Our second monthly Special invites our listeners into the world of publishing, with a particular focus on the Middle East.

Recorded at London Book Fair 2025, Olivia speaks to Trevor Naylor - a writer and publisher who has over 40 years of experience in the book industry. Though his career has taken him to over 90 countries, he spent decades based in Cairo, Egypt. We catch up with him as he’s working on his latest project, a book about Egyptian Gods and mythology.

This conversation is full of fascinating insights into the Middle Eastern publishing landscape, its stories and its enduring influence.

A big thank you to our guest Trevor Naylor for taking the time to chat with us!

Trevor Naylor was born in Hull and now lives in West Yorkshire where he works as a non-fiction writer, specialising in books about Ancient Egypt. He also runs his company, named Parkway, selling books across the Middle East region. Trevor has worked in all areas of publishing and bookselling over more than 40 years. He was Sales and Marketing Director of the leading Arts publisher, Thames and Hudson. He held the same position at the American University in Cairo Press in Egypt. He has managed and worked in bookshops, owned his own independent bookshop in the UK, and travelled extensively representing publishers and selling books to over 90 countries worldwide. He is also currently studying for an MA in Creative Writing with the University of Hull.

If Trevor’s story got you curious about Ancient Egyptian myths and legends, our books ‘Egyptian Myths & Legends’, ‘Egyptian Myths & Tales’ and ‘Egyptian Ancient Origins’ , are available to shop on our website.

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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.

This week’s episode brings us two strange stories from the sea. The sea offers the perfect setting for short stories: it’s dramatic, vast and by extension mysterious. We only know a fraction of what actually lives in its depths. No wonder then, that it captured the imagination of the authors featured in this episode.

Featuring:

‘Over the Side’ by W.W. Jacobs (00.46), narrated by Olivia. This story was first published in 1905 and describes the eerie, supernatural experience of a sailor who falls overboard. It can be found in our Pirates & Ghosts Short Stories collection.

& ‘A Poison of Bodies Beneath the Water’ by Spencer Orey (17.10), narrated by Nathan Chatelier. Published within our Lost Atlantis Short Stories collection, this narrative imagines a closed off society of mermaids who will stop at nothing to maintain the purity of their species.

Biographies:

William Wymark (‘W.W.’) Jacobs (1863–1943) was largely known for his deeply humorous and horrifying works. His first volume of stories, Many Cargoes and ‘The Monkey’s Paw’, are the works for which he is probably most famous.

Spencer Orey is a graduate of the 2021 Odyssey Writing Workshop and a finalist for the Writers of the Future Contest. His short fiction appears in Tales from Fiddler’s Green. He has a PhD in cultural anthropology, with academic interests in magic, mobility, and media dreams that he likes to weave into speculative stories. He grew up in dry New Mexico and dry California and is happy to live in rainy Denmark with his wife and kids. Find him online at spencerorey.com or on X @spencerorey.

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

This episode is hosted by Bea.

‘Over the Side’ was first published in 1897, in Today and appears in Pirates & Ghosts Short Stories (Flame Tree Publishing, 2017).

‘A Poison of Bodies Beneath the Water’ is © 2023 Spencer Orey and appears in Lost Atlantis Short Stories (Flame Tree Publishing, 2023).

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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.

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.