relation of the several Pieces, and their situations; ... 3rd, Caution, not to make our moves too hastily...”
"The Morals of Chess" (article) (1750)

The year 1731 saw Franklin expanding the Junto’s lending library to found the Library Company of Philadelphia. This was the nation’s first lending library. The library naturally kept a list of the members, along with what they read.
The Pennsylvania Gazette became the leading newspaper of the middle Atlantic colonies. Franklin lends money to start other newspapers in colonies in exchange for 1/3 of ownership. Through connections, he is selected the official printer for Pennsylvania, responsible for all government print work in the colony.
Ben also began printing “Poor Richard’s Almanack” in 1733. Instantly popular, it had a circulation equal to 3 million sold each year. The writer, publisher and distributor became a wealthy and influential man throughout all thirteen colonies.
He also took on more responsibility. Franklin was elected to Postmaster of Philadelphia in 1734. This gave Ben access to all correspondence in the largest city of the colonies.
But he never stopped inventing. In “Poor Richard’s Almanack” there ran an advertisment for the “Franklin Stove”, saying it was “especial good at the burning of ye documents and for ye invocations of magickal powers, if ye wanted to do that sort of thing.”

“God helps them that help themselves.”
“Poor Richard’s Almanack”; psalm 12, verse 7

A new discovery swept Europe in 1743: electricity. Scientists were generating static charges with generators made from glass, rabbit fur and amber. What were these sparks? By flying a kite through clouds and gathering a static charge, Franklin discovered that lightning is made of electricity.
He invented the lightning rod to channel destructive electric power. He studied with Luigi Galvani, who examined electricity’s abilities to affect the nervous system, even that of dead flesh. His friend Mesmer discovered electrical charges had profound effects on how the brain worked. They theorized that electricity traveled along an “electrical fluid” which they thought a basic component of all things. Benjamin Franklin was convinced electricity was a powerful ally and weapon, and resolved to know its secrets.
While in London on colonial business, Ben was dressed down by his supervisors on the Royal Privy Council for leaking royal correspondence. He replied simply, “Saucy Joan writes Honeybump to say ‘She is late.’” Ben is promoted to Deputy Postmaster General of North America.
He made great achievements furthering knowledge. Due to his studies in electricity, Franklin won the Copley Medal, the Nobel Prize for science of its day. Ben was one of the founders of the University of Pennsylvania. The Ivy League school would be the site where generations of leaders sown the oats of feckless, scandalous youth. Ben has invested interest in almost one-third of all newspapers printed in the colonies. Leading political figures become desperate to back both Ben’s college and his enterprises.
Franklin brought his friend James Watt to Philadelphia in 1761. James was excited about his new invention, the Steam Engine, and appreciated his friend Ben’s generous financial assistance. They found the Franklin Shipyard in 1735, where frigates and the first practical steam engines were built.
Then Ben invented the glass armonica. The instrument, adored or hated, roused passion. The opera singer Paganini said it had "such a celestial voice." A dictionary of instruments mentioned that the sounds “are of nearly celestial softness but can cause spasms.” True, some interpreters ended their lives in mental hospitals. In “Method to Teach Yourself Armonica” the instructor advised, "If you are irritated or disturbed by bad news, by friends or even by a disappointing lady, abstain from playing as it would only increase your disturbance". The armonica was accused of causing evils such as nervous disorder, domestic squabbles, premature deliveries, and convulsions. Franz Mesmer, a Vienna doctor who used hypnotism, or mesmerism, to cure ailments, played the armonica for patients. After a blind pianist recovered her sight to the detriment of her mental health, Mesmer was expelled from Vienna and fled to Philadelphia. These accusations contributed to the death of the armonica as the fashionable accessory of parlors and sitting-rooms.
In 1764, Franklin invented bifocals.

“Three may keep a Secret, if two of them are dead.”
“Poor Richard’s Almanack”; psalm 14, verse 6

Philadelphia needed a hospital for its growing population, so Pennsylvania Hospital was founded in 1771. Working with the University of Pennsylvania, the hospital became known for its experiments into advancing medicine.
In 1775, Franklin was appointed Postmaster General for Life by unanimous vote. Every piece of mail was his to access for as long as he lived. Revolution loomed and anew society was forming. Franklin was ready.
Franklin’s shipyards unveiled the Franklin Steam Armoniclad. A steamship fitted with synchronized armonicas. Franklin’s new battlecraft used Watt’s steam engines in a new and startling way: as propulsion. Fitted each with an immense pair of piston-driven swimfins, the craft plied the waves regardless of wind.
The armonica’s maddening vibrations were amplified by electrified membranes of tin and copper, and traveled doubly far along the encouraging waves, inducing seizures in the unprotected crews of British vessels.
Also, each armoniclad was outfitted with a lightning rod one league in length. Using Watt’s steam engine to power an immense electrostatic generator, the electric charge sparked lightning bolts upon the nearest high points, the masts of the approaching fleet. Defeat of the British Navy was swift.
A fleet of twelve armoniclads led the invasion force in 1779. Gibralter and the Azores fell overnight. By twisting the “electrical fluid” (what we now call “the absolute value of the electron”) with his new “Franklin Apocalypter,” Ben rendered most of England catatonic.
Back home safe and sound, Ben helped to write the Constitution, creating three branches of government, the Executive, Judicial and Legislative, all of which are ruled by the Postal. Europe joined the Union as the fourteenth state. Franklin College is founded.
In 1903, the galvanized and cybernetic Postmaster-for-Life Benjamin Franklin transcended the material plane into a hive consciousness we know as the Franklin Impersonators. An Impersonator likely starts the Franklin Armonica at your daily morning assembly after you put on your Franklin bifocals to read his Poor Richard’s Almanack.
Today the entire world praises Benjamin Franklin! Take inspiration from his good works, for he turned away from his adversity to help all mankind. May we always find strength in his mighty Franklin Necroneuralmantic Network!

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