The Society Of Misfit Stories Presents September 2021

The Society of Misfit Stories is a home for those wonderful stories that are too long for most magazines but too short for stand-alone print books. Whether you call them short stories, novelettes, or novellas, these stories are all of a length that often struggles to find publication traditionally. Each issue offers a substantial volume of amazing speculative fiction for readers who enjoy spending time with a good tale.

Each issue of The Society of Misfit Stories Presents... is a celebration of long-form fiction. These novelettes and novellas will entertain and surprise fans of the form. In this issue: stories by Michael Gardner, Ziaul Moid Khan, Mark Lord, Danielle Ranucci, William Suboski, and Rebecca B. Weiss. A sample of the stories in this issue: Jack Hiller believes he is destined to join a secret society that runs the world. But an encounter with an equally ambitious alligator stands in his way in Working Day. After the suicide of his best friend, Balta must come to terms with his grief while working with his friend's sister to slay a demon in The Demon-Slayers. A detective finds himself caught up in a bizarre web of secrets, intrigue, and murdered felines in The Mystery Killer of Cats.

Each issue of The Society of Misfit Stories Presents… is a celebration of long-form fiction. These novelettes and novellas will entertain and surprise fans of the form. In this issue: stories by Michael Gardner, Ziaul Moid Khan, Mark Lord, Danielle Ranucci, William Suboski, and Rebecca B. Weiss. A sample of the stories in this issue: Jack Hiller believes he is destined to join a secret society that runs the world. But an encounter with an equally ambitious alligator stands in his way in Working Day. After the suicide of his best friend, Balta must come to terms with his grief while working with his friend’s sister to slay a demon in The Demon-Slayers. A detective finds himself caught up in a bizarre web of secrets, intrigue, and murdered felines in The Mystery Killer of Cats.

The Society of Misfit Stories is a home for those wonderful stories that are too long for most magazines but too short for stand-alone print books. Whether you call them short stories, novelettes, or novellas, these stories are all of a length that often struggles to find publication traditionally. Each issue offers a substantial volume of amazing speculative fiction for readers who enjoy spending time with a good tale. A sample of what you'll find in this issue: A community living on the back of a giant tortoise-like creature faces a threat when the creature stops following their commands in Raise Me Up an Eastern Mountain. A guitarist believes an imposter has assumed his identity, but as he tries to unravel the truth, he discovers the imposter is ever more dangerous that he realized in Broken Strings. A bookshop owner’s obsession with a female customer who has a disturbing interest in books about pain is forced to confront his own buried demons in Black Leather Gloves.

From the brilliant mind of Michaela Coel, creator and star of I May Destroy You and Chewing Gum and a Royal Society of Literature fellow, comes a passionate and inspired declaration against fitting in. When invited to deliver the MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival, Michaela Coel touched a lot of people with her striking revelations about race, class and gender, but the person most significantly impacted was Coel herself. Building on her celebrated speech, Misfits immerses readers in her vision through powerful allegory and deeply personal anecdotes—from her coming of age in London public housing to her discovery of theater and her love for storytelling. And she tells of her reckoning with trauma and metamorphosis into a champion for herself, inclusivity, and radical honesty. With inspiring insight and wit, Coel lays bare her journey so far and invites us to reflect on our own. By embracing our differences, she says, we can transform our lives. An artist to her core, Coel holds up the path of the creative as an emblem of our need to regard one another with care and respect—and transparency. Misfits is a triumphant call for honesty, empathy and inclusion. Championing “misfits” everywhere, this timely, necessary book is a rousing coming-to-power manifesto dedicated to anyone who has ever worried about fitting in.

The Society of Misfit Stories is a home for those wonderful stories that are too long for most magazines but too short for print as stand-alone books. Whether you call them short stories, novelettes, or novellas, these stories are all of a length that often struggles to find publication traditionally. Volume Three represents all of the stories that were published in 2018. The Society of Misfit Stories originally began as ebook-only bi-weekly releases that were compiled into an annual publication for print. In 2019, the program transitioned to a literary journal published three times a year. This book represents the final volume of the original project. The stories in this collect range from the silly to the terrifying, from the whimsical to the philosophical, from traditional high fantasy to experimental magical realism. The one common denominator is that they are all written in the novelette/novella format. At five-hundred print pages, The Society of Misfit Stories features an amazing collection of new and established authors creating in the speculative genres. Bards and Sages Publishing is proud to have provided a home for such wonderful works.

When two strangers appear during the annual MacDougal family Christmas celebration in the Blue Ridge Mountains, siblings Shayne, Morwenna, and Bobbie must band together to fend off the growing danger and figure out who they can trust.

THE SPEED OF LIFE launches with a crime so horrific that if the first great tragedians-Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides-had imagined it, no historical record remains to prove it. From themes as modern as #MeToo to leitmotifs of Greek tragedy, the novel tells the stories of diverse characters who are brought together by the seminal crime and rewards the reader with psychological revelations worthy of Stendhal. PRAISE FOR THE SPEED OF LIFEFrom the courtroom to the swamp primeval to the underpinnings of the universe, James Jordan takes us on a wild ride. A hugely ambitious and thoroughly enjoyable triumph of a first novel. All I can say is "Bravo!" T. C. Boyle, author of The Tortilla Curtain, The TerranautsThe Speed of Life, by James Victor Jordan, is a ground-breaking, scientific/philosophical novel wrapped in a Carl Hiaasen-flavored thriller. Jordan relates cutting edge theoretical physics to ancient Seminole shamanistic practices and produces a credible explanation of why and how old magical methods may have tangible effects in our world. At the same time, this novel is sparklingly contemporary, bright and crisp around the edges of its plot, and ingenious in braiding elaborate story lines to bring an extraordinary cast of characters together. And it fires itself forward at a break-neck velocity; this is not a book you will want to put down. Madison Smartt Bell, author of All Souls Rising I hugely enjoyed this remarkable novel. It blends human courage & cruelties with solid astrophysics and with Seminole culture & mythology - resulting in a richness that held me tightly in its grip. Kip Thorne, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, author of Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy, The Science of Interstellar