In this newsletter:

1. Why is this lunatic emailing me?

2. Last time.

3. Coming up.

4. S e c r e t s.

Why is this lunatic emailing me?

…you let me?

But if you forgot how I got into your house: you likely signed up years ago, or you recently grabbed a free book, or you thought me groovy on Substack.

Hi! I’m M.P. Fitzgerald, an unwell sci-fi author who writes warnings with heart for dream criminals. And you?

Oh, you forgot to lock your door.

Art is political if I am in your house, so if that does not groove, then you might want to unsubscribe to lock me out.

No hard feelings, but I am taking your dog with me.

Last time on Graphomania Sugar Time:

Last month you got a few really groovy things from me, because I live here now and that’s what a good roommate does, ya know, and don’t worry I’ll share Breakfast when it’s done!

One of those really groovy things was the second part of my serial, Till Death Do Us Partition.

, author of the folk-horror serial, Mandragora (which you should read but be warned, I feel like he and I are in an arms race to see who can perturb our readers the most…) had this to say about Layer 2:

If you need further convincing of how nice it is, here are my own notes when I finished the draft (assuming you can read my terrible handwriting):

I was in a mood.

Till Death Do Us Partition, Layer 2, is paid content, but can be read with a free seven day trial (access to my paid content is only $2.75). The first part of the serial is and will remain free to read (you can read that here).

A Happy Bureaucracy: the table read!

Last month I had the goddamn privilege to read my book, A Happy Bureaucracy, live with authors , , , and (they are all wonderful writers, please read and engage with their stories). I made them say some pretty heinous shit, and they delivered it with gusto! Truly some real purveyors of ‘groin malice’.

To say that I am beside myself with gratitude would be a damn understatement. This was not only a wonderful time, but something I thought would never happen. A giant shout out to those authors—they are kind, talented, and deeply weird.

Respect.

You can still watch part one and part two at your leisure if you missed it live.

Two intrepid listeners did their taxes while we read my dystopian parody about the IRS in a post-nuclear holocaust, and they will be getting a signed paperback copy of my book shortly. Thank you for committing to the bit, you made this clown smile!

Coming up on I Need Sugar Dammit Graphomania…

If all goes to plan this month, paid subscribers will be getting the third and final entry to Till Death Do Us Partition, and let me tell ya, if you thought the the previous entries were dark, this one will be abyssal. If I was a magic show I would only perform at funerals.

“But M.P.!” I say with a sock puppet, “why is your Science Fiction so filled with despair?”

Because I’m Irish. Would you rather I wrote about The Sea™? ‘cause the result would be the same! It’s this or A Modest Proposal, okay? At least with this you sometimes get fun space lasers.

Pew pew pew!

In the meantime, if you are not a paid subscriber (or just need things to read), you can find some free short stories in my archive (I’d recommend Speak No Evil, or Somebody $avoir).

S e c r e t s

A copy of A Happy Bureaucracy was spotted in the wild:

Thank you, , I hope my madness treats you well! I am not allowed to be in a bookstore unattended as I will bankrupt myself (also there is a stack of books on my floor, like, there isn’t space on the shelves anymore and there is no more space in the apartment for new shelves, why would I buy more books? Because I will, that’s why), so I get it. Books are to be bought in flocks.

Also, I attended a writer’s workshop on world building by . I’ll repeat here what I’ve (very grumpily) said elsewhere for the curious:

Lit bros, I know you think ‘world building’ is a dirty phrase, it’s one I dislike too (and I’m a sci-fi writer!), but you’re hypocrites about it with all the mythologizing you do of New York City. The coffee joint with the perfect bagel (made from a multi-generational family of immigrant bakers) that no tourist knows of, where The Incitement™ happens? Might as well be the Green Dragon Inn hidden in Tolkien’s Shire.

I recently did a workshop with Haly, the Moonlight Bard on world building, and it changed how I think about setting and environment. Just because you are a contemporary writer, don’t think for a moment that what you’ve been doing in every story isn’t world building; you’ve just got a shorthand for culture that most readers don’t need explaining.

Congrats on being lazy?

Whatever you’ve intuited about the geography of the setting, Haly can break it down and show you how to do it better. ‘World building’ is a communication skill. The in-jokes your characters share about the subway, the cultural norms of coffee in the morning, the aspirations of the barista who can’t find another job. It doesn’t have to be Tolkien-esque, but it does have to be done right—and Haly can open that for you.

Lit bro straw man aside, what I didn’t say about the workshop was that it was a genuine blast. It was fun, dammit, and if you are a writer yourself seriously consider taking one of her classes. This is not a “how to maxx-max your career by maxxmaxxing”-scam, it is genuine craft honing and I adored it.

Find more information on this workshop here.

Speaking of workshops, I will be attending ’s Knife Fight Ballet workshop (I adore the title), which I am greatly looking forward to. There are some familiar faces there attending, as well, which is awesome. I’ll likely report in on this next month.

Ladies, lend me some sugar, I am your neighbor! My goodbyes are lies!

When Breakfast is done you can have some but only if I can put the fire out with sugar and I refuse to explain why.

Stockholm syndrome is pop psychiatry, by the way, so you don’t have to look it up and also don’t lock your door.

I’ll see you again this month, so keep your eyes peeled in your inbox for Layer 3 of Till Death Do Us Partition. I may be sending you an additional email this month on how to get some killer books on the cheap, so you don’t have to bankrupt yourself like I do myself every time I go to a book store.

Stay hoopy, froods!

—M.P. Fitzy

M.P. Fitz's Fiction Backlog

M.P. Fitzgerald writes darkly humorous sci-fi for dream criminals, and no, he doesn’t know what ‘Ultimate Sugar Forever’ means either, someone get this man a damn supervisor.

layer 2

  The little girl ahead giggles as her mother marches to her death. The pale-skinned attendant? She’s wearing a black blouse and wire-framed glasses and holds the door to the room where the pods are.
  “It’s important that parents digitize to OmegaPoint first so there is someone there to greet their children.”

Read more

The bathroom? Your mirrors have been shattered. Burnt hair smell and your eyes water.

Your living room? The intruder author stands inside a salt ring beside your television—hammer in hand.

“Do you remember when Alphabet Dave told us kids to find our parents’ gold and mail it to him—”

SMASH!

“…and if gold was not an option, then the copper wires in the walls would suffice, or were you a PBS kid?”

In this newsletter:

1. Why is this lunatic emailing me?

2. Last time.

3. Coming up.

4. S e c r e t s.

Why is this lunatic emailing me?

…you let me?

But if you forgot how I got into your house: you likely signed up years ago, or you recently grabbed a free book, or you thought me groovy on Substack.

Hi! I’m M.P. Fitzgerald, an unwell sci-fi author who writes warnings with heart for dream criminals. And you?

Oh, you forgot to lock your door.

Art is political if I am in your house, so if that does not groove, then you might want to unsubscribe to lock me out.

No hard feelings, but I am taking your dog with me.

Last time, on Alphabet Dave Graphomania

February is not a real month, it’s a compromise. Last compromise you got a couple really neat things from me (because I give and give and give), and don’t worry, we are pretty sure Alphabet Dave died in prison and ghosts aren’t real.

Probably.

Anyway, one of those neat things was the first part of my new serial, Till Death Do Us Partition, where the difference between widowed and divorced is a machine.

Yes, I overlayed the Kabbalah Tree of Life over a power line because I’ve watched Serial Experiments: lain too many times and I’m not apologizing. A quick shout out to author who gave me feedback on this work before I published it (he has been reading his work live lately and you should check it out). Thank you, Nick, you are a gent!

Also, I’d like to thank for featuring Till Death Do Us Partition in their 9th issue!

Why should you read layer 1 of this serial? I’ll let author and film maker, , spell it out for you:

(Andrew Robert Colom recently released a multimedia piece of fiction, University Land, which if you are not engaging with then you have to this very second).

Award winning author, , gave me praise that nearly killed me:

(Ian Patterson has a new book on the way, Transition, and it’s a banger).

…and I made my editor, (hire him) curse at me, which gives me the fuzzies.

(Emil recently re-released You Speak, the latest part of his Saint Cycle series, and yes, it gave me a panic attack. READ IT).

I’ll speak on direct inspiration for Till Death Do Us Partition’s setting in S e c r e t s, until then…

A Happy Bureaucracy: the table read!

Last month I had the privilege to read the first half of my post-apocalyptic parody novel, A Happy Bureaucracy out loud in a live streaming event with fellow authors , , , and . Each of these wonderful authors are brilliant writers (please read and engage with their works) but it also turns out that they are brilliant voice actors too! Haly did justice to Rabia’s rancid cursing and her performance was top notch, while Tom voicing The Colonel made me crack up so hard I had to mute my mic. Slater’s version of The Deputy Commissioner for Operations Support, Henry S. Boyd lives in my head as canon, full stop. Also, for the record, Emily S Hurricane should be narrating books professionally, and I will not entertain dissent on this.

We had too much fun with this.

We need a responsible adult in the room.

Yes, it is an entertaining affair, but it is also a Trojan Horse1 to put eyes on the mutual aid initiatives we are running, such as Recipes To Feed The Ducks.

If you missed it, no worries! The replay lives on Tom’s publication, and you can watch it here.

I want to thank all fort-two (42! My favorite number!) peeps who showed up to watch. Y’all are my goddamn heroes.

Coming up on Alphabet Dave’s Post Mortem Parole Hearing Graphomania…

We will be doing the second part of A Happy Bureaucracy’s live table reading this Thursday (3.5.26) at 5:30 PM, PST, on Haly’s channel here (the link may change if there are technical difficulties, if so just keep an eye out on Haly’s feed).

Also this month, for my paid patrons, keep an eye out in your inbox for layer 2 of Till Death Do We Partition. Dante has made an appointment at the local crematorium, will his wife give him the light of day in the digital world, or was the betrayal a step too far?

Alphabet Dave is behind you

…where he has always lived.

S e c r e t s

Award winning author Ian Patterson sent me an advanced reader copy of his upcoming sci-fi novel, Transition, and it is a banger.

This is the third book in his series, The Narrator Cycle, and after it launches I will be doing a review of it with my more complete thoughts. In it, a man who lives on a large space station awakes from an overdose to find that one of the large, tumorous rats native to the station can talk to him. What unfolds is an incredibly heart-felt, and mind bending journey to the very nature of perception. 10/10, keep an eye out for this one.

The setting in Till Death Do We Partition is inspired by a very real p-patch (a type of community garden native to Seattle, which uses urban spaces, and is something my community has been doing since at least the 90’s) atop a parking garage which I visited after a particular bad night of hypnagogic paralytic sleep. If you did not know it was there, you likely never would.

These gardens are a trip. I used to share and till a plot with my ex at a different p-patch, where I successfully grew cherry tomatoes (her, all kinds of things, she was the real green thumb) and neglected many other things.

I also drew on my very short lived career as a 9-1-1 operator (It was only a six month endeavor) for the characters as one of my horses2 for drafting was ‘grief’, and operators manage grief (or avoid grieving altogether and crash out) everyday.

I was nostalgic, that day.

If you choose to pay for the upcoming parts of the story, buckle up. It is going to be a wild ride that you do not want to miss!

My goodbyes are lies!

In retrospect it was pretty weird that Alphabet Dave was only on the television when the adults left the room.

I’ll see you again this month, so keep your eyes peeled in your inbox (or keep up with me on Substack). Remember: the second part of the table reading for A Happy Bureaucracy will be this Thursday (3.5.26) @ 5:30 PM, PST! I’ll see you cool cats there.

Live long and prosper,

-M.P. Fitz

M.P. Fitz's Fiction Backlog

M.P. Fitzgerald writes darkly humorous sci-fi for dream criminals, like Alphabet Dave who lives behind you.

 layer 1

  Can’t talk to you about this, honey, as that requires a premium subscription. In this make-shift garden, atop an empty parking garage where my emergency contact is a former coworker and my CofFree taste burnt—the sunrise is dried Pepto-Bismol. Cold steel bench on my ass doing more to wake me than this fake coffee swill, and the phone dead ends:
  I’m sorry, this voicemail is full. Please try again later. Goodbye.
  A murder of crows hesitates above. I redial, look down to the crushed Pepsi can beneath a vine of dying cherry tomatoes. This garden is seven parking spaces wide by four rows, and it is the only thing occupying space in this nine-story parking garage.
  ...this voicemail is full. Please try...
  The ‘premium’ roast of CofFree smell does nothing to mask the compost rot behind me. The city is silent save for the caw of crows before the phone tone clicks and—
  “Goodness, D, it’s six in the morning!”
  “Sorry, Beth, listen—”
  “This couldn’t wait ‘till a rational person is awake?”
  “I wanted you to know, before they let you know,” I’m twisting the top of my CofFree cup, take a deep breath.
  CAW-CAW!
  I shift my weight, finding no comfort from the steel on my ass.
  “You still there, Beth?”
  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Quiet, slow. It’s what they taught us to do in 9-1-1 operator training to calm and control the caller. It forces them to pay more attention, which slow themselves down, and keeps them from panicking or doing something they’d later regret.
It’s that obvious, I guess.
  CAAW. CAAW. CAAW!
  “Couldn’t sleep because of the nerves, you know? And it felt rude not to call you—”
  “Spit it out, champ.”
  “I’ve got an appointment with OmegaPoint today.”
  “Where are you?”
  “I’m safe, Beth, Jesus, I just didn’t want you to worry when—”
  “They pronounce you dead?”
  My grip tightens on my half-empty cup. A crow lands between me and the tomatoes, cocks its head, and blinks.
  “They only do that for legal purposes.”
  “Because you’ll be dead, Dante.”
  That’s not what the brochure says. Rendered faster than perception, OmegaPoint is life without bounds, and I can see their smokestack, half the height of the Space Needle, from here. Come business hours, those crematoriums will barf black clouds and bruise the sky purple. I can’t eat pork anymore ‘cause the smell is the same, but at least there is less highway traffic every day.
  The crow pecks at the crushed Pepsi can, then looks at me with sideways corvid blinks and a low caw. Cola sludge is probably safer for him than city water. I wonder if he wants my CofFree.
  “Where are you?”
  The scrape and jingle of car keys, the creak of her front door.
  “You ever see those old memes comparing the size of Minecraft to our actual planet? OmegaPoint is bigger than that, Beth.”
  “I won’t call Fire.”
  9-1-1 speak for ‘Fire Department’, which includes EMTs. SPD—Seattle Police Department, they’ll meet me at the hospital, if Beth has her way. She’s treating this like I’m a suicide caller.
  OmegaPoint is not a digital afterlife—it’s a digital foreverlife!
  “You’re my emergency contact, I didn’t want you to panic.”
  “Lotta good that’s doing.”
  Leave your worries in the meatspace. With OmegaPoint, the unattainable is yours—and delivered fast as thought!
  Bench is cold enough my ass is numb, and even the crow would rather peel aluminum open than risk the cherry tomatoes raised on the poisonous Seattle rains. I tell myself that choosing a virtual world was not selfish. I tell myself that you were allowed your own secrets.
  “This call is better than finding a brochure, trust me,” I tell on myself.
  CAWCAWCAW!
  “There was no note, Beth. Did I tell you that?”
  Instead of your handwriting, practiced with lines like ‘I’m sorry I am a burden’, the first page of the brochure reads:
  A single adult consumes fifty-eight gallons of water per year and consumes 547,500 calories. A square foot of wheat consumes sixty gallons of water per year, and provides ninety calories for human or animal consumption. A single cow, able to provide 780,000 calories, when slain, consumes 12,775 gallons of water in a year and consumes 912,500 calories herself. An OmegaPoint server slab is able to hold four digitized adult minds, and consumes only a single person’s worth of water a year1. You won’t only be entering a better world when you join—you’ll be giving life in meatspace another chance!
  Instead of ink pressed hard onto paper in anger, page stained by an errant tear with spiteful words like ‘Till death do us part, motherfucker!’ the brochure in its place says:
  Server and upkeep costs can be covered through multiple payment plans, including making OmegaPoint the sole beneficiary of your life insurance.
  I’ll admit I fucked up, honey. But a suicide note would have been less dramatic. Instead, I got a four-page advertisement detailing the reasons why digitizing a mind to transfer it into a virtual, endless playground is a permanent process. I can tell you, from memory, how the brain will be vivisected and sliced into micrometer-thin meat sheets and scanned down to its electrons because the mind cannot run without emulating the exact hardware of the brain from which it came, but I can’t tell anyone why my late wife decided to have that done. Not for certain. I mean, guess who I’m on the phone with now?
  Like, I know. But not in your words.
Feels silly to hold a funeral when half of your family won’t show up because they can, theoretically, talk to you with a good enough internet connection and a premium subscription. Feels silly when you don’t know yourself, on a philosophical level, if you are widowed or divorced, because questions about the soul and the nature of consciousness are maybe a little too heady when your bed is half-empty, and no one at work will look you in the eye. Feels too still in that failed nest of ours, and I’m the fool who ruined it.
  Can’t sleep long because I drink too much and have to get up to pee, and what sleep I do get is on the couch because the bed feels like a fucking mausoleum. Credit card maxed out with the handle of cheap tequila, which tastes like pine for some goddamn reason, but it means I can’t afford the down payment to talk to you. A laptop is a medium to the digitized dead, and like all charlatans, it costs money to do so.
  The crow looks at me and says nothing. I hear Beth’s car door open, the seat belt warning going bongbongbong...
  “Where are you?”
  “What’s the difference, Beth?” I peel the plastic lid off my CofFree and pour a little bit of the sludge into it, then set it down near the crow.
  “All of my contacts are former coworkers. Not exactly like I’m living. At least at OmegaPoint...”
  CAAAAAW low, guttural, a second crow lands, head out as it bows. Both of them eye the CofFree.
  Beth says ‘what’ and it’s not a question.
  “She’s my wife, Beth. I deserve to know.“
  “You’re a selfish ass.”
  The first crow hops backwards as the second pushes towards the offering.
  “Fuck the philosophical shit, D. The soul, all of that, legally you’re dead, and this is a one-way ticket.”
  I shrink in my seat. Look up to the flying crows dotting the pepto-pink clouds like shredded black boba tapioca balls. Probably tastes better than this fake-ass coffee from a soda fountain. No such thing as light pollution in OmegaPoint; you can live in a sprawling, clean city and see the stars at night. Smelling wetdust and compost rot, I wonder if a telescope would show you the stars’ pixels.
  “If you’re concerned about me, you can meet me at OmegaPoint.” And the first crow jumps forward with wings open and sips from the lid.
  No shifting gears. No car engine.
  “What if she doesn’t want to talk to you, D? What are you going to do when they vaporize your brain and you wake up in a fake world, and she wants nothing to do with you? What then?”
  Crushed Pepsi® can ahead of me, steel bench beneath. Crows fighting for something that might give them arrhythmia. Fact is, the brochure was everything you needed to say to me.
  One hell over another, I’d prefer the one where you say it to my face.
  Can’t even afford to talk to my dead wife.
  At OmegaPoint, the sky is limitless!
  “Ten o’clock. Their main facility.” I close my eyes. “I loved you,” and hang up.
If she calls back, she’ll get I’m sorry, this voicemail is full.
  The tomatoes, untouched by my winged friends, you can see they are rotting at the base. Could be the soil, the poisoned rain? Could be that every day there is one less car on the street and what’s left behind is neglected. If God is alive, then He certainly must live in the machine; otherwise, how could He bear not to flood this creation?
  All of that 9-1-1 training amounted to nothing—I couldn’t save the one person I vowed to nurture.
  In OmegaPoint, anything is possible.
  I stand up, brush pollen off of my frozen ass, and the two crows give out one last CAAAW before flying away.
  All I want to do is tell you I’m sorry. I’ll leave you alone, promise, let you have your eternity in OmegaPoint’s digital playground. But I can’t do that here. No job and a day away from being homeless, with our last dollar spent on something that is definitely not coffee.
  The question is: will you allow me to say it after I cross, or will you even deny seeing me?
  Hell in this world, hell in the next. In the distance, the giant crematorium smokestack spews a black pillar of the dead into the sky.

  And I have an appointment to get to.

Read the next part, layer 2, here.

M.P. Fitzgerald writes darkly humorous sci-fi for dream criminals. To unlock part two of this serial when it is published, upgrade to paid. Money will not prevent me from writing, but what you give will allow me space to publish it.

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In this newsletter:

1. Jesus Christ, M.P.! Why do you keep sending me unhinged shit like this in my mailbox?

2. Best of M.P. Fitz 2025 poll results.

3. Satire as the world dies.

4. S e c r e t s.

5. Coming up.

Why is this lunatic emailing me?

…you let me?

But if you forgot how I got into your house: you likely signed up years ago, or you recently grabbed a free book, or you thought me groovy on Substack.

Hi! I’m M.P. Fitzgerald, an unwell sci-fi author who writes warnings with heart for dream criminals. And you?

Oh, you forgot to lock your door.

Art is political if I am in your house, so if that does not groove, then you might want to unsubscribe to lock me out.

No hard feelings, but I am taking your dog with me.

Best of M.P. Fitz 2025 poll results.

I made my stories fight to the death. Paid subscribers got to choose the winner. These were the results:

FATALITY! Speak No Evil, wins!

Speak No Evil was my entry to the second Midnight Vault—a Twilight Zone tribute project spearheaded by and (with so, so many great authors contributing). Barring that it gets chosen for publication (fingers crossed), it will remain free to read. I’ll be keeping It’s No Longer Free Speech, which is a fifteen-hundred-word dick joke at our president’s expense, free as well.

You can read all of my stories, for bus fare money, in my archive.

Satire as the world dies, or: an author’s existential terror about art!

I am not unhinged—’cause the door fell out of the frame years ago.

There are two things I have to contend with as a writer of satire. One, the world gets more fuckles faster than I can clown it, and two—marketers of generative AIs like ChatGPT do everything they can to undermine the idea of writing something yourself, therefore stripping away the value of an author.

In 2019 I released my post-apocalyptic novel, A Happy Bureaucracy, shortly followed by its sequels Fear and Loathing in the Wasteland, and Post-Apocalyptic Pirates. What was to be a throw-away joke about toilet paper becoming the most expensive and rare luxury item in the apocalypse became a reality just a year later with the COVID-19 shutdowns. What was supposed to be the most over-the-top “Mad Max-inspired vehicle” I could think of as a gag, The Colonel’s motorcycle chariot, became the least interesting vehicle in Furiosa just five years later.

But “predicting the future” with gags was not what kept me from putting out the next books and finishing the series. The book was a love letter to nuclear holocaust books, games, movies… etc., with the “ha ha” being that the IRS, the most dry institution on the planet, not just surviving the end of the world, but thriving, to lambast the “lone gunman” power fantasy that permeates so much of this genre. It would be a fun story to return to. But in the time the last book was released, we got a man who tried to overthrow the government after losing a fair election, and was later re-elected, and is the Epstein files, as well as Nazi saluting billionaires pillaging our art and cultural inheritance for chatbots, and if I keep writing this sentence I will go insane because every day we make the horrors of Snow Crash and Neuromancer look like an easy episode of The Muppet Babies.

Art takes effort, it takes time, capital, craft, and talent. By the time I was halfway finished on a draft for the fourth book, Russia invaded Ukraine on the flimsiest of pretenses, the Wagner Group mutinied and marched up to Moscow with zero contestation and then CHANGED THEIR MINDS. I could not keep up.

And that was only a few years ago.

, author of HALLWAY, and fellow sci-fi/horror satirist, recently said something to the effect that he approached cyberpunk and such by thinking of a dumb world, and then imagining it even dumber. Respect. The problem I have, is that I did that and the world went “fuck you, hold my beer” on me. I am a rather cynical, grumpy man. I’ve been a seventy-year old crumugeon since I was twelve, and the world surpasses even my most pessimistic ideations at lightspeed. I may have won a ( single) flash fiction battle against Futuro, but I’ll be the first to say he does this better (which I greatly admire).

You may not believe this, but I am very much in the “it is your duty to lambast fascism with art” camp, and I think I, as an artist, should be doing this as long as I can (I don’t think we have much time left to do so), and, frankly, my Happy Bureaucracy series was not cutting it.

Pinocchio, the liar, was an artifice

Fascism hates art, because art says something, and those in jackboots need constant control of what is and what isn’t allowed to be discussed. To quote reddit quoting tumblr quoting Dan Olson (I told you this was a rant):

“They don’t want these complexities to exist, and by talking about them, you make them exist. It’s a form of magical thought. Talking about police brutality wills police brutality into existence. A Disruption of the status quo is seen as a disruption of the natural order. The Problem they see is that no one has made those people shut up. That is what they want: someone to come in and make those people shut up and go away, to put things back ‘where they belong.’

…

Their will is a hammer that they are using to beat reality itself into a shape of their choosing, a simple world where reality is exactly what it looks like through their eyes, devoid of complexity, devoid of change, where they are right, and their enemies are silent. They are trying to build a flat earth.”

This is why you see Fox News in outrage every time there is a new Star Trek series or movie released—even at its tamest, it imagines a better world, and a better world than you live in, right now, is a problem for those in charge. But Star Trek is profitable; it moves merchandise, and those same people in charge really dig it when they make money. So what are you to do as a rich oligarch when you both love money but need the flock to ignore the slaughterhouse and keep on keepin’ that status quo?

You undermine art itself by taking away the value of an artist from the minds of the people. And this, I believe, is the endgame for LLM and generative AI.

If the writer is disposable, because a machine can do it, then you can rob the writer of legitimacy, and thus equate art and the machine’s slop as the same thing—and that’s powerful. Slop doesn’t say anything, and therefore doesn’t need to be silenced. The complexities of art that threaten the status quo are lost in the constant, total noise that only a machine is capable of.

And these are the two biggest problems I face as a satirist trying to write in a series of books:

1. The world moves fast and the point of the series is quickly antiquated.

2. Every day, giant tech companies actively undermine the value of art for profit.

I am not hopeless. Despite what is happening, I do still believe that making art, especially in this moment, is the most important thing I can do. They may mean to bury the dreamers in rancid slop and hope them to drown, but art exists to create connection. People long for human connection. But to make the most effective art I can to fight off authoritarianism and the consolidation of oligarchical power, I think I have to shelve writing in a series, for now, and write standalone books with better, laser-focused intent. I earnestly think that is how I can best impact what is around me with my art.

As much as I adore my Happy Bureaucracy series, it exists only because I found out that the IRS has a contingency for collecting taxes after nuclear war—that shit is too funny not to lambast. But the intention behind it ended there. It is genre parody, and right now I need to write satire, if only so that I can look myself in the mirror. I do not intend to be shelving the series permanently, but I will be writing other things so long as my heart dictates it. I am sorry if that is disappointing to read. I can only promise, in the meantime, that what book I publish next will be fire.

S e c r e t s

The short stories I wrote last year were very much in preparation for what I intend to write soon. They let me explore some of the more immediate ideas and dangers on my mind, but, more importantly, were written to better my craft. I am at a place now where I am comfortable attempting the book I need to write, and that confidence is something I will milk for as long as I can.

I am tinkering with the idea of releasing the stories in paperback before I finish the next book. If that is something you want, let me know! I’d love to, but only if there is enough interest from you.

Coming up…

Expect the first part of a mini-serial in your inbox this month. Yes, I said last month, but the fine print said ideally so… Look I have ADHD, we doin’ our best here, what’s in your cupboard?

The first part will be free. The rest will be paywalled. I’ll have a warning at the top for those who can’t afford to upgrade so they don’t get invested in something they can’t finish (A Happy Bureaucracy glares at me in disgust). Money from the other parts will afford me space to work on the bigger stuff for you, which is always the goal.

My goodbyes are lies

Gasoline is cheap, and my stories are gunna be doused in it. If the page doesn’t burn, why do it?

I’ll see y’all soon, good readers. Don’t let the bastards grind you down.

-M.P. Fitz

M.P. FITZ’S FICTION BACKLOG

M.P. Fitzgerald writes darkly humorous sci-fi for dream criminals. Lock your door or he might rant at you again.

In this newsletter:

1. Why is this lunatic emailing me?

2. What you got in 2025

3. What’s incoming for 2026?

4. S e c r e t s of 2025

5. What the fuck art means to me: an essay

Why is this lunatic emailing me?

…you let me?

But if you forgot how I got into your house: you likely signed up years ago, or you recently grabbed a free book, or you thought me groovy on Substack.

Hi! I’m M.P. Fitzgerald, an unwell sci-fi author who writes warnings with heart for dream criminals. And you?

Oh, you forgot to lock your door.

What you got in 2026

Uh, nothing if you signed up after the 31st of December.

Last year I had two goals, which I’ll speak on in detail later in S e c r e t s, but the product of one of them saw me write thirteen short stories for your reading (dis)pleasure. If you were kind enough to upgrade as a paid subscriber, all of these stories are still available for you to read, and at your leisure. I believe in access to fiction, no matter class or circumstance, so there are still eleven (of twenty-one) stories that are free to read by all.

But which story was best?

The Tournament:

Peeps that upgraded (and sneaky peeps on Substack) got to vote for which stories they liked best in three brackets—A Long-ass Goddamn Winter, Summer of Grief, and I Will Fight You Autumn. Here were the results:

Love is a Snow-Lettered Word, a story about amputation, won out for A Long-ass Goddamn Winter, with A/B Festering, a horror about AI and dream marketing, coming up top in the Summer of Greif (this surprised me), and It’s No Longer Free Speech with Speak No Evil (my stories lambasting facsim) tying in I Will Fight You Autumn.

Winter will see the champion.

I am opening the final vote to all. The winner will become, or remain free, for anyone to read for the rest of the year (Speak No Evil being the exception if it is chosen to print for the second run of The Midnight Vault).

Pick daddy’s favorite for him!

The winner will be announced in my next Bunker Dispatch. You have a week to vote.

What’s incoming for 2026?

Stuff. Lots ‘o stuff. SO MUCH STUFF WILL YOU HAVE!

There is this thing where I announce something, and I get the dopamine from announcing that project, and then life gets in the way, lights my shit on fire, and then I’m a liar. So let’s put a big ass asterisk on the following and say ‘ideally’.

This month1 will see the start of a three-part serial (I miss the white-knuckle panic writing of Existential Terror and Breakfast), with the first part being free to read and the remaining parts paywalled. This will be on a monthly schedule.

Then I’ll be digging deep and going into novel mode. I do not want to over-promise, so you may or may not be getting short stories while I write New Novel™.

Expect further madness in the form of these Bunker Dispatches, if that frightens you, you may want to lock your door by unsubscribing now. There will be no hard feelings, but I will take your dog with me.

S e c r e t s of 2025

Yes-yes, everyone is sending you 2025 retrospectives and your inbox is full to the brim. Skip this part if you are over that, ‘cause imma do it too!

I had two goals last year, aside from delivering at least twelve short stories to you:

1. Join workshops where and when I can and build relationships with other authors/writers.

2. Research, hone, and build on my writing craft.

3. I like there to be three things.

Really, if I were doing number one, number two would come with it, but I still spent a good amount of time and effort outside of workshops to improve my craft.

Was I successful?

Last January, I partook in ’s Stream of Consciousness POV workshop, and again in May. Writers arrive with three-word prompts for eachother and are then tasked to write line-by-line. This workshop was a goddamn good time and a large reason why I won ’s 7th Flash Fiction battle in July (if you are not reading Andrew, go do that now— he is responsible for some of the best fiction I read last year).

Also in July, I took part in ’s (author of The Contortionist’s Handbook and Dermaphoria) Writer’s Workbench workshop, the first workshop of his in a decade.

It kicked my goddamn fucking ass.

And I loved every minute of it.

Craig has one promise when you join his workshops: you will come out a better writer.

Everything I’ve written after that workshop are my favorite stories to date. Hell, everything I wrote last year was my best work (so far), but I think there is a clear ‘before and after’ the workshop. I am still studying what the man taught.

If you are a writer yourself, and you see Clevenger running another workshop—SIGN THE FUCK UP.

Praise To The Editor!

Clevenger was not my only teacher, and my editor pushed me and my work to better places. I can say, without a doubt, that ’s (hire him) tutelege was one of the best things about my 2025 experience, and I am honored to call him a friend. I spoke at length about his current dire circumstances in my last dispatch, but in short: the man and his family of three (and two cats!) will be homeless in March without intervention. Which is why I am reintroducing the…

Check out his ghost novella project and buy a page/card! There is no book I want on my bookshelf more than this, and it will not be written if the first 150 cards are not sold (114, by my last count, have been sold).

Other highlights:

I had the damn pleasure to meet (author of I Hear You Watching) in person. He was kind enough to sign my copy of his book and take a picture with me holding it. Buy it and read it if you haven’t—it’s stunning!

Speaking of books you should buy, a lot of peeps got the paperback version of my first novel, A Happy Bureaucracy!

That was heartwarming.

Get your atomic death and taxes in paperback here!

An incredible goddamn community

The most unexpected event of my year has to be the formation and my inclusion in half a dozen mutual aid initiatives built to get artists out of terrible financial situations by selling their art or services. From rent assistance to food, these initiatives ran under the FiC (Fiction is Culture) banner, and were spearheaded by the author of the Sheildbreaker Saga, .

I don’t talk about what I’ve done/do behind the scenes for these initiatives (and I shant now, bitches!), as the bottom line (helping contemporaries) is what matters more than my ego. What’s more, is that if anyone deserves recognition for these community efforts, it’s Tom—a man with a giant fucking heart and an iron will to help others that is so fucking inspiring I am holding back tears thinking about it.

Thank you, Tom. Without you, my hope for humanity may have died.

What the fuck art means to me: an essay

Everything.

My goodbyes are lies

I am grateful for all of the above. Beyond what I’ve gone over, 2025 was a trying year, and these moments made fighting forward easier. I’m proud of the work I’ve produced, and I am proud of whatever impact that work has had on others. I tentatively look forward to this year2.

I’ll see ya soon, and remember to vote in the poll!

-M.P. Fitz

M.P. Fitzgerald writes darkly humorous sci-fi for dream criminals. He is far away, where you can’t hurt him, and he is not afraid of your true form.

I wrote 13 stories this year and I want to make them fight. I am a cruel father, yes, but I am also a cowardly one.

Because I am handing the gun to you.

The Tournament

I’ve thrown my stories into three brackets, which in my mind represent three distinct “moods” of my work this year.

1. A Long-ass Goddamn Winter: January-May

2. Summer of Grief: June-August

3. I Will F…

Read more

JUST IN TIME FOR THE HOLIDAYS!

Punished for doing the right thing.

A little too familiar, huh?

Let’s cut to the chase.

Come March, a multi-generational family will be homeless because they followed the rules. All of the details on how they got there are here (and I’ll touch on them later, but they are infuriating), but first, a little bit about the remedy.

My editor, , his mom, my friend , and two precious cats. Those are the stakes. And they are betting on ART to survive. You get kickass fiction (and more goodies, oh my so many more goodies!) and they get another roof above them. You won’t believe how unbelievably cool and audacious that art is gonna be… (also, I’m offering some groovy things, but you have to read all of this to take advantage of it).

Real quick:

Why is this lunatic emailing me?

…you let me?

But if you forgot how I got into your house: you likely signed up years ago, or you recently grabbed a free book, or you thought me groovy on Substack.

Hi! I’m M.P. Fitzgerald, an unwell sci-fi author who writes warnings with heart for dream criminals.

And today I’m putting two of my favorite authors in the spotlight.

The Projects (1 of 2)

In my editor’s own words:

“This year I found out what a Christmas Letter is and why I fucking hate it. It’s soft-focus class warfare glazed in white wine and Valium.

‘We had a wonderful year.’ ‘Wonderful getaway.’ ‘Amazing restaurants!’ ‘So blessed!’ Like it’s a quarterly earnings call for the soul and how great your life is, performative social bookkeeping, upper middle class to wealthy people give them out with holiday cards. A little one page report card to prove the senders are healthy, upward, winning, happy, living their best lives, and doing better than you.

Then there’s those of us refreshing city inspection portals and googling ‘can my landlord retaliate for code complaints’ at 3 a.m. on a fucking Tuesday.

So the concept was easy. Invert the format.”

The man is writing a novella, limited print; once the stock is gone it’s gone forever. No reprints, no eBooks, just ghosts. 150 New Year’s cards, each with a page from the Novella, hand numbered, further artifacts optional. Those who sign up will get the full novella, but only if the New Year’s cards sell out. An art experiment for survival.

Bullet points are neat!

• 150 copies hand-signed, numbered, inscribed, doodled inside, who knows.

• Only available to card-holders. (There is a list, if you’ve donated, you have a page number)

• Priced at print + landing cost + $1. (I’m not making money on the book. The point is survival + proof.)

• No reprints. Ever.

• No ebook. No POD. No second edition. No “later.” No ISBN. No UPC.

• $35 gets you a bubble mailer of trinkets (Currently, 17 people have chosen a bubble mailer of trinkets and ephemera). $50 and up gets you a gift box. (31 have chosen a gift box.)

• The more you GIVE = the stranger, more obscure, more archival, the more rare, the more interesting YOU GET.

The man has already sold half of what’s available. I’ve paid for my page. This is going quick.

But who is Emil Ottoman?

He’s the lunatic who edits this lunatic. He’s a damn fine author of fiction. He’s a kind human being in a shitty situation attempting to kill God with friendship. He is one giant reason I’ve become a better writer this year.

You can read some of his work (a short story, titled: My Name is My Name) here.

Burnt Tongue

My Name Is My Name

My Name Is My Name…

Read more

a year ago · 47 likes · 20 comments · Emil Ottoman

I’ve written about him before, but in short, his stories will hurt you. He writes panic attacks. Nothing of his will ever bore you— not many authors still alive can say that of their own work.

The disaster in his own words

The shortest possible recap

“We’re staring down homelessness on March 19, 2026 because our lease wasn’t renewed after we involved the City over safety/code issues in our apartment, which is a supposedly protected activity. The next day our landlord “soft” retaliated by stating he was not renewing our lease. This is legal in Missouri for some reason.

This is our family’s second emergency move from housing instability issues in 12 months. We are tapped and exhausted and don’t know if we can even find a new place.

Last time was a ceiling collapse; this time is landlord retaliation by any other name (and in many other states it is, but not here.)

Attorneys won’t touch us. We can’t even get help from where all the attorneys who wouldn’t touch us told us to go, Legal Services of Eastern Missouri. They said come back with an eviction. That eviction is never going to come.

And I’m going to say this a bunch, by March 19, if we don’t bring in more money than I’m currently confident we can, our little multigenerational household is staring down homelessness.”

A light fixture on the ceiling was leaking. Water plus electricity easily turns to fire. He tried to do the right thing, he followed the rules, and is now being punished for it. I do not want this man’s biggest lesson from this year to be “never do the right thing.”

He’s not the only one fighting this, because this is a Power Couple’s fight.

Who is Edith Bow

She runs the Stream of Consciousness POV Workshop that I’ve attended and is a contributor to the 9 Story Hotel. She’s kind, and she is up against a city full of corruption and neglect. Her workshops gave me an incredible edge in the Flash Fiction battle I won earlier this year.

You can read some of her work (a short story, titled, Art School) here.

Ether Dreams

Art School

[ Stream of Consciousness POV circa revision from 2/2022, from the archives: Prompt: Fox, Country gas station, Lovers by Emil Ottoman, line by line writing…

Read more

a year ago · 25 likes · 26 comments · Edith Bow

Her writing style is truly inimitable. She writes like she is trying to upload dreams long forgotten and forbidden to her reader. She is commiting art against those that have wronged her family.

The Projects (2 of 2)

In her own words:

“For the second time, reporting safety issues resulted in the same outcome: no one will touch retaliation unless you’re in eviction court. In Missouri, there is a loophole so wide you could drive a U-Haul through it. If a tenant reports habitability violations, the landlord can simply refuse to renew the lease. No eviction. No hearing. No legal protection…

…From December 6, 2025 → March 19, 2026, I am writing personalized, stream-of-consciousness, zero-draft stories to anyone who wants to support my relocation fund or just wants to middle finger the patriarchy.”

Revisit Death.

When you donate, you give her a three-word prompt:[ 1 noun, 1 verb, 1 adjective]

Bullet points are neat!

• $20 → 400 words

• $30 → 600 words

• $50 → 1,000 words

• $75 → 1,500 words

• $100 → 2,000 words

• $100+ → No word limit + ultra-personal extras

• Any number you want where you have issues with systemic oppression and want to middle finger corruption is up to your discretion. The writing project is purely optional.

As of this writing she has four commissions written and posted on her publication. I cannot wait to get mine. Here’s her first one:

Ether Dreams

1997

I will not be putting in the prompt; so y’all just have to figure it out. Winner gets a prompt half off…

Read more

4 months ago · 22 likes · 7 comments · Edith Bow and Edward.Marlo.Ruiz

Art to save lives

If you’ve read this far—thank you. I care about this family, their fiction, and I appreciate you for giving this your time and consideration. I am offering a one-year subscription, free, to those who sign up for either of these projects. A free lifetime subscription if you do both of them. Just reply to this email with a screenshot of proof of payment (this will likely be a screenshot of Venmo, or Paypal…etc), or DM me the same on Substack, and you’ll get access to all of my paywalled short stories and the complete Happy Bureaucracy eBook boxset. Every new story that goes paywalled is yours free to read as well, and any future goodies under those tiers.

All of the above, The New Year’s cards and the zero drafts make for a good holiday present. All information on how to sign up for these projects can be found in the buttons below.

Go here for the New Year's cards/novella

Go here for Revist Death zero drafts

Get in on the ground floor of some awesome projects, and help three people and two cats keep a roof over their heads.

Thank you again for your time, reader. I hope you have a wonderful holiday season, and I’ll see you next year (unless I continue not to take a break like I said I would in the last Bunker Dispatch and email you again before January).

Bah humbug,

-M.P. Fitz

M.P. Fitzgerald writes darkly humorous sci-fi for dream criminals. He is far away, where you can’t hurt him.

“I switched your meds.”

Your cat bunts the author’s leg.

“They weren’t candy-coated.”

In this newsletter:

1. Why is this lunatic emailing me?

2. The itinerary

3. Last month

4. S e c r e t s

5. The Nihilist’s Horoscope

Why is this lunatic emailing me?

…you let me?

But if you forgot how I got into your house: you likely signed up years ago, or you recently grabbed a free book, or you thought me groovy on Substack.

Hi! I’m M.P. Fitzgerald, an unwell sci-fi author who writes warnings with heart for dream criminals. And you?

Oh, you forgot to lock your door.

The itinerary

Christmas is around the corner. Lurking. Waiting. Once, a man by the name of Sugar Plumb Gary told me that you cannot spell “horror” without “ho” (true story).

Ho ho ho…

I am taking the month off to work on things behind the scenes. I may send out some flash fiction this month anyway because I am bad at not working, but I don’t intend to.

Last Month

The triumphant return of The Midnight Vault brought 92 stories of Twilight Zone-inspired wonders, horrors, and intrigue. With it came my own story, Speak No Evil.

I think this is the story I’m most proud of this year (but I am usually most proud of whichever I did most recently). Here’s what others had to say about it:

—, Rap Fiction.

—, Burnt Tongue, and TELEVISION SKY.

—, Automatic Writer.

If you have not read it yet, you can do so here. Speakers or headphones are highly recommended.

Mutual aid initiative: WordiGirl the BabyBard

Haly, the Moonlight Bard ✒️ is spearheading an initiative to assist a fellow writer, and creator, , as she is going through a rough time.

“She’s getting hurt by AI creep, she’s working multiple part time jobs and getting no benefits, and she’s in a bind.”

Read the initiative here.

In this initiative, she is offering an assortment of services for writers, including voice acting, music composition, and Discord server setup (and possible moderation). As someone who has had audio recorded for my books and short stories, I can tell ya that narration and music is something you want if you are looking to expand your reader base beyond where you have already, and her prices are fair and cheap for short form.

Not a writer? No problem, she has other really cool goodies, or you can just donate at her Ko-Fi.

Every penny helps.

S e c r e t s

Skip this part if you want to read Speak No Evil, but haven’t yet.

My favorite episodes of The Twilight Zone deal with authoritarianism and prejudice. The episodes, Eye of the Beholder, and The Obsolete Man, in particular, were suggested for research for The Midnight Vault. Eye of the Beholder contains a line that is elegant in its simplicity and power that I will be forever jealous of:

“The State is not God.”

This specific line is what I kept in mind when writing Speak No Evil. As I live in a country that slips further into fascism every day, I believe that it is my duty, as a writer, to lambast authoritarianism where I can. As The Midnight Vault went viral in its first outing (then known as The Substack Zone), I felt that this was a perfect opportunity to do so.

In an earlier draft of Speak No Evil, I referenced that Ode to Joy was playing on bomb klaxons and used it as a way to move time forward for the reader and build tension. I chose this song because it’s a banger, but also because Ode to Joy has a curious history of being appropriated by the Nazis (adhering to the story’s themes on authoritarianism). I did not know that the piece had lyrics, and my editor, Emil Ottoman (hire him), insisted that I include them because “…IT’S TOO LUDICROUSLY GERMAN!” (among other reasons), and the man was fucking right.

He also told me to get a colonoscopy because I was fucking up my flow with colons. Hah! Goddamn pun of the year goes to this man!

From there, I found a free-use recording by the Skidmore College Orchestra, and cut to the last 14 minutes of the song for the musical accompaniment (which matches perfectly with an average read time). The damn thing has been stuck in my head for a month.

For Thanksgiving, I made a sharp-cheddar, taleggio mac and cheese with pickled jalapenos in a Detroit pizza pan. It was magical (I’m used to doing a full spread, as the professional cook in the family, so doing one dish was nice). As a joke, I bought a can of “Chef Boyardee Mac & Cheese” with the intention of serving it first with forks sticking out of the can.

This did not happen.

I am a joker and a jester (this is boiled into the fabric of my family), but I am rarely cruel about it. I tested the canned mac and cheese first.

The can says “no artificial flavors” which must be true, because it had no flavors at all. Is starch a flavor? It tasted like starch. If this mac and cheese was a person, it would be a dead person. This putrid startch paste rotted in my gut and actively gave me pain for days. This was not food. It’s performance art to a tone poem, and that tone is hate.

So yeah, I’m taking December off.

And now, for something completely different.

It’s…

The Nihilist’s Horoscope

(In which I write horoscopes based only on what the zodiac symbols look like to me)

You must learn about the moon if you are to learn about yourself, Anchor. The moon trines, it waxes, it wanes. You must study it. It is many things, Anchor. It is a symbol of fertility and of madness. It is a symbol of power and femininity. It is ghostly, it is dead, it is beautiful.

On the surface of the moon, on the face of this goddess is a plaque, a metal plaque depicting a picture of the earth. Inscribed on this plaque are the words: “Here men from the planet earth first set foot upon the moon, July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.” And those words shall remain far, far after civilization whispers away. Inspiring, isn’t it? Except…

On that plaque is the signature of Richard Milhous Nixon, 36th president of the United States. It will remain there for posterity far after our greatest works of art fade. The crook and supremely sweaty Tricky Dick Nixon will be one of the last names of humanity left after humankind is dead. Our greatest legacy will be the signature of a crooked drunkard.

What is to be learned about yourself from this? Well, no matter what we think of Nixon now, his legacy is cemented on the moon. Nixon will get the last laugh. No matter what you do, achieve, learn, or strive for, you will be forgotten. Tricky Dick won’t.

This heading has no purpose!

Have grandkids who need to read more? Coworkers you want to upset? Or maybe you yourself want access to my full archive of stories? Today, you can get or gift a one-year subscription to Graphomania for 50% off!

$20 gets you the complete Happy Bureaucracy book series (3 eBooks), subscriber-only short stories with access to the full archive (21 in total, as of now), and bragging rights that you are a better person than anyone in your family. Know this.

Just head over to https://mpfitzgerald.substack.com/bahhumbug

My goodbyes are lies

I’ll see you in January, dear reader, likely retrospective, and far, far away from canned mac and cheese.

Bah humbug,

—M.P. Fitz

M.P. Fitzgerald writes darkly humorous sci-fi for dream criminals. He is far away, where you can’t hurt him.

  Paranoid, unpolished, and sleepless; you know the monster can kill you by speaking—and I have a death wish and nothing to write it down on, when the radio, an old bomb klaxon on a pole, announces:
  ALL CITIZENS REMAIN INSIDE. A SPELL CARRIER HAS BEEN REPORTED. LEVEL THREE SOUND-CANCELING HEADPHONES RECOMMENDED.
  And there is a goddamn hole in my sock.
  Ears uncovered, the young blue-eyed nun guarding the hut’s door, she’s tinged with sandalwood and myrrh, and she asks if I am an Inquisitor. I show her my gunmetal pocket watch with an engraved eagle on the case, and she blinks.
  “Did you put in the call?” I say.
  “Is it true?” Hand over her heart, shaking, “Can spells kill?”
  “Sister, answer the question.”
  She nods but looks down at the dirt-crusted snow and my pinkie-toe pokes through the hole in my sock. A title like mine, and I still cannot afford new attire.
  “A witch in our coven.” Her blue eyes meet mine. “Can it really kill with just a spell?”
  PURITY NOISE IMMINENT.
  “Please move aside, Sister.”
  “She—” The nun is smack-dab in front of the hut’s door. She folds her hands together and pleads, “It. It was my friend, my fellow Sister. Please. I have to know before you—”
  ALL CITIZENS REMAIN...
  I hear the faint whine of an autocar coming in from the city. One hut to my right I see fingers spreading window blinds apart. Huddled in place or going home: the town may be wearing headphones, but all eyes are on me, and strong-arming a nun is not a good look, even if you do have the authority.
A snowflake melts on my forehead when I take my fedora off, and I smile for the crowd.
  “Everything the State says is true, Sister. Some spells kill, and are contagious. Some are innocuous. I’m here to tell the difference.”
  “In-ockyou?“
  “Innocuous, it means harmless.”
  “Is that in the bible? Father does not read words like that to us.”
  “Show me the monster, Sister.”
  “Aren’t there supposed to be two of you?” She’s on the tips of her toes to look over my shoulder. “Should we wait for your partner?”
  I’m pushing, and her back is against the door, close enough to get the hint of cinnamon in her sandalwood shampoo. Feel the disapproving stares with chilled wind on the back of my head. I step away.
  “We’re short-staffed for the holidays.” I pull out my corn cob pipe, pre-packed with tobacco, light it, and take a slow drag. Damn I miss cigarettes. Gotta act like you have all night; she has no idea that you don’t.
  “Listen, Sister, I’m trying to do my job. The older ones miss toilet paper and hopefully your friend is only using old ad copy for her business at the toilet. That’s light punishment. But if she has a dangerous spell, we can take care of it before full quarantine locks your town away from precious supplies.”
  She blinks as a snowflake melts on her eyelid, and I take a long drag off my pipe and look up into the bible-black clouds.
  “Might be a long winter.”
A SPELL CARRIER HAS BEEN REPORTED. LEVEL THREE SOUND-CANCELING HEADPHONES RECOMMENDED. PURITY NOISE BEGINS IN THREE MINUTES.
  “Sister?”
  She steps to the side and avoids my gaze. “It’s unlocked,” and is that snowmelt or nervous sweat on her forehead? “Be careful.”

  The radio cackles, the dial confiscated.
  “A Witch’s Den. Submitted for your approval, a time and place, maybe a distant world, or a tomorrow sooner than you’d like, familiar, yet strange—but squarely within The Midnight Vault.”
  The dial is let go.
  Fade out.

  The table is a generation of putty-smeared grime with wood underneath, and the monster smells of dead fruit. It’s the acetone on her breath. Ketosis, when your metabolism changes and starts to burn fat for energy, causes your liver to produce the stuff, and it pushes it out any way it can. The stink of her breath is the smell of her dying, one I am too familiar with. The nuns fast too long; their breath turns to nail polish remover as they waste and die. See the fasting under her brown eyes, her sockets sunken, outlining the bone of her skull? She’s buried under a thick wool robe, but she’s shivering. Is it because ketosis is eating her and she can’t hold heat? Between us on the table is a rotary desk telephone, sun-bleached beige. She called?
  “Where is your partner?” Her lips are chapped, split skin and spitting accusations. “Inquisitors hunt in pairs.”
  “Hand over the spell, and my judgment will be kind.”
  “Go piss on a cunt.”
  Step closer, and she has to look up to meet my stare.
  “Let me be kind.”
  The monster laughs at me. A wheeze between guffaws.
  “Your breath smells like boot leather, boy,” with a spray of spittle.
  I wiggle my toe. The hole in my sock is tight and cutting into it. The wall-smothered sound of Ode to Joy plays on the radio speakers outside. I’m vulnerable with the door behind me, and she, the dying foul-mouthed monster, stares past me. Did she hear something I didn’t? Check my watch. I’ve got two replays of Beethoven, tops.
  “Sit,” she taps the table with her bony index finger, “and I won’t contaminate your mind. I’ll hand it over. You’ll get what I promised.”
  ALL CITIZENS REMAIN INSIDE. A SPELL CARRIER HAS BEEN REPORTED... and Ode to Joy’s sonorous intro plays over into verse.
  “The State equips me with the right to judge and execute you on the spot,” I say to a woman in the last stages of dying from starvation.
  “But you haven’t, now, have you?” Still shivering. Her smile reveals rotten teeth, tobacco-stained and chipped. “Sit.”
Outside the chorus begins. My toe is going numb from cut off circulation. I sit down.
  “Wasn’t so hard, was it?” and she clasps her hands together behind the telephone.
  I refuse to nod. Her damn smile tells me my stoic face isn’t playing.
  “Curious. What exactly is an Inquisitor without an issued gun or partner looking for during a spell reporting?” Tap tap on the table.
  She reaches into her robe.
  “Ma’am—”
  …and pulls out a gunmetal pocket watch. “We are running out of time,” and she sets the watch on the table, open, face up, the second hand twitching and stuck in place.
  Engraved on the watch is an eagle. Exactly like mine.
  I lean back; she’s returning the same piercing stare I’ve given a hundred witches.
  “You—”
  “First-gen Inquisitor.” She yawns. “Now you’ll sit and listen if you want this to go any faster.”
  “You called me directly.”
  “I knew how to read as a kid. Meant I had cognito-contaminants in me to begin with. But I was a true believer.”
  If the other Inquisitors are pounding on the doors of neighboring huts, I can’t hear them above the chorus.
  ♫WEM DER GROßE WURF GELUNGEN,
  EINES FREUNDES FREUND ZU SEIN
My leg hops in place, each bounce and my toe hurts. My anxious stare says please hurry the fuck up.
  “I wasn’t trained to read to look for key phrases and halt. I wasn’t trained against contaminants, I was just taught to read. Gave us an expiration date. You read and you are vulnerable. You read enough and you are infected.”
  “You called me directly.” I’ve never been good at instructions. “Why?”
  “A shit gamble, a naive hope. I have a spell has to outlive me, and I’ve seen you in church. Your beard is salt and peppered, you aren’t young, I figured you would have read too much by now.”
  ...LEVEL THREE NOISE-CANCELING HEADPHONES ARE REQUIRED... and Ode to Joy starts once more.
  She reaches into the breast of her robe, same as where she kept her state-issued pocket watch, and pulls out a blue book, its cover spliced with the spine hand-sewn. No title, and she places it on the table, but keeps her hand on it like it will fly away, and she breathes out a long nail polish remover-stained breath.
  “You’ll know what you have after the first three words, but please, push through the training and read the whole damn thing.”
  “How do you know I won’t turn it in?”
  “That you came alone means my gamble is a good one, fellow heretic.”
  I wince.
  Don’t correct her.
  She closes her eyes. Her shivering stops.
  “You can turn it in and they’ll probably let you live after a year of reeducation, or...” Her eyes open, soft, and she removes her hand from the spell book, leans back, that’s it, she’s done.
  THUD-THUD-THUD at the front door.
  “Inquisitor business! Open your door, citizens!”
  Scramble up. The chair falls behind me. Snatch the book, pocket it quick, and face the door. Counting my held breath, then hear the blue-eyed nun on the other side: “But—”
  CRACK and front door slamming open like a gunshot? A final sentence to my crimes.
  ♫O FREUNDE, NICHT DIESE TÖNE!
  SONDERN LAßT UNS ANGENEHMERE ANSTIMMEN
  UND FREUDENVOLLER
  I open the door, walk through, shut it behind me. Clocked by the two confused pairs of eyes of my contemporaries. Both young, fresh. One red-scarved Inquisitor stands next to his black and white-scarved partner, the unconscious body of the young, blue-eyed nun lying between them? Her forehead is bleeding.
  Red Scarf cocks an eyebrow. “Major Inquisitor? What are you—”
  “Same as you,” and I pull the lid of my fedora down praying it might hide what just happened in the hut. Think fast. “This hut is clear, God please tell me no one outside saw you assault a Sister of the State!” Advance to the exit and keep the panic in your throat; let it out into your pillow when you get home.
  Black & White holds both hands up in front of him. “The door hit her when we kicked it open, no one—”
  “We weren’t informed of you and your partner’s dispatch, Major,” says Red; his hand hovers tense at his hip.
  “Didn’t he wave you down outside?”
  Black & White’s hands fall to his side as Red looks behind him, and Beethoven crescendos.
  ♫AHNEST DU DEN SCHÖPFER, WELT?
  SUCH’ IHN ÜBER’M STERNENZELT!
  ÜBER STERNEN MUß ER WOHNEN
  Gunshot, loud—louder than you even think; always, and the door behind me does shit all to muffle it. She wasn’t going to wait for the ketosis to take her. Black & White to the left of me struggles with a coat button, all lizard-terror eyes, but Red to the right of me has his gun up, and the nun on the floor is stuck here in the middle with you.
  Red shouts: “Drop your weapon!” at a dead woman who absolutely evacuated her brains against the ceiling, and I step out of his way. Black & White has his coat open, his hands shake—and I step over the unconscious nun and push myself outside.
  I breach into winter air, my eyes haven’t adjusted for the night and I run, my boots crunching snow, and with each step my toe feels tight sock fabric cut into it, and the old bomb klaxons drone:
  AMPUTATION IMMINENT. RESPECT THE STATE AND THE LAW OF GOD.
  I beeline to the precinct.
  ...ALL CITIZENS ARE REQUIRED TO WEAR CLASS THREE NOISE-CANCELING HEADPHONES...
  Through and between huts, windows on both sides of me bright with light, eyes sliced between blinds.
  “Major Inquisitor!” hot and angry behind me.
  O FREUNDE, NICHT DIESE TÖNE -SPELL REPORTED- ANSTIMMEN UND FREUDENVOLLERE -CITIZENS ARE REQUIRED TO FEAR—every crunch of snow leaves a trail and the watchers in this trench of windows can’t hear my panicked pathetic yelp with their ears covered but they can witness every puff of cloud popping out of my guilty mouth. And I turn left into one alley and right into another but more windows bright as searchlights silhouetting citizens—REMAIN INSIDE PURITY NOISE CONTINUES NOW. My ears sting from the numbing cold but I can still hear my heart beating to Beethoven. More uncovered eyes are ahead of me. Red or Black & White behind me. Shins heavy with lactic acid pumping the ground beneath and it’s silly but will my toe fall off, or just hurt forever? We told them that a witch can kill with her words. We told them the State was GOD. We force them to cover their ears and hear only the panicked isolation of their minds. And in this moment, spell in my pocket, desperate for privacy, I arrive at the Inquisitor’s Precinct, a concrete slab dirtying the white of snow with one jet black motorcar parked against its curb.
  And I breathe.
  As a Major, I have a key to either. Turn myself in, ignore a dead woman’s last request, and they’ll break me how I’ve broken so many others. I’ll live, but I’ll live each day as a coward. The motorcar can take me to the mountains, and this chase lasts the rest of my life if I’m lucky, however long that is. The life of a hunted animal.
  I must see the spell and choose which curse I can bear.
  Hole in a sock I cannot replace, winter biting my ears, I pull the blue book from my pocket. Those pups, Red or Black & White are screaming my title into the night, MAJOR, in the distance, and—
  Fuck it.
  I open the spell, and read the first three words.

  “We the people…” it reads.

  And Ode to Joy swells in crescendo.
  (Run your course, brothers)
  LAUFET, BRÜDER, EURE BAHN

  (Joyful, like a hero to win)
  FREUDIG, WIE EIN HELD ZUM SIEGEN
  (Be embraced, millions!)
  SEID UMSCHLUNGEN, MILLIONEN!

  (This kiss to the whole world!)
  DIESEN KUß DER GANZEN WELT!

M.P. Fitzgerald writes darkly humorous sci-fi for dream criminals. You can unlock his entire story collection here. Please support and read the other stories and authors in the Midnight Vault here.

Musical accompaniment from the Skidmore College Orchestra. Edited by (hire him).

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“I set your cats free.”

Coyotes yip-yap in the distance.

“It had to be done.”

Was that an owl you just saw?

“They knew too much.”

In this newsletter:

1. Why is this lunatic emailing me?

2. The itinerary

3. Last month

4. S e c r e t s

5. The Nihilist’s Horoscope

Why is this lunatic emailing me?

…you let me?

But if you forgot how I got into your house: you likely signed up years ago, or you recently grabbed a free book, or you thought me groovy on Substack.

Hi! I’m M.P. Fitzgerald, an unwell sci-fi author who writes warnings with heart for dream criminals. And you?

Oh, you forgot to lock your door.

The itinerary

This month I will be participating in the second round of The Midnight Vault, a tribute to The Twilight Zone that took much of the indie author scene by storm last year (you can learn more about the first paperback by Tiny World Publishing in my spring recommendations). The Twilight Zone was a huge influence on my appreciation for speculative fiction and social commentary which naturally means that I am foaming at the mouth to participate. Instead of getting a short story mid-month, as usual, expect it to come November 24 at 12:01 a.m. PST.

Last Month

I am, once again, a proud co-signer to a mutual aid effort for fellow authors.

THE SHIELDBREAKER SAGA

Introducing RECIPES TO FEED THE DUCKS

We the Undersigned, who have spent the first ten months of this year promoting the work of a few of our fellow artists and authors who found themselves with their backs against the wall, now find ourselves in the unenviable position of seeing one of our own founding members in a similarly difficult situation…

Read more

6 months ago · 62 likes · 19 comments · Tom Schecter

is a satan-gifted writer whose weapon-grade kindness cannot go understated.

“She is also a mother of two with a terminal liver condition that keeps her from being able to work a regular job, so she relies on SNAP—which is not coming right now. And her state’s plan to cover that shortfall isn’t going to work effectively for her family.”

To aid her in this dreary time, we are offering a fantastic, punk-rock zine for $5 (more information in the post above), and I am offering a one-year comped subscription to anyone who offers $25 or more (again, in the post above). This will give you access to the complete Happy Bureaucracy series, all of my Graphomania short stories, and more.

That this is necessary at all in the United States is bullshit. If you are from another country and have decided to help, know that your help technically counts as foreign aid.

We elected a party of hob-goblins and the United States needs foreign aid—fun, huh?

Which brings me to…

Last month I also sent you my short story, It’s No Longer Free Speech, Or: Press To The Limit, a satirical piece I fear is not too far from today and is ultimately a fifteen-hundred-worded dick joke (and is about piss!) because I am cultured, dammit.

It’s been said that:

…as well as:

If you missed it, read it here while it is still free (or upgrade so you can read it forever).

S e c r e t s

November is my month. I was born on the anniversary of JFK’s assassination, and for years I did not understand why flags were flying half-mast or why people were so sad while I was blowing out candles.

I wanted to take a moment to thank you, reader. This last year of mine was fraught with a lot of personal grieving (for people, relationships, and country), but it is also one where I’ve joined (and helped build) a kickass community of kind artists, and it was a year where I leveled up my craft and wrote my best stories to date. I joined two writing workshops, met some of the most brilliant and compassionate people that I believe exist, and through it all, you’ve stuck around. I live humbly, and I am grateful for the awesome things and people that are in my life. I have more in this regard than most.

Thank you for riding this year out with me.

And now, for something completely different.

It’s…

The Nihilist’s Horoscope

(In which I write horoscopes based only on what the zodiac symbols look like to me)

This upcoming month will not be a good time to share finances, “Fancy M,” but that is not because your significant other or business partner cannot be trusted. On the contrary, these people in your life are exemplary. In fact, there could not be anyone else better to share your finances with! It is you who cannot be trusted, “Fancy M,” and we both damn well know why! Oh, you thought that I had forgotten, that with enough time gone by my memory would fade. But my eyes are always open, “Fancy M”; they are always open!

So, go ahead, share your finances. Open a second bank account and move your relationship forward with this new step in trust and maturity. Then, when the letters come in, and the legal notices, then when you are served with a court notice, then you can tell them why you can’t be trusted.

Then you can tell them why you are both being sued.

See how that treats you.

Or, heed my advice! This upcoming month will not be a good time to share finances, and we both know why.

My goodbyes are lies

I’m sure the cats will come back. The door is open, after all.

Always is.

If you want access to my full library, upgrade. For the month of November it’ll be 30% off.

Tootels, bitches!

-M.P. Fitz

M.P. Fitzgerald writes darkly humorous sci-fi for dream criminals. Refuge in audacity is a requirement.

Thirty-two ounces of coffee, and I’m pee shy facing the gallows.

Gavel. Hubub. Microphone. Old man body odor; original Old Spice and mothballs— strong as my hangover, and the senate chamber is smaller than I imagined the world’s biggest theater to be. Last senator to grill me and it’s all kangaroo carnival barking of their loyalty. They suspended the law for being too inconvenient for our geriatric king. I may die at the end of this hearing, but at least I’ll get a bathroom break.
With a liver spot the size of a saltine cracker, he’s the Appalachian senator with alopecia in a red tie, he’s shaped like a bell, and he says the American people deserve answers.
“I agree,” camera flashes burn bored senator afterimage into my sight. Photonic piss reflex making it hard not to squeeze my thighs together. “Three hundred and fifty million American citizens have had their Fourth Amendment rights breached as Corporate Voyeurism—”
“Data brokers, son,” and he’s pointing at me with a stubby Vienna sausage-like finger, “they prefer the term data brokers,” flash flash and he leans back with a smug smile.
I grab my coffee. Clear my throat. Deliberate and slow I sip and count the camera flashes. One. Five. Twelve.
Set the paper coffee cup down and the green siren mascot is staring at me.
“These voyeurs watch the American people twenty-four-seven—”
“I think they object to that term son.”
“They track us when we shower, track us when we shit, and they count how many times we masturbate.”
“Such vulgarity. Need I remind you where you are—”
“Let me finish.” flash flash flash. “Then they sell this information to employers who would deny us jobs for using a competitor’s brand of tampon, they sell this information to insurance companies who would deny us care because they have diagnosed us, through the data they collect, weeks before we see a doctor, and thus can label it a preexisting condition.” I take a careful, measured scan of the chamber, an old debater’s trick I learned on a baseball scholarship. Pitch like a beast, but turns out I’m better at this. Let each person feel like I am making eye contact and speaking to them directly. Senator Liver Spots leans back with his arms crossed and a horseshoe frown. Stare dead center into Fox’s static cam because it’s easy to spot and make eye contact with brainwashed dad hatewatching on the couch. “They count how many times you’ve laughed at a dick joke made at the president’s expense, then sell it to the White House to—”
“No true American laughs at my president,” he leans forward, his mist of spit at the microphone is visible from here.
Flash flashfash.
“The American people’s constitutional right to privacy is—”
“And what of the Data Broker’s right to privacy boy? Did your newspaper not breach that when it ran your slanderous—”
“ALL TRUE, senator, but the word you are looking for is libelous, which it isn’t if it’s true.”
“You violated, and I use that term as it’s really meant, violated twelve respectable companies’ right to privacy—”
“Mr. Senator.”
“Shut your damn mouth.” He snaps his fingers and struggles to stand up as his knees shake. Two buzz-cut political aides young enough to be his grandkids trying to make Pop-pop proud struggle with something beneath their seats: an easel. Flash flash. They pull out a poster board, drop it, then wince like Pop-pop is gonna whip them with the big buckle. Flashflashflash. Senator Liver Spots looks at them like the buckle is real. Shit. Pie charts. Cameras love pie charts.
I need the attention back on me. Fuck. Back on the narrative.
I do the only sensible thing.
Pitch my coffee.
Green circle siren logo blurs sailing at ninety miles an hour to the terminus, and the Venti cup explodes against the pie chart covering buzzcut morons and their bell-shaped senator in twenty ounces of tepid double-blended extra whip dark mocha frapachino.
FlashFlashFlashFlashFlaFlash-Flash fuckyeah all eyes on me.
“I will not be releasing the names or identities of my sources.” Flash flash—and short-sleeved Capitol police are pushing their way down the aisle to me.
“Twenty. Thousand, American citizens were deported because they laughed too hard at their televisions or tablets at a cartoon joke made at the president’s expense and the White House illegally obtained that information from—” Skritcheeee! and they cut my mic.
Senator Liver Spots shakes his head and the Capitol police freeze like disappointed dogs. “An unruly press, as always,” and he wipes frappuccino slurry from his nose. “We’ll return after a fifteen-minute recess.”

Urinal cake under me blue as the sky I may never see again, and the fluorescents flicker while I try to piss. There’s five other goddamn urinals he could have chosen, and this dude chooses the one next to me?
His press badges jingle together as he unzips his fly, and right as I’m about to piss he pulls out his dick and lets out a thunderous stream of unearned relief and he says, “They probably have the names already if your reporting’s true, you know,” above the sound of his stream.
Two Venti frappuccinos and I’m pee shy. I stare forward at gray wall with my dick in hand.
With Aviator Shades, he turns and looks at the side of my piss pilfered face. “Off the record, you messed with everyone’s money reportin’ that. You mean to?” His chewing gum breath is cocksure and cinnamon.
I relax, close my eyes, and let out high-pressure pee. “Source says they went to your press first.” Lock eyes— my urine sparkles. “Too chikenshit to run it?”
He tinkles tiny, shakes while my stream booms like a river, and zips up, “I have loans to pay,” then washes his hands.
“Listen,” then throws wet paper towel away, “Give up those names and you go home for another story. No one gives a fuck about their privacy, and no one believes it will be them in handcuffs until they are. It ain’t worth dying for, think about what’s important, like you kids or somethin’.”

The pie chart’s been replaced with a new copy, and two armed men stand next to it. Senator Liver Spots is smiling like he found out how he can get hard without penis pills.
“Data Brokering is as American as Stone Mountain. It’s a way of life that provides sixteen thousand jobs to tax-paying Americans, and your sources on their collection practices set out to ruin those lives.
“Now, you can give them up,” and he taps the pie chart with his stubby sausage finger, stares at me, then looks back at his horrible poster with another tap, “or I can show the American people what’s at risk for the economy.”
Flash flash. Flashflash flash.
He’s the last senator in line to grill me and I can walk out and see deep blue sky or leave in cuffs to the gallows. Today, someone has to die because our king is a bitch. I keep my sources secret and they’ll get to live for something no one gives a fuck about and I die, or I live with their deaths and go back to paying my bills. No matter what, headache as strong as a senator’s Old Spice and graft armpit stench, this is the last time I get to talk. And I think about what’s important.
“Senator,” I lean into my microphone, the feedback distorts because I’m too close and I’m loud like the voice of God.
“The president’s penis is the size of a child’s thumb.”
Flashflaflafash-Flash!
“It’s perpetually wet-noodle flaccid and so small it could be mistaken for an extra nipple. The president’s cock is so full of warts it looks like day-old Chinese takeout babycorn was dipped in used gray Vaseline then pinned to his crotch.”
Senate police tackles me and I’m in backward free-fall. The chamber lights above are more blinding than a photography flash as my tailbone meets hard floor, the carpet does nothing to cushion bone slammed down by a two-hundred-pound cop. Before I can woof out my shortened breath the bastard has his boot pushing down on my shoulder forcing my chest to arch forward like an angry giant todler just pincehd my pelvis and collarbone together, and in this moment it’s silly, but all I can think is I sure as hell won’t be playing baseball after this injury, as chamber lights turn to blue carpet when the bastard flips me over — mocha bile taste on tounge — my arms are pulled behind me and his boot presses down between my shoulder blades. He cuffs my wrists, and I have no breath to scream.
A man can’t take a piss in this country without some sonofabitch watching him while the president pisses all over our constitution like it’s one of his cornered child prostitutes? No. Today I choose how to die— and I put that diseased prick’s dick on the record.

30% off

M.P. Fitzgerald writes darkly humorous sci-fi for dream criminals. If you don’t hear from him after this, then he’s been ‘disappeared’. Piss everywhere in his honor if that happens.

Upgrade.

Now is the time for hoarding.

“Now is the envy of all of the dead.”

In this newsletter:

1. Why is this lunatic emailing me?

2. What to expect this month

3. M.P. Fitz’s Autumn Sci-Fi Reading Recommendations

4. S e c r e t s

5. The Nihilist’s Horoscope

6. A few sentences at the top of this newsletter, likely about fall, written by a very stable person.

Next time lock your door

Hi there! I busted open a Coinstar and then tried to flush the evidence and now the toilet’s a wishing fountain so maybe call a plumber?

If you’ve been around and have read me; we’re groovy— you’re great. If you just came my way allow me to introduce myself: I’m M.P. Fitzgerald, an unwell sci-fi author. I write post-apocalyptic parodies and darkly humorous sci-fi. I’m in your home because you either subscribed to me on Substack or grabbed a free book of mine. You’ll get my short stories here in your inbox once a month and newsletters in between like this one.

Yes, I tried flushing twice.

What to expect this month

I’ll be sending you a new short story this month, it will be free to read before going to the paywalled archive, so read it and share it while you can!

What you got last month

Last month, I sent you my short story, Finance Options.

From , author of The Big T:

Finance Options is still currently free to read but will be thrown in paywall camp soon, so read it now if you missed it or throw your boi some bread.

M.P. Fitz’s Sci-Fi Recommendations

We skipped Summer because I AM NOT WRITING A SUMMER READING LIST THAT’S WHY but you should have been reading sci-fi— there was a lot of it and a lot of it was very good too.

Welcome to Sci-Fight Club! The first rule of Sci-Fight Club is— that you read these recommendations because they are genuinely awesome and further, do not expect any Fight Club jokes like maybe the one you were expecting? The second rule doesn’t exist.

Everything below I’ve read (or reread) and can vouch for. Most are free (they shouldn’t be) and if not then they are worth every coin.

Rudy Rucker’s The Ware Tetralogy (omnibus)

Holy shit, where do you even begin with Ware? Of anything that can be considered cyberpunk, this is my favorite series and a fantastic re-read. The Ware Tetralogy is a generational story throughout the technological singularity. Starting from ice cream trucks employed by boppers (achronistic MOON ROBOTS) to kidnap their creator and transfer his mind into a robotic shell, and ending with fourth-dimensional cheese-fetishists (I swear I am not having a stroke), this tale is as wild as it is smart.

Some of those wild ideas:

• A moon robot that speaks like Edgar Allen Poe.

• Passing down robotic consciousness to humans through an extra chromosome.

• Broadcasting consciousness as a way to travel through the vastness of the universe with the hope that someday someone just, uh, picks up the line.

• The sun is alive, and QUUZ WANT EAT PLANETS!

• Replicator technology that’s just a fourth-dimensional knife cutting into itself.

• Cheese-fetishists.

Cheese-fetishists. If you know, you know.

The above quote is a moon robot pickup line. Find the book on Rudy’s website.

’s Vaquera (short story)

My Flash Fiction Battle brother brings it hard. His story, Vaquera, is Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal modernized; if you think that to be audacious— the man pulls it off because he has gotdamn chops. I love this story so much, I wrote an article about it, and this is what I had to say:

Vaquera is deceptively simple in its narration. This should have been the first warning that he cut the seatbelts. Told through a simple transcript of a corporate board teleconference, the story unfolds as the wealthy discuss their methods for gaslamping1 the populace as they do damage control from spreading a very visible disease before pivoting to, well, A Modest Goddamn Proposal. Know that Mr. Futuro is capable of incredible prose. His other story, 11:11, showcases the poetry the man is capable of (in 2nd POV, no less); he can, if he has the inclination, write with literary style, and here he refrains from doing so.

Why?

Because I suspect he knows that the wretched actions of the wealthy, paired in their own words, indifferent to all but the bottom line of the dollar, is the most horrific malice that could be penned to page.

My favorite line form Vaquera:

Andy Futuro’s name is the warning label. Go read this amazing story here (for free).

’s The Lobby (short story)

Our last place of survival in space: a prison barge. Foucault’s head exploding is probably what propels the engines. Pablo Báez tells trauma through gratuitous (gratuitous is Pablo’s middle name, I checked) prison sex mired with murder in ancient, hulking corridors. If you are bored—YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO BE BORED WITH PABLO AROUND— read this man’s work. The Lobby demands a close read. This is not just a scene in a generation ship, and as you discover more hidden details and meaning you’ll be at once horrified and full of dreadwonder.

Read The Lobby (currently free) here.

’s Diary Entries (serial)

I’ve said it before, but reading Edith Bow feels like I’ve stumbled on something forbidden, like happening upon a tome in an ancient forest that uploads someone else’s dreams when you read it. She is a master of imagery and feeling. Diary Entries is cyberpunk with the hallucinatory imagery of Revelations, the world drowns in rain with no silver lining in a mushroom cloud, and I cannot think of a better way to write a late-capitalistic apocalypse. Who is The Witch, and why do you know her?

Diary Entries is ongoing, read it here (free for now).

’s Fly Me To The Moon (short story)

Yes, this is pay-walled, and it alone is worth every penny of an upgrade. Emil Ottoman’s take on a Generation Ship making landfall is in a class all of its own. Dire, mythical, high sci-fi where the human element is both close and personal while addressing the whole of humanity. The ending lands harder than L-Con ripped in twain. If you love sci-fi, this is the story you want to buy and read tonight. Full stop.

If he doesn’t end up writing Ahab in Space Imma throw something.

Read Fly Me To The Moon, here (paid, and worth every damn penny).

& ’s Dyad (short story)

Jon T. and Sandalore Sykes are powerful, kickass writers alone. Combined, they make some sort of undefeatable author Voltron.

I am very coherent.

A trippy tale told through the transcripts of a dating app service, Dyad is uncomfortable, funny, HORRIFIC, and all with a momentum that...

Look, you really just need to experience this one—there is a mongoose and that’s all I can say without the orderlies fetching the straitjacket.

Everything you need to know about one of the characters happens in one gloriously long sentence:

Read (or listen to) Dyad here (currently free).

S e c r e t s

My short story, Finance Options, is based on my recent experiences of having to upgrade my phone. I am not the character in my story, beyond the mask I wore to write him (I don’t think I’d “ask for a manager” if you put a gun to my head), but all of my feelings about our system and giant corpos are there.

Beyond that, the truth is in the story, wrapped in lies.

This is the first story I’ve posted on my own publication since battling Andy, and is a result of ’s workshop. Aside from being a brilliant writer and a very kind individual (go buy The Contortionist’s Handbook right now!), he is also a tremendously apt and patient teacher. I am honored to count my writing genealogy to his tutelage.

…but I have a ways to go, still, and I will be studying his lessons for a while.

I appreciate that you, dear reader, have stuck by me in this journey.

And now, for something completely different.

It’s…

The Nihilist’s Horoscope

(In which I write horoscopes based only on what the zodiac symbols look like to me)

Sometimes I just think that I take this whole nihilism thing a little too seriously, you know? Like, sometimes I just want to write whimsical stuff, like giraffe riding cowboys! That’s a hit right there. But no. I can’t. Because you won’t let me, Parallel Horseshoe!

Today I wanted to sit down and write about the adventures of Cornegay and his mount, Waffles. Don’t argue with me there; Waffles is a perfectly good name for a giraffe. But you know what I had to do instead?

Your horoscope.

So here it is: You are selfish, and you are ruining at least one perfectly whimsical man’s life. Thanks, Parallel Horseshoe. Thanks.

Feed my kitty

Debra (or, Behold The Titanic Power Of Catzilla, which, like “A Pimp Named Slickback”, must be said in its entirety, every time, and yes, I am serious, but I can call her Debra) needs to be fed. She likes cuddles and hates horror (I watch a lot of horror). This sometimes puts us at odds. Regardless, she is ever hungry.

Graphomania, which consists of this Bunker Dispatch and my fiction, is a reader-funded publication. My stories take craft, time, and capital to write for you. Pitch in, and you help me write future warnings with heart. You’ll also get access to everything I’ve ever written, which I think is neat.

For a very limited time, you can upgrade for 30% off, and I’ll be sure to buy Debra the good food.

My goodbyes are lies

Thank you for being my reader! I’ll see you later this week with a short story. Sorry about the toilet, and stay tuned!

-M.P. Fitz

M.P. Fitzgerald writes darkly humorous sci-fi for dream criminals. This story took craft, time, and capital to write for you. Consider slapping down some bread for ya boy.

In this polished wood countered Verizon store with drop ceiling sky, I’m scratching an errant dried mustard stain off my jeans when the saleswoman asks: “How can I help you?”
I stare as if caught masturbating.
And the advertisement playing in my head repeats, as it has for two whole days:

Red tail lights. Mud. You sure don't like it when others drive it, but you certainly don't mind watching it drive away. Full suspension all-wheel drive chrome wrapped around our patented Sensitivo™ pink-skin interior. Introducing the Ford DTF-450®: Finally— a truck you can fuck!

She, blue polo shirt and too many bracelets—close, and her conditioner is fraganced with lavender honey, takes a step back after clocking the yellow mustard detritus under my nail, and like the advertisement, repeats herself.
"Something is wrong with my brainchip," I say, and I cover my hand with the other, then clear my throat. "I can't skip this ad."
"Lemme guess," and her hands are on her hips, her bracelets jingle, "you've got a Model 17?"
"I'm not looking to replace it."
"Unfortunately, that model was recently sundowned.”
"Could a manager fix this for me?" and I take a step forward.
The saleslady takes two slow steps to the side, revealing the item display behind her. With a softened voice: "It's not broken, sir," and her bracelets cling and clank as she holds her hands in front of her, "It's been sundowned. We no longer provide services to the Model 17. But there are options."

Red tail lights. Mud. You sure don't like it when others drive it…

I have not slept in two days.
She knows I'm cornered.
"Listen,” and I poke my chest with my thumb, "I'm not going to be tricked into paying more than I already am, you people—”
Her eyebrow cocks up at ‘you people’, then I take a breath. Can't accidentally be the bad guy here, you know?
"Your company is a little sleazy, is all."
She’s looking at my stained pant leg when she says, "We'll keep our options within your needs."
The brain chips behind her on the polished wood wall are small, no bigger than a thumbtack, titanium brushed and pristine, all capable of doing what dad’s archaic iPhone could, but in your head. A collage of happy people running on a beach, graduating from college, and making flirtatious glances in a cocktail lounge sits beside one of the chips, and in bold red letters:

NO ADVERTISMENTS.

…wrapped around our patented Sensitivo™ pink-skin interior. Introducing the Ford DTF-450®…

"How much for that one?"
"The Model 27, with financing and proper health insurance for the installation surgery, can be paid off in as little as 40 years."
"I paid my last one off in three."
"The Model 27 is far more advanced, you have to understand," she says.
"You 'sundowned' it in four."

Finally— a truck you can fuck®!

"There are other options," she says slow as a kindergarten teacher giving her class instructions. With her hand up she brings my attention to the icepick on the wall, and her bracelets fall toward her elbow, revealing the black anodized titanium cuff around her wrist. "We have the home kits and the Indentured Employee discount."
"I'm sorry.”
She looks away and grabs her wrist, covering her cuff. Her knees locked, she blinks. Then blinks again.
"It's a good deal, actually. Only fourteen-hour shifts and there’s AC, you know?" Her laugh is hollow. "I'll have mine paid off in just twenty years."

Red tail lights. Mud. You sure don't like it when others drive it, but you certainly don't mind watching it drive away…

I cannot afford a new brainchip, let alone a fucking goddamn car. Who is this advertisement for? Not me. Sure as shit not this young woman that likely sleeps on premises. A mad intonation for an idol no one can worship and I'm the damned punished for it?
"What's the 'home kit'"?
"There are a lot of perks to Verizon Indentured Employment,” she's half-smiling with a palm out flat, signing STOP. "Can I recommend—"
"No." I step forward. "Tell me about the home kit."
"The home kit is $21.95 with a one-time payment of $79.95 for the three-part instruction video course."
"Can you just tell me how to use it?”
"Sir, please."
"Tell me."
"You place the tip of the pick between your tear ducts and eye," and she places her index finger under her acorn-colored iris, "Then you press the icepick upward behind the eye and breach a thin layer of skull before getting to the brain."
"And this will get the chip out?"

…pink-skin interior…

"It's called a transorbital lobotomy, sir," she folds her arms over her chest. "It will scramble your brain so that you don't care about the advertisements." She's scanning the floor. "Won't mind anything."

RED TAIL LIGHTS. MUD. YOU SURE DON'T LIKE IT WHEN OTHERS DRIVE IT, BUT YOU CERTAINLY DON'T MIND WATCHING IT DRIVE AWAY. FULL SUSPENSION ALL-WHEEL DRIVE CHROME WRAPPED AROUND OUR PATENTED SENSITIVO™ PINK-SKIN INTERIOR. INTRODUCING THE FORD DTF-450®: FINALLY— A TRUCK YOU CAN FUCK!

"I want to speak to a manager."
She leans forward, and I get a whiff of lavender honey again. Her acorn-colored eyes look into me as she shakes her head.
"I am the manager, sir."
I can be a comfortable slave, or be free— but never know it. A thing Verizon owns, or a domesticated cow lost in the wild, oblivious to the wonders around them.

RED TAIL LIGHTS. MUD…

"You seem like a good person," I say. "You'd probably be a fine manager to work under." I close my eyes. "Lobotomy now, please."

M.P. Fitzgerald writes darkly humorous sci-fi for dream criminals. This story took craft, time, and capital to write for you. Consider slapping down some bread for ya boy.

“Want some?”

A wasp bounces off your closed window, trying to escape as it goes: buzz-tap-tap!

“You really should lock your door,” and he sticks the fork in the jar.

BUZZ-TAP-TAP!

“You never know who might wander in…”

In this newsletter:

1. Why is this lunatic emailing me?

2. The itinerary

3. Last month

4. S e c r e t s

5. The Nihilist’s Horoscope

6. M.P. Fitz’s Backlist ‘o Doom!

7. I wanted there to be seven things

Why is this lunatic emailing me?

…you let me?

But if you forgot how I got into your house: you likely signed up years ago, or you recently grabbed a free book, or you thought me groovy on Substack.

Hi! I’m M.P. Fitzgerald, an unwell sci-fi author who writes warnings with heart for dream criminals. And you?

Oh, you forgot to lock your door.

You can lock your door and unsubscribe at any time.

LOOK! A PICTURE!

The itinerary:

I’ll be sending you a new short story for your reading (dis)pleasure! Likely mid-month, likely on a Wednesday. It will be sci-fi, it will be darkly humorous, and it will contain my total and ultimate ire for Verizon everything. Yipee!

So keep an eye out for it in your inbox or on Substack. It will only be free for a short time before going under the paywall.

Last month:

and I celebrated our first issue of The Rejects, a publication that only takes previously rejected stories and poems and gives them a chance to be read. We’ll open another round for submissions in fall, I think.

Also, ’s glorious Weather Reports project launched, and with it, my entry and short story James O (read it here). It was, as with most of my writing, a very personal piece; truths cloaked in lies (you can learn more on this the S e c r e t s section).

What peeps have said about it:

“I love the constant juxtaposition of the mundane, the incredible, and the untrue in this piece. Very cool.”

— (Read her own Weather Report, Tabby, which I adore).

“Great character! I love the structure of this story, and yes, that is a killer last line. Belongs on a T-shirt.”

—

Weather Reports, if you are not familiar, is a massive collaboration of 40+ writers, musicians, and artists all creating under a single prompt, provided and orchestrated by Jon T:

“It's been three months, and no one can explain the atmospheric phenomenon reshaping our sky. So far, it is a largely passive visitor: iridescent cloud veils shimmer from dawn to dusk, while colossal shadow-spires rise after dark and blot out the stars. Some taste metal, others swear a sweet perfume drifts through the air. Harmless so far, yet profoundly distracting, the most unnerving trait is a lilting hum that slides from high to low and back again with no discernible pattern, like distant singing heard from a far away place…”

It might just be the coolest thing to read on the internet right now. Yeah, I skipped my ‘Summer Reading Recommendations’ because— no. I don’t do summer. But this is it: go read Weather Reports!!

I’d start with the music made by author, menace, and my battle brother, , Lightning Immaculate, then head on over to ’s breathtaking collage, Sybill, to set the mood. As always, author brings stunning prose and mindfuckerery with his piece The Widower, and brings the horror in what might be his best story yet in James Earl Stockton. There are many, many more to read (and that I have yet to read myself), but the above is a damn fine sampler.

I am super proud to have contributed to this project. Jon T is a madman and a national treasure. You can find all of the stories and pieces of art here: Weather Reports.

…and keep your eye out for an important easter egg hidden on that page. Rabbit holes abound…

S e c r e t s

I hinted that my entry to Weather Reports was personal, and that is because it is (partially) inspired by my late uncle, Jim.

All of the instructions for hoaxing UFOs in my piece are real things he did— for shits and giggles.

He was a large part of my childhood, and is responsible for not just my appreciation for classic sci-fi and B movies, but the craving for madness that I cannot shake. He was a living trickster; usually the smartest in the room— and you’d never know it. He was kind, was also a bastard, and was my late mother’s counterpart.

My soul is screaming.

Last week we spread his ashes, and I re-met his friend, George.

George has a figure of a man gold panning on the hood of his Jeep. When he met my uncle, forty-something years ago, he was literally living in a cave in the Nevada desert near his gold claim. He never says goodbye, always “See ya later.”

We spread my uncle’s ashes somewhere near a silver mine (which you will never find) by George’s request.

I hope to see him later.

I bring George up, not only because he is a lovely soul, but because my uncle likely did not blink when he found out that the man lived in a cave. No, he found an opportunity to rub glowstick chemicals on himself and pretend he was a “cave alien” to spook his friends tripping on acid.

Fuck you, Jim, I’ll miss and love you forever.

Immediately after spreading my uncle’s ashes, I returned home to officiate a wedding.

That was deeply weird and needed.

And now, for something completely different.

It’s…

The Nihilist’s Horoscope

It’s a good time for organization, McFish, a good time. Have a group of friends who love to read? Organize them! A book club will do you wonders and bring you all closer as you socialize about what you are passionate about. Like music better? Organize your friends into a band; you’ll be surprised to see what creative energies you all share! Have a messy house? An especially messy house? Organize it!

Now organize it further.

Should the books on your bookcase be organized in the Dewey Decimal system or by the color of their covers? Try both! Just be sure to wipe them down, then again, and again. You can never clean too much. Your kitchen is clean, sure, but doesn’t it look a little off to you? Move everything out of it and reorganize it by the dates you obtained each item! Then wipe it down three times. Make sure to get the corners, and the baseboards, and the ceiling, and the walls…make sure you get it all. Everything is dirty; everything is chaos!

If you could organize it down to the molecule you would. OH YES, YOU WOULD! It’s not fair that they get to jumble about like that, like no one is watching. But you are, oh yes, you are. You know that they can’t stay in one place. Scrub. Scrub three times three times three times. Someone has to organize!

…because the uncaring, chaotic universe sure as hell won’t.

M.P. Fitz’s Backlist

Novels:

The Happy Bureaucracy series:

A Happy Bureaucracy (Post-apocalyptic Parody)

Fear and Loathing in the Wasteland (Post-apocalyptic Parody)

Post-Apocalyptic Pirates (Post-apocalyptic Parody)

Memos from the Wasteland (Post-apocalyptic Parody)

Short Stories:

James O. (entry to Weather Reports)

Turn Left on Rigel 7 (winning entry to the 7th Flash Fiction Battle)

Ferrytale Woman (Cyberpunk Minamalism)

A/B Festering (Cyberpunk-horror)

Onieros On Us (entry to the Stream of Consciousness POV Workshop)

Three Thousand Magi (Social Anxiety Horror)

With real Strawberries (Cyberpunk/Speculative Fiction)

Unalive On Air (Cyberpunk Minimalism)

Love is a Snow-Lettered Word (Sci-fable)

Saturnal Cancer (entry to the Stream of Consciousness POV Workshop)

The Public Humiliation of Brian (Social Anxiety Horror/Cyberpunk/Humor)

Roko’s Lathe™ (Cyberpunk)

Recursive Panopticon (Cyberpunk)

Radio Cthulu (Cyberpunk/Horror/Humor)

The Museum (Speculative Fiction)

Atomic Death and Taxes (Post-apocalyptic Parody)

Sunny Day (Horror)

Mother’s Day (Horror)

Does anyone know how to get barnacles off of their porch? (Horror/Humor)

Podcast Audiobooks:

A Happy Bureaucracy (Post-apocalyptic Parody sound-book for your earpits, music by Dust Mice)

Feed my cat

See all of that fiction goodness up there? It can all be yours.

Upgrading to paid gets you all of my eBooks, including the complete A Happy Bureaucracy book series, as well as access to all of my paywalled short stories and live video reading replays. Also? The Founder’s plan gets you a physically signed paperback of A Happy Bureaucracy with a cheeky pentagram stamp in it.

Tap here, and fuel future warnings with heart.

Also, also? These monies feed my kitty. LET HER HAVE THE GOOD STUFF!

My goodbyes are lies

Thank you, as always, for being my reader. I don’t know how some of you have been following me for years, but I deeply appreciate it. And to you new readers: you are pretty groovy too.

Tootles, bitches!

-M.P. Fitz

M.P. Fitzgerald writes darkly humorous sci-fi for dream criminals. He is unwell, but far away where you can’t hurt him. You might want to get a towel because he absolutely ate your mayo too quickly…

“Sorry about the toothpaste.”

Dogs bark in the distance.

“I was hungry.”

In this newsletter:

1. Why is this lunatic emailing me?

2. The itinerary

3. Last month

4. S e c r e t s

5. The Nihilist’s Horoscope

6. Two of these are out of order

Why is this lunatic emailing me?

…you let me?

But if you forgot how I got into your house: you likely signed up years ago, or you recently grabbed a free book, or you thought me groovy on Substack.

Hi! I’m M.P. Fitzgerald, an unwell sci-fi author who writes warnings with heart for dream criminals. And you?

Oh, you forgot to lock your door.

The itinerary:

Wrapping up a workshop with two weddings (one of which I am officiating) and a funeral ahead of me this August, I will be doing nothing. OR I WILL CHANGE MY MIND!! I am burnt out but am a slave to a mecurial mind fueled by novelty and whimsy.

So who knows?

NOT ME.

I will be doing another live reading of one of my short stories on Substack later this month, so look out in the inbox for info on that soon. If you show up on time (I allow about ten minutes for peeps to jump in before reading) it’s free. After that, replays go to paying subscribers.

You have to pay to revisit my humiliation.

But after this month, expect me to go back to the previous broadcast schedule: one short story a month, and one thing like this about how I ate all of your toothpaste because you bought a brand I haven’t eaten yet and sorry not sorry but I was hungry and actually you should know better then to leave things out on the counter?

You can lock me out of your house by unsubscribing at any time. Until then, I will be like an unwanted cat that has not been housetrained and occasionally tells you evil stories.

Last month:

I read my short story, with Real Strawberries, live (replay here). In it, I whistle too well, go on about my culinary conspiracy theories about ranch dressing, and showcase my penchant for abrupt endings.

I also had my short story, Ferrytale Woman, published in & ’s first issue of Wonder Hearse zine!! This imitable zine is a showcase of spectacle and beauty, even if that beauty is bleeding out and desperate. Photography, poems, short stories, and lovingly crafted collages of the featured writers’ words—all of it set to killer beats and music. It is a thing of art, for the sake of art, and I am more than proud to have contributed to it.

Author and fellow plunger-wearer called my story “stirling work”:

It is, at the end of the day, the next step of the apathy we hold for the suffering. If you haven’t read it yet—what’s wrong with you?? Read it (and the rest of Wonder Hearse vol 1.0) here.

Last month, I also walked away victorious against the literary menace, in the 7th Flash Fiction Battle.

If you don’t already know, The Flash Fiction Battles were created…

“…to provide friendly and respectful competition to the short fiction space with the hopes of innovating the genre to provide visibility to its writers and more relevancy to short form fiction as an art form.

Flash-style is flash fiction written on a time clock with the express purpose of dueling another fiction writer.

The writers are given 3 hours to create content with 500 words or less that tell a story.”

500 words. 3 hours. You picked the prompt and decided the winner.

My hands have not shaken above a keyboard like that since my short stint as a 9-1-1 operator.

My opponent, Andy Futuro, was a beast to fight, and in him I find kinship. We bend the present in our prose as wake-up calls to prevent the future. If you are not familiar, read his story, Vaquera; it’s my favorite.

From this competition came my flash story Turn Left on Rigel 7 and Futuro’s Hunger Mountain Taxi. Excellent fiction added to our culture means we all win.

But me more.

Thank you to all who made it out and voted in the chat. I seriously appreciate you!

“This reads like a hangover hallucination laced with grief, paranoia, and sci-fi dread. The world was absurd, funny, and unexpectedly sad. The ending choice hits harder than any reveal. Amazing work done in such a short period.”

— (Read his most recent champion piece here.)

Read my winning piece here.

And make sure you subscribe to . You don’t want to be left behind, because the man is going places, and he is one of the most powerful writers putting pen to paper right now.

And now, for something completely different.

It’s…

The Nihilist’s Horoscope

This month, love is in the air, Weird Sperm. Love is in the air.

Jesus Christ love is in the air! Don’t you understand?! IT’S CONTAGIOUS!

Love is a virulent pathogen, and it is airborne! It is only a matter of time before it is too late. You can’t trust those pencil-necked bureaucrats at the CDC to keep us safe! They probably synthesized it. They’ve been planning on thinning out the population behind closed doors for years now, Weird Sperm. For. Years. It was only inevitable that they would pull the trigger. Love is in the air, and we are all going to die!

Unless you are in the mountains, it is better to bug-out. Grab your supplies and ditch the car. It will only hold you back as everyone else evacuating the city floods the streets into a deadlock. Forget the social contract; you need to worry about you and yours! Take before someone takes from you and head to the hills, the dry, dry hills. Viruses have a harder time in high dry elevation, but you tell everyone else otherwise. There is no need to compete if your competition goes in a different direction. Keep your knife close and …

… Wait. No, sorry. My bad. This was just another paranoid meme farmed out by Wavy Lines. Sorry.

Goddamn Facebook.

S e c r e t s

’s workshop, hosted by ’s Burnt Tongue, is both stunning and kicking my ass (in the best possible way)!! The man is one of the best teachers I have ever interacted with. He presents information in a way so easy to consume that you’ll be unaware of how dense it actually is until your head hurts. I am eager to bring what he’s taught into action, and I suspect that I’ll be studying his lessons for a VERY LONG TIME.

If Ottoman’s page hosts another author’s workshop, and you are a writer yourself looking to up your game, I’d wholeheartedly recommend you jump in as soon as one is announced. Full stop.

More S e c r e t s ? Kinda greedy of ya, but okay…

I had a wonderful time meeting and hanging out with fellow writer , author of I Hear You Watching (a funny, paranoid, unflinchingly honest book that you absolutely must read, seriously, buy it).

Zach is kind and insightful. We discussed our creative pasts and hurdles and I loved every minute of it. Hopefully, it can happen again.

Horror writer (and awesome dude) picked up a copy of my short story collection and uh— made it fight to the death!

Drew writes some of the most entertaining, but seriously fucked up, horror stories. They are imaginative, gross as shit, and often funny. If you are looking to add some PTSD from reading to your table, read Drew Valdez now.

Also: painter, poet, and writer made my books look cooler than I ever could!

She wrote what has to be my favorite series of poems I’ve read this year, heavy body (I particularly like nerves). Her paintings are raw fire, and her creative talent is fucking intimidating. Check her stuff out!

My goodbyes are lies

Upgrading to paid gets you all of my eBooks, including the complete A Happy Bureaucracy book series, as well as access to all of my paywalled short stories and live video reading replays. Also? The Founder’s plan gets you a physically signed paperback of A Happy Bureaucracy with a cheeky pentagram stamp in it.

Tap here, and fuel future warnings with heart.

Thank you for your readership and for your support. Keep an eye on that inbox and stay hoopy froods!

-M.P. Fitz

M.P. Fitzgerald writes darkly humorous sci-fi for dream criminals. He is unwell, but far away where you can’t hurt him. If you got the flavorless toothpaste, none of this would have happened

Late, lovesick and hungover; the back of the taxi cab reeks hot of sour cream and cigarettes as it jerks forward— and I still can't get my buckle in.

"Where to?" the cab driver says as he punches the turn signal up. Death Metal kick drums beat out of old side door speakers loud as my headache.

I meet his heterochromatic eyes through the rearview mirror before they dart back to the road. My job can now wait.

"Drive until I say stop," I click my buckle in.

The drums are hard on the cymbals as he turns left.

"Sir, please, a destination or I'll have to kindly ask you to get outta the cab."

His two-colored eyes avoid me, but on the tattered photo taped to his dashboard, old with grime, they look straight into me.

"In twenty goddamn years you never updated your photo, you afraid of cameras or somethin’?” and I tap the back of the headrest on his seat twice.

He pulls over, and I lurch forward at the too-quick stop.

"Get out," and the door’s lock pops up.

"I'll tell ICE,” I say.

Death metal beats fast as my heart. The lock comes back down. We stay on the curb.

"Why would you go and do something like that?" he’s gripping the steering wheel, but half smirks. "I'm just your normal everyday Earth Joe."

"No one talks like that! Stop talking like that!"

"You sound crazy," he hits the blinker. "Crazy and emotional."

"Drive," I say, my ass sweating on hot pleather. "Drive and stop the act."

The kickdrums go: Thuddadadathud dada!

"You found me," and he gasses the cab. "Good job, whaddya want?"

Drums beat fast as an AK unloads a clip.

"Proof," I pull out my phone and fumble for the camera app.

"They'll dissect me."

Dada Thuddaddathdu!

"I want my life back," and I put him in frame.

Something wells under his eyes— tears? But they're green.

"They'll dissect my Earth children," and the drums push out one last clip before he turns the radio off. "Please."

"Lost mine in the fucking divorce."

"If you tell on me," he faces me, "will you get them back?"

That his disguise got him this far is as unbelievable as a refugee from Ceti Alpha Five driving a taxi cab. Heterochromatic eyes, face rubber as a Stretch Armstrong sun-bleached and cracked. Tears aren't green, they’re turquoise, and I look at my phone.

My backseat life, empty of praise and family, it can change with a single photo. As will his.

“Take me to the liquor store," and I put my phone back into my pants pocket. "Sorry about the ICE thing," Space Oddity plays on the radio, and I let the man drive.

This was my winning submission to the 7th Flash Fiction Battle.

The prompt was:

“20 years ago. In a taxi. The driver was telling you about aliens in his cab. back to today, same cab, same driver”

Thank you to all who made it out and voted in the chat. I seriously appreciate you.

You can read the entry from my honored combatant, , here: Hunger Mountain Taxi. Make sure you subscribe to him. You don’t want to be left behind, because the man is going places.

M.P. Fitzgerald writes darkly humorous sci-fi for dream criminals. He is unwell, but far away where you can’t hurt him.

‘sup kiddos?

You’ll be getting a proper Bunker Dispatch Update for August, I promise (I’m gonna eat all of your toothpaste!), but we got a funeral to prepare for first.

Tomorrow, Thursday, July 31st at 3:00 PM EST, you are cordially invited to the 7th Flash-Style fiction battle where I will murder-dead .

Tap here for more info.

It’s hosted by ARC, and moderated by Sandolore Sykes, the inaugural competitors in this challenge. You must subscribe to Flash-Style Fiction Battle to participate in the chat, and believe me— you absolutely do (it’s free).

The Flash Fiction Battles were created…

“…to provide friendly and respectful competition to the short fiction space with the hopes of innovating the genre to provide visibility to its writers and more relevancy to short form fiction as an art form.

Flash-style is flash fiction written on a time clock with the express purpose of dueling another fiction writer.

The writers are given 3 hours to create content with 500 words or less that tell a story.”

500 words. 3 hours. You pick the prompt and decide the winner.

My opponent, Andy Futuro, is a beast, and in him I find kinship. We bend the present in our prose as wake-up calls to prevent the future. If you are not familiar, read his story, Vaquera; it’s my favorite.

, author of the Phineas Poe trilogy seems impressed with my opponent:

THIS IS HIGH GODDAMN PRAISE!

However, Mr. Futuro is a pacifist, which means author knows where to put his money in a fight:

Andy abhors violence, and he has a right to. We all should. I respect that.

But as author Zani D says, “love wins, violence provides.”

A pacifist needs no pacifier.

He needs a death rattle.

Read more about the battle here

I will see y’all tomorrow, Thursday, July 31st at 3:00 PM EST, dear readers.

Good luck, Andy Pasado.

-M.P. Fitz

M.P. Fitzgerald writes darkly humorous sci-fi for dream criminals. He is unwell, but far away where you can’t hurt him.

Mr. Square for the curious (giant damn shoutout to Shelby Tabby Cat, thank you for engaging with my art this long!).

I am mortified, but y’all are the best, so I might do this again!

-M.P. Fitz

Read more

‘sup groovy people? I promised a new short story this month, and I am proud to let you know that you can read it over at the inimitable Wonder Hearse zine, a publication co-produced by and .

Tap here to read my story

My short story, Ferrytale Woman, is among other really gorgeously written short stories, poetry, awesome photography, and killer beats. Put on some headphones and while you are over there make sure you subscribe for future editions of Wonder Hearse. It is by far one of the coolest things out there right now.

Also, keep an eye out this Saturday the 19th as I do another live reading on Substack at 10:00 AM PST.

Will I do so out loud?

Who can say?

Stay hoopy, froods!

-M.P. Fitz

M.P. Fitzgerald writes darkly humorous sci-fi for dream criminals. He is unwell, but far away where you can’t hurt him.