This week, Olivia sits down with two brilliant authors, Eugen Bacon and Cheryl S. Ntumy, to explore The Sauútiverse. If you caught our Sauúti Terrors episode a few weeks ago, you’ve already had a glimpse into the universe they helped build, but this time, we go deeper. Together, they unpack the imagination, themes, and creative vision behind their richly layered Afrofuturist universe.

To learn more about The Sauútiverse pick up a copy of ‘Sauúti Terrors’ or visit sauuti.com .

If you are interested in hearing a story from Sauúti Terrors, written by Eugen Bacon, our podcast episode featuring her story ‘The Rawness of you’ is available to listen to on The Myth & Fiction Podcast. And if you are looking to hear some of Cheryl S. Ntumy’s work, her story ‘The Wedding Dress’ is featured in our podcast episode, Not Just Any Dress.

To learn more about Flame Tree and our upcoming projects subscribe to the Fiction Newsletter or follow us on Social Media.

The Myth & Fiction Podcast returns on Tuesday, 2 June, with a new episode exploring The Valkyries, one of our upcoming Myths, Gods & Immortals titles, published alongside Odysseus.

Biographies

Cheryl S. Ntumy is a Ghanaian writer of speculative fiction, romance and YA. She is part of the Sauútiverse Collective, which created a shared universe for Afrocentric speculative fiction, and Petlo Literary Arts, a creative writing organisation in Botswana.

Eugen Bacon is an African Australian author. She’s a Solstice, British Fantasy, Locus, Ignyte and Foreword Indies Award winner, a twice World Fantasy and Shirley Jackson Award finalist, and a finalist in multiple awards. Eugen is an Otherwise Fellow, and was also announced in the honor list for ‘doing exciting work in gender and speculative fiction’.

This episode is hosted by Olivia.

.....................................................................................................................................

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.

If you joined us a couple of weeks ago for our episode featuring A Breath of Time, then you’ll already have had a glimpse into our brand-new Romantic Fantasy anthology series. And as promised, this time we’re turning to its fiery, ferocious, and, of course, romantic counterpart, Of Love & Dragons. In this episode, we bring you two captivating stories set against sweeping oceanic backdrops, where love and transformation collide in powerful and unexpected ways.

Featuring

'We Are Not Them' by Georgina Kamsika (04.09), read by Sabrina Robinson. It’s an enemies-to friends-to lovers tale set against a vast, oceanic backdrop, where two women must confront the weight of their history. Found in our brand new Of Love & Dragons anthology.

'The Water Kelpie by Rebecca Sophia Clarke (29.31), read by Bea. In this tale, we meet a kelpie - not quite a dragon, but a creature just as steeped in mystery, who draws a woman down into his underwater kingdom. From our Gothic Fantasy anthology, Shadows on the Water.

Biographies

Georgina Kamsika writes about monsters and ghosts and aliens. Sometimes the people kiss. Sometimes the monsters do too! Georgina is currently writing an interactive fiction game for Choice of Games, but when the coding gets too much, she finds she must write a short story or two. This is one of them. For more information, find her at kamsika.com and @GKamsika on most socials.

Writing as ‘Sophie May’, Rebecca Sophia Clarke (1833–1906) was a prolific and well-loved children’s author, best known for her ‘Little Prudy’ series. In contrast with her lively, quirky characters, she was personally quiet and unassuming. Apart from a few years as a schoolteacher in Evanston, Indiana, she spent most of her life in her birthplace, the tiny town of Norridgewock, Maine.

‘We Are Not Them’ is ©2026 Georgina Kamsika and appears in Of Love & Dragons (Flame Tree Publishing, 2026).

‘The Water Kelpie’ by Rebecca Sophia Clarke was first published in 1866 in Fairy Book, but more recently appeared in Shadows on the Water (Flame Tree Publishing, 2024)

.....................................................................................................................................

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.

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)

.....................................................................................................................................

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.