My story Of Rum, Madness, Thunderstorms and Prayer is live along with the rest of the November issue of Atomjack as of today. It's about pirates, priests, aliens, drunkenness and space travel. All in all, a very quiet sort of literary exploration of the human condition.

Special thanks to three of my friends and Clarion classmates, the Tinas--otherwise known as Tinatsu Wallace ("T1na"), Tina Connolly ("2na") and Caroline Yoachim ("3na")--for both help and inspiration with this one. Due to some looming deadlines at the time, I wasn't able to send this one through the full Clarion West Class of 2006 on-line crit group, so all three kindly agreed to crit it off-list, and all three were, in a slightly unusual way, tuckerized into the story.

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Making this a doubly good day, I got my brand spanking new laptop today (thank God the Philosophy Department gave me that Individual Research Account when I got in), and today I even managed to get it registered for wireless on-campus and to get the free Microsoft Office software provided by the University. Meaning that I can actually write. At home. For the first time since about June. This is a good thing.