In today’s episode, which is a couple of days ahead of the Buck Moon, we are presenting you with two moon-tales. Stories, where the night dances with ancient power as the moon watches.

Featuring:

‘Shattered Moon, Hungry Sea’ by Elou Carroll (02:13), narrated by Olivia. A story where a child’s curiosity unleashes oceanic fury, proving that some jewellery should never be touched, and some secrets should stay sewn into the sky. Borrowed from Flame Tree’s ‘Moon Falling’ collection.

‘The Moon-Slave’ by Barry Pain (10:28), narrated by Bea. A Victorian nightmare, where the moon enslaves a young girl to its spell. What begins as artistic expression becomes supernatural bondage, proving that some performances are more binding than any marriage contract.

Biographies:

Elou Carroll is a graphic designer and freelance photographer who writes. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Deadlands, Baffling Magazine, If There’s Anyone Left (Volume 3), In Somnio: A Collection of Modern Gothic Horror (Tenebrous Press), Spirit Machine (Air and Nothingness Press), Ghostlore (Alternative Stories Podcast) and others. When she’s not whispering with ghosts, she can be found editing Crow & Cross Keys, publishing all things dark and lovely, and spending far too much time on X (Twitter) (@keychild). She keeps a catalogue of her weird little word creatures on eloucarroll.com.

Barry Pain (1864–1928) was renowned first and foremost as a comic writer. Like his friend and fellow- humourist Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927), however, he had a longstanding interest in the supernatural and the gothic. His mad-scientist shocker The Octave of Claudius (1897) was to become a pioneering Hollywood Horror movie, in the form of A Blind Bargain, with Lon Chaney and Raymond McKee, in 1922.

This episode was hosted by Shilpa Varma. To find out more about our writer-in-residence and her role at Flame Tree, click here.

‘Shattered Moon, Hungry Sea’ is © 2020 Elou Carroll and was originally published in Apparition Lit in 2020 and appeared in Moon Falling (Flame Tree Publishing, 2024).

‘The Moon-Slave’ by Barry Pain was first published in Stories in the Dark in 1901 and more recently appeared in Weird Horror Short Stories (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) 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.