I’m really pleased to have found a home for my short story, The Brothers Oe. It will be appearing in The Society of Misfit Stories, published by Bards and Sages Publishing, in September this year.

It seems almost inevitable, as ‘misfit’ is certainly the best way to describe The Brothers Oe. It’s fantasy, sort of. There’s mention of dragons and spirits. It’s historical, kinda. It takes place in an imagined version of feudal Japan, though not a realistic rendering of any particular period. It’s crime/mystery, for sure! Sumo wrestler Yogi finds his brother, also a famous wrestler, dead of apparent suicide on the eve of the championship bout but not is all as it seems. It’s a novelette, which is a weird length of story to place anywhere.

Yet here we are! Big thank you to editor Julie Ann Dawson and the team at Bards and Sages!

More info coming soon.

“The fourth man was in a bathtub, his head slumped forward onto his considerable chest. His wet hair was loose from its topknot and stuck to his face. His eyes were open though downcast and distant, as one peering out into the nothing beyond the ocean on the beaches of Fukuoka. In the grey morning light filtering in through the gaps in the timber walls, the bathwater looked black.“

— The Brothers Oe