This week, we're slipping into something magical - two stories bound by a common thread: enchanted dresses. One bringing life, the other death. Together, you could say they weave a pattern of love, loss, and transformation.

Featuring:

‘The Wedding Dress’ by Cheryl S. Ntumy (00.51), narrated by the author herself, has been selected from her collection Black Friday - a stunning anthology of speculative stories from Ghana, Botswana and South Africa. This particular tale imagines a wedding dress into a symbol of grief, remembrance and ultimately, joy.

& ‘The Crimson Weaver’ by R. Murray Gilchrist (13.50), narrated by Bea. A somewhat darker story that appropriately appears in our Weird Horror anthology. Set in a surreal and fantastical realm, two men are seduced by a siren-like figure and spun to thread to reinforce the weave of the siren’s red gown.

Biographies:

Cheryl S. Ntumy is a Ghanaian writer of speculative fiction and has appeared in FIYAH Literary Magazine, Apex Magazine and World Literature Today. She's also been shortlisted for the Nommo Award for African speculative fiction, the Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize and the Miles Morland Foundation Scholarship.

R. Murray Gilchrist made his name as the author of over twenty novels – many of them set in the nearby Peak District, where he made his home. But his short stories commanded considerable respect, and a great many of those dealt in horror and the macabre.

This episode is hosted by Olivia.

‘The Wedding Dress’ is © 2025 Cheryl S. Ntumy and appeared in Black Friday (Flame Tree Publishing, 2025).

‘The Crimson Weaver’ was first published in 1895, in The Yellow Book Quarterly, Vol, VI and appears in Weird Horror Short Stories (Flame Tree Publishing, 2022).

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Music is an extract of Sunbeams by Allen Stroud, from his Fractal Series album, licensed courtesy of fpl-digital 2025.

This podcast is hosted and sometimes narrated by Beatrix Ambery (also audio editor), Olivia Jackson (also podcast coordinator) and Nick Wells (also producer).

Chosen from hundreds of wonderful tales, short stories such as these are selected by our short window open submission process, giving opportunities to writers of all levels of experience, culture and location. Look out for our submission announcements, and see the full list here: flametreepublishing.com/gothic-fantasy-book-series-list.html

Our full range of thematic short stories, epic tales, mythology and folklore titles are available at all good bookstores, online and in retail, and at flametreepublishing.com

Flame Tree Publishing, Independent Publisher of the Year 2024, British Fantasy Society. Beautiful Books, Timeless Storytelling, Fresh Perspectives.

The Flame Tree Myth and Fiction podcast is created and © copyright 2025 Flame Tree Publishing Ltd.

On this week’s episode of the Flame Tree Myth & Fiction Podcast, we feature two powerful short stories linked by their discussions of motherhood - but don’t be mistaken, these stories are anything but sweet.

Featuring:

‘Pegasus’ by Danai Christopoulou (00.50), narrated by Amanda Benzecry. A narrative that follows the famed pegasus, through its creation, violent birth and its resulting vow of revenge. This story can be found in Medusa, a book published last year in our Myths, Gods & Immortals series.

& ‘The Mother’s Eyes’ by Charles Dickens (11.26), narrated by Nathan Chatelier. A story that follows a man who is haunted by the eyes of a grieving mother after he indirectly causes the death of her child. Published within Charles Dickens Supernatural Short Stories.

Biographies:

Danai Christopoulou (she/they) is a queer Greek SFF author and editor currently living in Sweden. Their short fiction has been published in Fusion Fragment and others, nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and longlisted for a Nebula Award. Follow them on X for regular updates.

Charles Dickens was born in 1812. Dickens kept up a career in journalism as well as writing short stories and novels, with much of his work being serialised before being published as books.

Amanda Benzecry (voice actor) regularly narrates books for Audible, is on the panel for the RNIB and is a frequent contributor (both as a narrator and a writer) to TNF Soundings, providing audio material for the visually impaired.

Nathan Chatelier is a British voiceover artist with almost fifty audiobooks recorded alongside thousands of other projects, from videogames to the Mean Girls West End trailer. Check out his demos.

This episode is hosted by Bea.

‘Pegasus’ is © 2023 Danai Christopoulou and was originally published in The Icarus Writing Collective in 2023 and appeared in Medusa (Flame Tree Publishing, 2024).

‘The Mother’s Eyes’ by Charles Dickens was first published in The Old Curiosity Shop and Other Tales, Chapman & Hall in 1841 and more recently appeared in Charles Dickens Supernatural Short Stories (Flame Tree Publishing, 2020).

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Music is an extract of Sunbeams by Allen Stroud, from his Fractal Series album, licensed courtesy of fpl-digital 2025.

This podcast is hosted and sometimes narrated by Beatrix Ambery (also audio editor), Olivia Jackson (also podcast coordinator) and Nick Wells (also producer).

Chosen from hundreds of wonderful tales, short stories such as these are selected by our short window open submission process, giving opportunities to writers of all levels of experience, culture and location. Look out for our submission announcements, and see the full list here: flametreepublishing.com/gothic-fantasy-book-series-list.html

Our full range of thematic short stories, epic tales, mythology and folklore titles are available at all good bookstores, online and in retail, and at flametreepublishing.com

Flame Tree Publishing, Independent Publisher of the Year 2024, British Fantasy Society. Beautiful Books, Timeless Storytelling, Fresh Perspectives.

The Flame Tree Myth and Fiction podcast is created and © copyright 2025 Flame Tree Publishing Ltd.

The first of our monthly specials! In this week’s episode, Olivia revisits her conversation with the editors of The Open Heart & Short Stories by Catherine Wells, Patrick Parrinder and Emelyne Godfrey. Recorded at The London Book Fair, this episode is full of insights and revelations about the often overlooked authorial work of H.G. Wells’s wife.

The Open Heart is one of the latest books to come out in our Beyond & Within series. It collates Catherine Wells’s previously published work alongside her unfinished novella, ‘The Open Heart’, which has never before been published!

Thank you to our guests Patrick & Emelyne. The Open Heart is now available to order through our website.

Patrick Parrinder is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Reading and President of the H.G. Wells Society .He is the author of many books on H.G. Wells, science fiction and modern literature, and is General Editor of the 12-volume Oxford History of the Novel in English (2011–24).

Emelyne Godfrey has a PhD from Birkbeck College. She is author of several books on the long nineteenth century including Mrs Pankhurst’s Bodyguard: On the Trail of ‘Kitty’ Marshall and the Met Police ‘Cats’ (The History Press, 2023). She writes widely on women’s history, crime, science fiction and the supernatural.

Catherine Wells (1872–1927), born Amy Catherine Robbins, worked as a teacher and studied at Tutorial College, Holborn where she met and later married H.G. Wells. She is regarded as a great supporter of her husband’s literary outpourings, while she was in fact herself a serious writer, quietly creating her own stories and poems, long-neglected until now.

A big thank you to Claire Cartwright and Carol Goodwin at Novocon for inspiring our Desert Island Books segment!

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Music is an extract of Sunbeams by Allen Stroud, from his Fractal Series album, licensed courtesy of fpl-digital 2025.

This podcast is hosted and sometimes narrated by Beatrix Ambery (also audio editor), Olivia Jackson (also podcast coordinator) and Nick Wells (also producer).

Chosen from hundreds of wonderful tales, short stories such as these are selected by our short window open submission process, giving opportunities to writers of all levels of experience, culture and location. Look out for our submission announcements, and see the full list here: flametreepublishing.com/gothic-fantasy-book-series-list.html

Our full range of thematic short stories, epic tales, mythology and folklore titles are available at all good bookstores, online and in retail, and at flametreepublishing.com

Flame Tree Publishing, Independent Publisher of the Year 2024, British Fantasy Society. Beautiful Books, Timeless Storytelling, Fresh Perspectives.

The Flame Tree Myth and Fiction podcast is created and © copyright 2025 Flame Tree Publishing Ltd.