The truth is behind curtain number two...
Bunker Dispatch
Trees blooming. Birds chirping.
Those tweets, caws, rapturous bird sing-song over flower fragrant wind? Mere bragging of the rival eggs they’ve smashed, warning their smaller neighbors that they are next.
Spring.
In this newsletter:
What you’re getting
What you got
S e c r e t s
The Nihilist’s Horoscope
Bribes
What you’re getting this month
At least one short story from me, either designed for your reading discomfort, or something that made me giggle. As it turns out, these two circles often do not form a Venn diagram but rather overlap like a stack of pancakes.
Or are they even separate circles?
So, I’ll be sending you a new short story of the darkly-humored sci-fi variety for your eyeballs and earpits, and I suspect you’ll be sending me a cease and desist letter. Good times are to be had by all!
The narration to my story, Somebody $avoir, got a much-needed upgrade in quality from
’s Hear no Evil service, which he provided for free. If you have not listened to it, now is the best time to, as he has cleaned up the audio and given it much-needed love. Thanks, bud, that was rad of you! (Also, check out his collaboration Found/Lost Connection with ARC— it’s dope!)If you are new here:
Only unsubscribing will save you. I live here now.
If you have been around for a while:
Are we sharing toothbrushes yet, or is that weird?
What you got last month
Oh boy, last month was a fun one.
’s Entropic Absurdity hosted a “420 Flash Fiction Mob” a day late on April 21st (which gives it so much stoner cred I can barely breathe). In it, you can read my unhinged flash story, Buns (old Mr. Square fans may recognize the character). While you are at Entropic Absurdity, give her Charms series a read; it contains the best-written personal essays out there right now, full stop. She’s satan-gifted at writing. Brace yourself, pace yourself, and tell your friends.I also sent you my short story, Somebody $avoir (read it here while you can). Here’s what some other (better) authors had to say about it:
“This brutal and enthralling descent into capitalist hell was darkly funny, morally excruciating, and too real to ignore. Fitzgerald turns debt collection into high literary fiction, and he names suffering as the price of survival.”
—
(you should read this amazing flash fiction of his; the original won him a battle.)“What really took me was the fact that I learned things I never would’ve looked for myself, while still connecting with the story on a personal level.
Serious, serious, good shit.”
—
(who wrote this awesome nightmare that I will be sharing again)“…this was a good piece. Fuck me. The future is a threat, and the future is here, and we are apparently writing it? I fear we may write it into existence.”
—
(this is my new favorite of his, I hope he does Sisyphus and The Rock next)The future is a threat. Indeed. I fear we are writing it into existence as well, dear reader.
A large part of why I write the kind of sci-fi that I do is out of a naive hope that if my stories act as canaries in a coal mine, y’all will get out. Set us on the right course.
But the thing is? This story comes from my past.
It might be too late.
Spring.
S e c r e t s
In my early twenties, I had an inguinal hernia. Not familiar? My intestines started to crowd my balls through a hole in my abdominal lining. Uncomfortable… mostly, but there was a risk that said intestines twist up and then die due to blood/oxygen starvation.
I had no health insurance.
So the mission was clear: get a job providing that, stat. In the most hostile job market in a generation.
Well, most hostile market so far. Yay.
I am ashamed of the time I was a debt collector. I think subconsciously, my short run as a 9-1-1 operator was (in part) to try to make up for it.
If you want the truth, you’ll have to read the short story. It’s in its raw form, spit-shined with dirty entertainment. I can feel myself using my tricks here; as a storyteller, I manipulate heart strings, I can’t help it, and though it may sound odd, the fictional story in Somebody $avoir is more honest than I will be here— you know ahead of time that it’s a story, truth burried in lies. This? I can feel myself trying to make myself the hero, the misunderstood underdog.
The truth you’ll find in the story is that there is no hero.
But I will still leave you with some anecdotes about that time because I am a rampant raconteur, and I can’t help that, either.
My first call as a debt collector? An old man with terminal cancer. I apologized immediately and hung up. He owed $50 to a phone company and was getting calls about it daily. I was scolded by my trainer and coached to say:
“Don’t you want to leave your kids free of debt when you die?”
Ugh.
A year later, they gave me this ‘reward’ for doing what I was told:
I believe I ‘no-called no-showed’ a week after. Drank myself to sleep. Found a job in a kitchen again.
…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)
I foresee plenty of opportunity for work this next month, Rabbit Head. Further, employment need not be the only requirement! Why discriminate against the unemployed? There is plenty of work to be done outside of a job. Work around the house? Check, there is always a new thing that needs to be fixed or cleaned. Work around the yard? Check! When you are finished, why not plant something new so that the work does not end? This is a great month to keep yourself busy with work!
Of course, the things that need the most work are not external, Rabbit Head, and I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there is a lot of work that could be done internally. Just off the top of my head, I know you could work on your deep and destructive trust issues. Your insecurities are so many it might be hard to figure out which one to work on, so here is a little help to get you started: all of them. Work on all of them. I’m sorry, that didn’t help? How about you work on your paralyzing indecisiveness then? Then work on your insecurities about being indecisive, and then maaaybee you can start working on your insecurities about being insecure. Maybe. Your crippling depression might get in the way of that one, so, uh … good news! You have crippling depression that you can work on.
Bribes
The Fantasy & Sci-Fi Mania free book promo for May is live. Voracious for more? Try the General Genre Giveaway.
My goodbyes are lies
I hope, beyond anything I can put into words, that the future is a threat that we can avoid. It’s one reason why I write stories, why I write warnings with heart. If these stories have resonated with you or distracted you just long enough, you can help me keep writing them. The economy is (very likely) going to get even worse, so my paid memberships are not expensive by design; no one has to break the bank. Everyone deserves stories.
Help this crazy craft person make heartfelt cautions for a better future, if you believe they can help warn others, tap the link below, and know that I appreciate the hell out of you, reader.
Keep the lighthouse shining, even for just a bit longer. Maybe we can avoid the dark, turbulent futures that I write…
Or at least have a blast in the meantime if we can’t.
Spring.
—M.P. Fitzgerald
M.P. Fitzgerald writes darkly humorous sci-fi for dream criminals. If he’s called you in the past, we can only hope it was to say ‘I love you’. Know that he meant it.
SOB
always a pleasure... never a chore.