Life, deconstructed. The saying we’re all the same underneath, is it referring to blood and bone or something less tangible? A distinctly human essence perhaps or the concept of a soul? Today’s stories broadly look at creation but more importantly at what commonality connects us all together.

Featuring

‘Solar-Powered Buddies’ by Akis Linardos (03.09), read by Amanda Benzecry. From our Robots Past and Future collection, this story is set in a future where androids and humans exist at the same time and not necessarily happily.

‘The Mother of the World’ collected by James Athearn Jones (28.24), read by Olivia. Borrowed from our First Peoples Short Stories collection, this is a Native American creation myth story.

Biographies

In a cove of a Greek island, Akis Linardos was born a rather peculiar infant and has only grown stranger every year. By day, he’s a researcher of biomedical AI and ethics, hoping there’s something less dystopian to come from this technology. His words have wormed their way into Apex Magazine, Gamut, Strange Horizons, previous Flame Tree anthologies, and Uncharted, among others. Visit his website for updates on his dreadful machinations: linktr.ee/akislinardos.

Born in the state of Massachusetts in 1790, James Athearn Jones would go on to work as a lawyer and editor. It is for his work collecting Native American legends that he is best remembered, however, beginning in 1820 with Traditions of the North American Indians, or Tales of an Indian Camp, which featured stories told to him by an Indian woman of the Gayhead tribe who was employed as his nurse. Jones would write three volumes in the Traditions of the North American Indian series prior to his death in 1853.

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.

‘Solar-Powered Buddies’ is ©2023 Akis Linardos and was first published in The Colored Lens in 2023 but more recently appeared in Robots Past and Future (Flame Tree Publishing, 2025).

‘The Mother of the World’ from Native American Tradition was first published in ‘Traditions of the North American Indians’, by James Athearn Jones in 1830, but more recently appeared in First Peoples (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), Shilpa Varma 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.

Part of the launch for our brand new Romantic Fantasy series, this episode features ‘A Breath of Time’, a collection which pits love and lovers against the greatest adversary of all: time.

Flame Tree’s Romantic Fantasy books are a captivating blend of our signature Gothic Fantasy collections with the passion and magic of Romantasy. This series is made up of stories selected from open submissions. As with our other series, this one is beautifully presented.

Featuring

‘Stitching Time’ by AnaMaria Curtis (), read by Sabrina Robinson. It’s a tale of two lovers who meet across two different timelines. The bond between the man - who is of course tall, dark and handsome & and woman - who possesses the ability to weave time, grows as they search for a way to tie their lives together.

‘Sonnet 12’ by William Shakespeare (), read by Bea. This poem reminds us that time is relentless. It ages beauty, it moves fast, it’s merciless - but it also challenges us to create something lasting: love, virtue, and legacy.

Biographies

AnaMaria Curtis is from the part of Illinois that is very much not Chicago, where she learned to be argumentative, competitive and nostalgic. She is the winner of the 2019 Dell Magazines Award and the LeVar Burton Reads Origins and Encounters Contest, and her work has been published in magazines including Clarkesworld, Uncanny and Strange Horizons. You can get in touch or find more of her work at anamariacurtis.com or on Bluesky at @anamariacurtis.bsky.social.

William Shakespeare’s sonnets are amongst the most admired, complex and beautiful poems ever written. Sonnet 12 was part of his famed “Fair Youth” sequence, a series of 126 poems. Shakespeare is often considered the greatest writer of the English poetic form.

Sabrina Robinson is an award-winning American actress and lover of whimsical stories. She most recently performed as The Bride in Blood Wedding at Tower Theatre and in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at Putney Arts Theatre. For her role in Breakfast of Champions (streaming on Amazon Prime), Sabrina received the Best Actress award at the ÉCU European Independent Film Festival in Paris.

This episode was hosted by Olivia.

‘Stitching Time’ is ©2026 AnaMaria Curtis and appears in A Breath of Time (Flame Tree Publishing, 2026).

‘Sonnet 12’ by William Shakespeare was first published in 1609 by Thomas Thorpe, but more recently appeared in Sonnets & Poems of William Shakespeare (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), Shilpa Varma 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.

This week’s episode dives into Sauúti Terrors, a bold new dark science fiction collection from African and African diaspora writers. Set within the groundbreaking Sauútiverse, the anthology brings together chilling and thought-provoking short stories.

Last month, editor and contributor Eugen Bacon visited London from Australia as part of a book tour alongside fellow editors Cheryl S. Ntumy and Stephen Embleton. While she was here, we invited Eugen to record one of her stories from the collection for the podcast.

Featuring

‘The Rawness of You’ by Eugen Bacon (08.50), read by Eugen Bacon. This story is set in Eh’wauizo, the spirit realm, a dimension of the dead, and is from the perspective of our unnamed hero who wakes up in a strange hinterland and nothing seems quite right.

Biographies

Eugen Bacon is an African Australian author. She’s a British Fantasy and Foreword Indies Award winner, a twice World Fantasy Award finalist, and a finalist in the Shirley Jackson, Philip K. Dick, Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and the Nommo Awards for speculative fiction by Africans. Eugen was announced in the Honor List of the Otherwise Fellowships for ‘doing exciting work in gender and speculative fiction’. Danged Black Thing made the Otherwise Award Honor List as a ‘sharp collection of Afro-Surrealist work’. Visit her at eugenbacon.com.

This episode was hosted by Bea

‘The Rawness of You’ is ©2026 Eugen Bacon and appeared in Sauúti Terrors (Flame Tree Publishing, 2026).

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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), Shilpa Varma 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.