M.P. Fitzgerald made his Midnight Vault debut this year with his story “Speak No Evil.” Get to know the author behind the story.
TMV: Go on then. What inspired this story for The Midnight Vault II?
FITZGERALD: The Twilight Zone episodes “The Obsolete Man” and “Eye of the Beholder.” There is a line in the latter, “The State is not God,” that became my leading horse when drafting. The bit about fruity acetone breath when someone wastes away is true.
TMV: What struck you most about this event, or what’s a major takeaway you had?
FITZGERALD: I loved the sense of community and cooperation in The Midnight Vault. Outside of workshops, authors are usually solitary in their creation. Writers shared drafts, helped create graphics, and were generally just very positive with moral support. It made the launch really feel like a group effort.
TMV: Did the The Midnight Vault II change your writing style at all?
FITZGERALD: No, but it did allow me to mimic one of my favorite voices of all time: Rod Serling.
TMV: What was one of your favorite lines from another Midnight Vault story?
FITZGERALD: “Green memories swelled little circles on his shoulders, so he would scratch them. He would scratch the memories off like a dog with mange. And on that day every green memory bled red.” This was from Pablo Báez’s “The Windchime on the Lintel”. The prose is poetic but not obtuse, and the imagery stabbed my heart.
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