Authoring Gothic Horror with Catherine Cavendish

We’ve been sitting on this conversation for a while, but now feels like the perfect time to share it. Olivia sat down with one of our most celebrated authors at World Fantasy Con, Catherine Cavendish, to talk about all things gothic horror—and with her newest novel, Ghosts of Chanterlands, out next month, there’s no better moment to dive in.

Cat is a prolific writer of supernatural, ghostly, and gothic suspense novels, novellas and short stories. We have published a number of her works, including her most recent novel The Stones of Landane, inspired by the Avebury henge, as well as the short story Dance, Mephisto which was included in our Shirley Jackson nominated anthology Werewolf Short Stories! In her words, she finds inspiration in haunted places and wandering around prehistoric stone circles, all helping to create the spooky tales we absolutely love.

Ghosts of Chanterlands is a horror novel set in 1940. It follows Pamela Courtney as she is evacuated to Chanterlands - the home of her aunts: Jilly, the eccentric one, who dreams of her days as a star of the silver screen, and Bunny, the pragmatic one. But Chanterlands is home to more than just the living. A greater danger awaits Pamela than the war that rages across Europe. What started as a mother’s desperate wish to keep her child safe has taken a dark and fatal turn. 

 This episode was hosted by Olivia. 

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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 

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