Helen Fitzgerald is the author of The Duplicate, available now from as an ebook from Snubnose Press:
Barbara isn’t the most popular girl in school and she’s hoping that the Ruth Warren self-help book can help her navigate through the questions in her life. How can she get Beth to be her friend? Why is Beth so popular? How can she get her true love, Tim, to notice her?
What is her mad scientist uncle working on in his basement laboratory? Why does he need an alcoholic homeless woman to live with them for nine months?
The terrible answers will affect Barbara’s entire life and most of all, her own daughter.
Helen Fitzgerald on The Duplicate:
Most of us have been unlucky enough to have at least one bad relationship. When I started The Duplicate I wondered: How far would you go to get the perfect lover?
If you were a genius, like 18 year old Barbara, would you use science to create him?
At her high school graduation, Barbara’s boyfriend Tim shows her peers the pornographic photographs she let him take, and dumps her. Devastated and humiliated, Barbara decides to take action. She will make another Barbara and another Tim, and “get it right next time.”
Inspired by Frankenstein and Carrie, The Duplicate is a story about revenge. It’s a story about a strange young woman’s desperate need to belong, and her terrifying realization that love cannot be manufactured.
