You look up ‘Stockholm syndrome’ when the smoke detector screams. Burning paper smell and cackles fill your kitchen—where is the dog?
BEEP BEEP BEEP!
The intruder Unwell Author wears your bathrobe and nothing else, and smoke pours out of your oven as he opens it.
“You forgot to lock your door again.”
BEEP BEEP BEEP. There is a book in the oven, titled ‘Breakfast’.
“I’m cooking Breakfast.”
BEEP BEEP—“Why did you hide the sugar?”
Why is this lunatic emailing me?
Last time.
Coming up.
S e c r e t s.
…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 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.
Till Death Do Us Partition, Layer 2.
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Mar 20
This is part two of a three-part serial; the first part is free to read. I appreciate you, thank you for your patronage (upgrade here to read this and to access all twenty-one stories in the paid archive).
Nick Winney, 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).
Last month I had the goddamn privilege to read my book, A Happy Bureaucracy, live with authors Tom Schecter, Haly, the Moonlight Bard ✒️, Emily S Hurricane, and Slater Henatay (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!
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).
A copy of A Happy Bureaucracy was spotted in the wild:
Thank you, Happy Nielsen, 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 Haly, the Moonlight Bard ✒️ . 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 Emil Ottoman’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.
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. 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.
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