It is now published!!! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07RKRYWH1/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=michael+beyer+books&qid=1557153283&s=gateway&sr=8-3
These are the links. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1096891867/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_2?keywords=michael+beyer+books+Fools+and+Their+Toys&qid=1557153522&s=gateway&sr=8-2-fkmrnull
And here is a peek into Chapter One;
Canto One – The Puppet’s Preface
Murray Dawes was sad but silent as the sheriff’s deputies put him in the cell in the county lock-up. Other men would protest their innocence of being a serial murderer and sex offender. Murray was accused of being the infamous “Teddy Bear Killer” who molested and murdered young boys all across the Midwest. Murray was in fact not quite right in the head. Something was off enough to make him constantly silent as the stones on an Iowan hillside in winter. But just because he was silent and mentally unique, it didn’t explain how he could end up accused of terrible crimes when he was totally innocent. He had, in truth, only been guilty of rescuing the last boy-victim of the real killer. And because he wouldn’t answer any questions from anybody, and the boy-victim was in shock and couldn’t talk, he stood a very real chance of taking the whole of the blame. Well, I wasn’t about to stand for it. I would find some way to tell them all the truth. My name is Zearlop. I am Murray’s ventriloquist’s puppet. And I know the truth that’s inside his muddled head.
I also know you will probably say this is totally unbelievable, that an inanimate object… or, rather, a puppet who is animated by others, cannot be the narrator of a story. You are right, of course. I can’t possibly be the author of this tale. I am a modified sock puppet of a zebra with mechanically blinking eyes and mechanically enhanced mouth movements. My head is full of cotton stuffing and old newspapers. But I was cleverly put together by two geniuses, and given life by another.
You have to understand; the human mind is like a great complex Labyrinth where no man has ever mastered every single corridor. Sometimes the most beautifully complex minds become lost or trapped in a dead-end corridor, never to find the light outside again.
But sometimes a special mind that was meant for special things is helped to find the light again… shown a trap door or a secret exit by another who has mastered at least a portion of the great, overly-complex dungeon.
And sometimes it is possible to slip past the Minotaur who guards the secrets of the Labyrinth and keeps us all from unlocking the magic. My story, the story I mean to tell you even if you don’t believe I am capable of telling it because I am a mechanical sock puppet of a zebra, begins with a fool. The fool’s name is Murray Dawes. That’s right, Mumbling Murray Dawes, the feeb, the spaz, the Special-Ed idiot, son of Elmer and Ethel Dawes, the nephew of Harker Dawes, and the only human being in the universe who had more in common with potatoes than he did with other people. Yes, I promise I will explain that last one later in the story.
Catch a Falling Star 
Sunday Sermons in More Innocent Times
There are definitely tendencies in those of us who are really atheists and non-believers in our heads to look back fondly at a time when God and religion filled our childish hearts every Sunday Morning. I have been told that idiots like me with a penchant for writing humor ought not to indulge in making fun of religion and politics. But I look at modern humorists making fun of both those things with impunity and too often end up admiring their success. Because, not only does the the subject of religion provide an easy target for satire and mockery, but we can’t really keep something sacred in our porcelain and breakable human hearts for very long without making sure it is fire-tested. That’s why I intend to take a flame-thrower to it in today’s Sunday Sermon. And I don’t mean I will only make fun of belief in God, but making fun of belief in atheism as well.
Here is a piece of music that gives your heart peace that you might need to play in the background if you really plan to read this purple-paisley-prose post. It is Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major, a very spiritual piece to play for peace of personhood and a pinch of paradise.
Now, of course, the first thing to acknowledge in this idiot’s Sunday sermon is the idea of God Himself.
Is there a God?
Remember, I pass the test for believing what atheists normally believe. That should disqualify me from making the following statement. But remember too, I also identified myself in this essay as an idiot. So, I will say it anyway.
There is a God, not in Heaven, but in us. There has to be. I talk to Him all the time, and He answers me. And I keep asking Him, “If you don’t exist, then how can you be answering me?”
“Well, Michael, you are an idiot. And things don’t have to make sense for you to believe them. But also, I am the part of you that never gives up on you even when you have given up on yourself.”
And I try to look as intelligent as I can as I say, “What…?”
“People, Mickey, my son, have a secret power inside of themselves that, when they are in troubled times and dire dangers, they can reach deep into their souls for it and pull it out to save themselves from the situation in the best way possible.”
“So, if people use this power correctly, say the right words and everything, they can save their lives in any situation and even live on after death?”
“I know you are an idiot, my child, but try not to be quite so idiotic all the time.”
“But people who are very religious believe in eternal life of some kind, don’t they?”
“You are not the only idiot out there, my beloved.”
“So, we don’t get eternal life for praying the right things and doing the right things and fulfilling all the elements of the Live Forever Spell?”
“There is no such thing as eternal life nor eternal torment. But you exist. And existence is eternal. There was no life before you are born, and there is no life after you die. But once you exist, you always exist, even outside of the time-frame of your mortal life.”
“That’s why I call myself a Christian Existentialist, right?”
“You are, indeed, that flavor of idiot, yes. But the Christian part means you have to adhere to Christian values. And not the ones Christian Fundamentalist idiots interpret from the Old Testament. The real ones based on choosing love over hate.”
“So, is that all I need to bring this sermon to an end?”
“Well, you should probably thank William Bouguereau for providing most of the internet images you illustrated this thing with. He died before you were born, but he still exists.”
“Thanks, Billy B. You paint lovely naked angels.”
“And you should recognize that this idiotic thing you have written is not a sermon, but, rather, a fantasy dialogue. And then stop adding more to it like a good little idiot.”
“Amen.”
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Tagged as atheism, Christianity, religion, satire