Month: May 2025

Imagine this: “Bad Memories, 2032”

In 2018, I made the rash claim that I could write a story that would make people feel sorry for the 45th president. This led to the short story “Bad Memories, 2032.” It appeared in After the Orange, edited by Manny Frishberg for B Cubed Press, and now appears in my new collection Patti 209: Fifteen Tales of the Very Near Future.

Here’s an excerpt:

“Mr. President, sir, your doctor is here.”

“Doctor? Another check-up? Sure, sure. Busy scheduling. Keeping busy. Keeping fit.”

“How are you sleeping, Mr. President?”

“Bad night last night, Doc. Couldn’t sleep at all. Phone wasn’t working. Couldn’t log on to that social media thing. I blame that dinner. Big state banquet. The biggest. Some terrible prime minister. Some awful guy from Teriyakistan. I let Ivanka handle him. Ivanka did great.”

“Just a few questions. Do you know who the president is?” 

“Do I know who’s the president? Hilarious. You’re some joker, Doc!”

“Do you know what year it is?”

“Do I know what year it is? Hah! Very funny! It’s, ah, 2028! And we’ve got an election to win. Bannon’s busy, you can bet on that. Man knows his job.”

“Yoga for Protesters”

The fury in me honors the fury in you. Oh, does it ever.

Originally published in The Protest Diaries from B Cubed Press, the short story “Yoga for Protesters: A Field Guide” appears in my new collection Patti 209: Fifteen Tales of the Very Near Future, available now.

“Yoga for Protesters” was inspired by my awesome yoga instructor, Susan Powter. Here’s one of the most challenging poses:

Pose to Protest Political Corruption

Place one mat in the hallway outside the politician’s office. Take turns with other constituents using the mat for regular yoga practices. It is fine to do any version of Hatha, Iyengar, Vinyasa, or Ashtanga. Be careful of the slippery environment. When the politician is under investigation or indictment, you can switch to Bikram (hot) yoga for the duration.

I’ll be demonstrating some yoga for protesters to kick off my June 6 reading at the Couth Buzzard bookstore in Seattle. Details here.

A big, beautiful bill and the “Wishbone”

The latest legislation have you in shock? Things could be worse, as it they are in this excerpt from the short story “Wishbone.”

Originally published by Third Flatiron Press, “Wishbone” appears in my new collection Patti 209: Fifteen Tales of the Very Near Future, available now:

“But don’t you have grandparents, Representative Podestra?” the talk show host leaned forward in an eager posture of faux concern. “How will you explain your proposed Age Equity Act to them?”

My grandson, Tory Podestra, decked out in a blue suit, crisp white shirt, and camera-friendly burgundy tie, didn’t even blink. He’d had media training.

“As a leader of the Third Parties Coalition, I’m committed to ensuring that everyone in the United States gets a fair share of our remaining resources,” he said. “There’s no question that the Olds have consumed far more than their share. The Age Equity Act actually benefits them, by ensuring that those of them who reach their 72nd year will enjoy discounted access to adequate housing, healthcare and other resources all the way through their 79th year. I think the AEA is extremely generous, when you consider how all the short-sighted Baby Boomers voted for the Trump administration in 2016 and 2024. They’re the ones responsible for everything that’s gone wrong. This great nation of ours can still recover—the Coalition is here to see to that—but not if young people like us have to pay endlessly to keep a bunch of old right wingers with dementia on life support. Frankly, I think the Olds should be grateful that they can at least contribute something to society by getting out of the way.”

I’d watched the clip of that interview over and over, first stunned, then regretting that I’d helped send that little prick to law school. Tory had been a pushy, grabby, unpleasant child and now he’d grown up to be a political nutcase. A few weeks later, at the dentist’s office, I’d actually denied that I was related to him. 

“Podestra is a very common name,” I told the receptionist.

“A Sign of the Times” (excerpt)

Here’s an excerpt from the short story “A Sign of the Times” from my new collection Patti 209: Fifteen Tales of the Very Near Future, available in ebook or print:

“…under the new Washington State statue, corporations are regarded by the law as individuals, and advocating any action to harm them is a hate crime. Joe, you’re going to be the test case.”

“Yeah. Got it. I mean, I’ll plead guilty. I’m ready to take my punishment.”

“No.” Kate snapped.. “Joe, if you’re convicted of advocating violence against the corporation, violence that clearly took place—”

“Prison?”

Kate looked right at me, for the first time, as if she thought I might be joking. One eyebrow went up. “Prison?” She gave a short, ugly laugh. “Under the new statute, the judge has no sentencing discretion. And law says the penalty for publicly proposing violence against a corporation is death.”

“A Sign of the Times” was written a few years back and published in Quaranzine. It seemed pure fantasy at the time I wrote it but with the former director of the FBI being “investigated by the Secret Service” over his use of a common slang phrase in a social media post, it’s now grimly appropriate.

Better off “Unnoticed”

For your weekend reading pleasure: Here’s an excerpt from the short story “Unnoticed” from my new collection Patti 209: Fifteen Tales of the Very Near Future, available in ebook or print:

“Your mother and I were ignorant,” he said. Wow. For once, Dad was actually admitting fault. He explained that, like most prospective parents, they’d met with a counselor and had their embryo’s genetic material improved using robust DNA selected from the databanks. “We thought we were making the best choice by giving you popular, well-tested genes. We wanted you to be healthy and happy. We just wanted you to fit in.”

I put my elbows on the table, and buried my face in my hands. “I can’t stand it. You made me nobody.”

“Cait, we were immigrants!” My mom leaned forward, elbows on the table, her dinner forgotten. “We’d been on a waiting list to get out of Mardour for years. We knew that if we were accepted for immigration to Savania we’d have only one child license. That meant only one child. So we wanted you to be perfect.”

“But not to stand out,” Dad cut in. He rationalized, “We made you pretty, and healthy, and smart.”

“But not so pretty, or healthy, or smart that the Savanians would be envious.” Mom’s voice rose, trembling. “We didn’t want…trouble.”

Meet “Patti 209”

Here’s an excerpt from the short story “Patti 209” from my new collection Patti 209: Fifteen Tales of the Very Near Future, available now:

I went ahead and made our cocoa, flavoring the drinks from a tiny bottle of vanilla I kept in the pocket of my robe. I loaded the cups onto a tray, covered the tray with plastic wrap to keep it dry, and headed cautiously out to the shed. We’d designed the back door to open level to the deck and pathway—no treacherous steps to contend with. That was fortunate, because in these days of short-staffing, the deck was untended and covered with slippery moss.

Oh, Rachel and I hadn’t been completely stupid. We’d understood the house. We’d understood old people. We just hadn’t quite grasped that the frail old people we were so tenderly designing it for would be us. Or that the country we lived in would wish we were dead.

When I entered the dark cottage the fragrance of potting soil and drying herbs rose up like fumes from an aged Scotch. No cleansers, no mopping solution, no stench of overcooked food and under-washed bodies. Couldn’t blame Sharelle for making this place her refuge.

Just Published: Patti 209

The ebooks are up at Apple Books and Amazon.com, and print editions will be available May 9 at Amazon.com and (through Ingram/Spark) from your favorite bookstore or library. Check the UnCommon Sense page for up-to-date ordering links and detailed information on the June 6 book launch and reading in Seattle.

book cover showing an stern middle aged woman and the words Patti 209: Fifteen Tales of the Very Near Future

Patti 209: Fifteen Tales of the Very Near Future (UnCommon Sense, 2025) is a collection of the short stories I’ve published over the past eight years about people who experience, and resist, the worsening political situation in the United States. They range from humorous essays (“Yoga for Protestors”) to satirical fantasies (“The Best Man for the Job”) to science fiction stories about individual protests (“Patti 209”) and civic disruption (“The Bodies We Carry”).

When I wrote these stories for various anthologies and magazines during the first Trump administration, COVID, and the run-up to the 2024 election, I fully expected them to become dated relics soon after publication. Surely the nation would return to normal, and outrages like violent deportations, suppression of free speech, unobtainable healthcare, and Project 2025’s proposed destruction of federal agencies would be of interest only to a few historians!

But, no. Here we are again. Several of the dystopian elements my characters face in these stories, considered pure science fiction when I submitted them to editors, are now elements of everyday life. Other plot points, intended to be far-fetched, now seem horrifically plausible (see “Wishbone”).

The dystopia is here.

But…so is the resistance!