Why Flame Arrow Exists: Stories of Resilience, Resistance, and Rebirth

Short on time? Skip to What This Means for You as a Reader near the end for the quick version.

Stepping Into the Fire

Every story is a spark. At Flame Arrow Publishing, we turn sparks into flames: stories that ignite change, bridge communities, and spark imagination.

Flame Arrow Publishing was never meant to be a quiet, tidy little press. It was born in the middle of a storm: climate anxiety, political fatigue, and readers quietly wondering if stories could still change anything.

We exist because we believe the answer is yes.

At our core, Flame Arrow is about three things: resilience, resistance, and rebirth. Resilience in the face of systems that grind people down. Resistance against narratives that flatten, erase, or dehumanize. Rebirth in the form of stories that insist we can build something better together.

This is why we publish what we publish. This is why we are here.

Hopepunk: Refusing to Give Up on Each Other

If grimdark says, "The world is broken and people are terrible," hopepunk replies, "The world is broken, and we are still going to show up for each other."

Hopepunk is not about easy optimism. It is about:

• Characters who keep caring when it would be simpler to shut down.
• Communities that grow in the cracks of failing systems.
• Futures where resistance looks like mutual aid, found family, and everyday courage.

You can see that heartbeat across our catalogue.

In Amaranth, people cling to life aboard an underwater ark while memory, loyalty, and power collide. The world has already ended once, but the story is not about giving up. It is about what we are still willing to fight for when the sea has swallowed almost everything.

In Invisible Line and Five Points on an Invisible Line, families and found families navigate surveillance states, activism, and chosen kinship in a near future that feels uncomfortably close. These books ask how we keep loving, organizing, and pushing back when the system is designed to wear us down.

In Everclear, a teenage girl in near-future Northern Quebec confronts corporate power, forced assimilation, and the erasure of language and memory. Survival becomes an act of reclaiming knowledge that powerful forces tried to erase.

From drowned worlds to future Montreal streets and northern forests, we are drawn to stories where people fight like hell and make space for tenderness. Where survival is not just about one lone hero, but about the messy, beautiful work of staying human together.

That is the heartbeat of Flame Arrow: speculative fiction that does not look away from the dark, but refuses to surrender the light.

Why Bilingual Matters: Two Languages, One Community

Flame Arrow is proudly bilingual, rooted in English and French, anchored in Quebec and the Pacific Northwest, and reaching for readers across borders.

Being bilingual is not a marketing angle for us. It is a commitment:

• To publish stories that feel at home in both linguistic cultures.
• To bridge communities that often read in parallel instead of in conversation.
• To give francophone and anglophone readers access to the same currents of resilience, resistance, and rebirth.

When we publish Amaranth in English and Amarante in French, we are not just duplicating a product. We are inviting two reading communities into the same emotional and thematic space. A reader in Lévis and a reader in Vancouver can recognize themselves in the same story world, even if they are holding different editions.

With Brins d’éternité, our long-standing francophone magazine, and titles like Invisible Line and Five Points on an Invisible Line in English, we are constantly looking for ways to let ideas cross the linguistic border without losing their edge or their nuance.

Projects like Unréal, a bilingual anthology rooted in Montreal, push that even further. In Unréal, the city itself becomes a character, a canvas, and a portal where languages collide, histories echo, and new futures are imagined.

In a world that keeps building walls, we are stubbornly building bridges.

Our 2025–2026 Vision: From Survival to Momentum

The last few years have been about proving that a tiny, values-driven press can exist at all. 2025–2026 is about proving we can thrive.

Here is where we are aiming our arrow:

• Deepening our hopepunk and speculative catalogue in both English and French, with stories that carry emotional weight and real stakes.
• Strengthening our community, not just our sales, with more reading circles, virtual events, and spaces where readers and writers actually talk to each other.
• Stabilizing the business side so we can keep taking creative risks, with sustainable timelines, fair pay for contributors, and long-term partnerships.
• Preparing for bigger leaps with more ambitious launches, smarter campaigns, and a clearer path for new authors who share our vision.

In practical terms, that means:

• Growing the Invisible Line duology into a long term pillar of our English catalogue, with digital extras, reading guides, and community discussions.
• Continuing to build out the Amaranth universe and keeping it accessible to both English and French readers.
• Using Brins d’éternité as a discovery engine for new francophone voices who might later join our book list.
• Launching The Sky Did Not Load Today and Other Glitches, a flash fiction collection that pushes our speculative edge into glitchpunk and experimental forms, with thirty futures, one thousand words or less, and zero safety protocols.
• Developing projects like L’Égide, Tonnerre-des-Bois, Unréal, and Everclear, which deepen our commitment to myth, land, language, and the communities that live in those intersections.

We are not interested in chasing every trend. We are here to build a catalogue that will still matter ten years from now.

New Voices on the Horizon

Flame Arrow exists because certain stories simply would not leave us alone. That has not changed.

Our recent and upcoming acquisitions continue that line: bold, emotionally charged speculative fiction that asks hard questions and still makes room for joy.

Across our upcoming titles, you will see:

• Worlds on the brink that refuse to collapse quietly.
• Characters who carry trauma, love, and anger in the same breath.
• Queer, multicultural, and marginalized voices at the center, not as decoration but as the beating heart of the narrative.

With Five Points on an Invisible Line, for example, we follow activists and families in a near-future Montreal that feels both broken and fiercely alive. The book leans into polyamory, social justice, and chosen family, and it insists that resistance can be tender as well as loud.

With L’Égide, we step into a Montreal of secret orders, mythological murders, and a demi-god who will do anything to defy death. Grief, memory, and love in all its forms drive a story where no one can face the truth alone.

In Tonnerre-des-Bois, a coming-of-age fantasy, a young protagonist walks the path toward shamanism, guided by the traditions of a community that lives in deep relationship with the forest. The novel celebrates the living connection between people, culture, and the natural world.

In Everclear, a teenager in northern Quebec searches for her missing father in a landscape reshaped by corporate power and forced assimilation. As she pushes deeper into the wilderness, she discovers that survival depends on reclaiming language, memory, and a truth about her own body that could change everything.

These books do not just entertain. They argue, gently or fiercely, that how we treat each other matters, even (and especially) when everything is falling apart.

As we announce each new title, you will see that thread running through them: resilience, resistance, rebirth.

The Future of Brins d’éternité

If Flame Arrow is the arrow, Brins d’éternité is the steady hand drawing the bow.

Brins has been a home for francophone speculative fiction for more than twenty years, a place where new voices first step into the light and established authors keep pushing the genre forward. Under Flame Arrow, the future of Brins is:

• More intentional with clearer themes, stronger curation, and issues that feel like conversations, not just collections.
• More connected by tying magazine stories to our book catalogue, our events, and our broader community.
• More visible through better distribution, partnerships, and digital access.

We want Brins to be the magazine you hand to a friend when you say, "This is what francophone SF and fantasy can do." A place where resilience, resistance, and rebirth show up in short, sharp bursts, in stories and essays that stay with you long after you close the issue.

Part of our 2025–2026 work is to secure more stable funding and distribution for Brins, so that we can:

• Increase circulation beyond our current print runs.
• Offer more digital options for readers who discover us from outside Quebec.
• Celebrate the magazine’s legacy through projects like 20 ans d’éternité, an anniversary anthology that honours two decades of francophone speculative fiction and opens the door to its next chapter.

What This Means for You as a Reader

All of this vision work only matters if it changes your experience as a reader.

Here is what you can expect from Flame Arrow in the coming years:

• A richer, more diverse catalogue: From hopepunk and near-future science fiction to sweeping fantasy, thrillers, and genre-bending fiction. Stories in both English and French, always with heart and depth.
• New worlds, easier to enter: Reading guides, digital extras, and bonus content for our series. It will be simple to jump in and get lost, whether you’re new or a longtime fan.
• A vibrant, visible Brins d’éternité: More accessible than ever, ready to share with friends, book clubs, and anyone passionate about francophone SF, fantasy, and beyond.
• A catalogue that grows with you: Not just more books, but stories that challenge, comfort, and connect. We offer fresh perspectives as your tastes evolve.
• More ways to engage: From Kickstarter launches to community events and The Arrow Dispatch, you’ll find more chances to participate, connect, and help shape the future of speculative fiction with us.

Why We Are Still Here

Publishing is hard. Small, bilingual, values-driven publishing is harder. But every time a reader tells us they saw themselves in a character, or an author says they finally feel like their work has a home, it confirms why Flame Arrow exists.

We are here for:

• The writer who refuses to sand down the edges of their story to fit a trend.
• The reader who is tired of cynicism and wants stories that fight for something.
• The communities, on and off the page, who are building better futures in the cracks of the present.

Flame Arrow is, and will remain, a home for stories of resilience, resistance, and rebirth.

Hope is our revolution.

If that is the kind of fire you are drawn to, you are in the right place.

Stay tuned in The Arrow Dispatch for more on our upcoming titles, Brins d’éternité, and the readers and writers who make this work worth doing.