Flame Tree Fiction

We love all things fantasy at Flame Tree, which means that aside from reading and making awesome books, we also like putting our feet up and watching some great telly. Over the next few weeks we'll be building up to some of the best fantasy TV series that will be on the box next year.

So it seems everywhere I look at the moment are zombie pictures, visions of the walking dead – sometimes relatively unscathed and human-like; mostly fairly bloodily down the road of decay – whether in art, film or on TV. Having been immersed in making a book on zombies has obviously contributed to my high intake of undead depictions, but even when I decide to read something apparently non-zombie, my thoughts return to these shuffling, grasping creatures. Going through my other half’s eclectic collection of books the other day, looking for something new to read, I plucked out John Wyndham’s The Day of The Triffids – a 1951 post-apocalyptic science-fiction tale of worldwide blindness enabling the rise of some rather nasty, stinging, lurching, carnivorousplants…

Awakening to A Changed World

OK, so first of all, the post-apocalyptic thing is there – a trope much beloved of zombie-filmmakers – but more specifically, I experienced much déja-vu in the opening scenes as the protagonist wakes up in hospital to discover he has been abandoned by his carers and no one is left, save for some desperate, groaning, shuffling people wandering the wards... Where had I seen this before?

The danger, mystery and beauty of vampires means they have an eternal allure a world apart from zombies or other horrors, and as well as reading about them or watching them on screen, gothic fantasy art affords a whole world of imaginative vampiric visions created by talented artists.

Today’s Zombie

In the last decade, Zombie pictures, movies and games have entered the mainstream in a big way. The Walking Dead has not only seen huge success in its comic book form, but also in the tv show adapted from it. Even an actor as well loved as Brad Pitt produced and starred in a film adaptation of Max Brook’s World War Z. Yet even as the genre grows, it is important to remember that it owes a huge debt to the the wonderfully twisted mind of George Romero.

We've just released a digital first publication in our Gothic Dreams series: Steampunk. 128 pages of colour illustrations, packed with brilliant art from fabulous contemporary illustrators. It's available on the Apple iBookstore and is designed for the iPad Retina display which shows off the detailed and glorious art. We're absolutely delighted with it.

There’s something very steampunky about cinema itself. The medium was invented in the Victorian era, and early projectors and cameras were intricate, archaic devices with hundreds of moving parts. This ethos of incricate moving parts laced with a strong emphasis on style is what makes steampunk appeal to so many people worldwide, and why too it has capured the imaginationof Hollywood filmakers. 

The stars have aligned, oceans have parted; and now Cthulhu no longer dreaming lies dreaming in the depths, but is here. We're incredibly proud of our amazing illustrated title, now available in hardback print and also digitally via the iBookstore. The powerful and terrifying images of Cthulhu look astonishing on the iPad, each colour popping because of the device's high-res screen. These illustrations also look incredible in our print book; we've used high-quality, glossy paper, so that each image stands centre stage in all its glory.

Take weird horror storyteller H.P. Lovecraft's terrifying and malevolent creation Cthulhu, and mix with the fantastical scope of Greek mythology; and what do you get? A uniquely-imagined epic adventure, with vivid storytelling and powerfully atmospheric artworks. I'm talking about the graphic novel Apollo, written by Erik von Wodtke and illustrated by Douglas A. Sirois.

Stepping out of reality and into a world full of mischievous fairies, fantastic backdrops and spooky settings, Jasmine Beckett-Griffith’s art transports her viewers into a world where anything is possible.

'Cthulhu Mythos' is a term originally coined by August Derleth and has since come to represent the overall shared characters, themes and elements from the works by H.P. Lovecraft, his protegés and other writers influenced by him. It's an intertwined universe that spans across several fantasy fictions without being explicitly detailed or made relevant by the plot.