10/14/2025 Special Report: THIS WAY LIES MADNESS published by Flame Tree Press
- Candace Nola
- 6 hours ago
- 7 min read
Today, we have a very Special Report for you. It is the wide release for THIS WAY LIES MADNESS, from Flame Tree Press. This stellar collection was edited by Lee Murray and Dave Jeffery, two of our industry's leading ambassadors for mental health awareness and sensitivity in how it is written and portrayed in our stories.
The below article, from the editors, discusses the importance of this incredible volume much better than I can, so I'll leave you to it. Be sure to grab the book from the link below when you finish.
Congratulations to Flame Tree Press, Lee Murray, Dave Jeffery, and all of the amazing authors that brought this book to life. And our thanks, for allowing Uncomfortably Dark take part in this very special launch!
This Way Lies Madness: An Introduction from Editors Lee Murray and Dave Jeffery
“In these pages, you will discover tales of trauma, dissociation, body dysmorphia, psychosis, depression, anxiety, and more, captured in all forms of horror from the extreme to the nuanced. There is jaw-dropping violence, skin-crawling body horror, and quirky dark humour, alongside the quiet, heartbreaking introspections of people spiralling into madness. Yet all the stories and poems in this volume are framed so that the insensitive, stereotypical presentations of mental illness commonly found in horror are resoundingly and appropriately absent. Our authors have achieved this in a number of ways. As well as drawing on lived experience and careful research, they have all made effective and inventive use of metaphor; a conceit also employed by horror masters like Poe and Gilman, to explore the complex effects that mental illness incurs on a person. Conjuring ghosts and poltergeists, vampires, haunted houses, and other unnerving manifestations, our authors have punctuated their tales with powerful symbolism, startling imagery, and compelling, and often confronting, intimacy. For a moment, we are living in the minds of their protagonists, obliged to experience their psychoses firsthand, to listen to their reasoning, to see the inexorable lengths they will go to survive. We are forced to watch the horrific loss of self.”—Lee Murray and Dave Jeffery, editors, This Way Lies Madness.
Origins
The idea for This Way Lies Madness came from a 2019 conversational article we wrote for The Horror Writers Association (HWA) titled Out of the Darkness. We found by writing the article, we were able to articulate our thoughts and our reservations about how mental illness was (mis)represented in the horror genre, and we considered what we were going to do to challenge that mindset. In 2022, as co-chairs of the HWA Wellness committee, we developed and launched the HWA Mental Health Initiative; designed to tackle head-on the poor representation of mental illness in the horror genre, and subsequent community.
The launch involved high-profile community engagements including online and face-to-face panels at StokerCon and ChillerCon, and the development of dedicated online resources, including a mental health initiative charter that demonstrated the commitment the HWA had towards facilitating change. The panels did not operate in isolation, they were guided and shaped by those contributing to them, and detailed panel reports provided so that all content could be disseminated and used to raise further awareness in the community.
Since this time mental health panels have flourished at numerous genre conventions, including ChillerCon, StokerCon, and The British Fantasy Society’s FantasyCon, and many more. What we are able to take from these panels, from the participants and those people in the audience, is that the topic is of utmost importance, and further understanding of how mental illness has become so synonymous with the horror genre is certainly required. After a little further exploration, we established that the 1920 German expressionist film The Cabinet of Dr Caligari is widely accepted as the starting point where the notion of mental illness and the stereotypical horror tropes that we constantly challenge today were augmented.
Horror and Mental Illness
Given that there is a longstanding and unhealthy association between horror tropes and mental illness, it is unsurprising that genre creatives struggle to understand how to approach writing about mental health issues in a sensitive way. What we suggest is to follow broad-based concepts and then utilise This Way Lies Madness as an underpinning resource.
Guidance for Genre Writers
To facilitate this, here are some general writing tips on how to create stories that limit the stigmatisation of mental illness, framed around
general considerations,
considerations of character and setting,
Finally, guidance on how to see if the writer has, to the best of their ability, got it right.
General Considerations
Research = Accuracy
Utilise the lived experience of those who suffer with mental illness.
Be sensitive to the core concepts of exclusion, isolation, the loss of hope, and the impact this has on the person and family/friends.
Use the core construct of equity and equality when writing about the mentally ill. Consider those with mental illness as a marginalized group.
Considerations on characters
A person should not be defined by their mental health diagnosis.
Mental illness should not be used as a rationale for violent actions. Statistically, mental illness is not synonymous with dangerousness.
The influence of mental illness is a good place to explore the true impact on a character’s life and wellbeing, and how they interact with others and the world around them.
Use characters who have alternative perspectives to demonstrate ill-informed, populist views of mental illness but have others who challenge such a view to present balance.
Considerations on settings
The use of metaphor is a vehicle to discuss complex and sensitive issues.
If using historical settings (such as asylums) present them accurately even this may appear to be moving into stereotypical areas. Research their philosophies and rationales behind regimes and treatments.
Remember that asylums of the 1900s were places that would appear at odds with how we view a mental health facility today. But they still existed! Also thoroughly research clinical settings & treatments of today.
The effects of mental illness on settings such as the family home makes for compelling reading and is an accurate reflection of the lived experiences of many people.
How do we know we are getting it right?
Use Sensitivity and Beta Readers (via social media writing groups)
Always use research via mental health charities, NHS sites, or peer reviewed journals
Benchmark your work against the HWA Mental Health Initiative and materials which can be accessed for free here.
This Way Lies Madness: A Resource
In conjunction with the information above, This Way Lies Madness can be considered a resource for writers to access exemplar genre stories that portray mental illness with sensitivity while still providing scary and horrific entertainment for the reader. The anthology shows how making use of metaphor can be effectively employed in order to reduce stigmatizing tropes so often ascribed to the horror genre. Every contributor has provided a vignette that follows their respective story, giving the reader insight in to how the writer conceived and developed their story, many of whom have used their lived experience as a survivor, a carer, or witness of mental illness as a source of motivation and inspiration. Using these vignettes can help the genre creative to understand what aspects needs to be considered when approaching a story with a mental health theme. It will also encourage the writer to think about their own lived experiences, and the themes they wish to convey in their work. Ultimately, This Way Lies Madness aims to help genre writers improve their approach to mental illness and how it features in their writing.
Our Hope as Editors
It is through the exploration and application of such issues and, to the delight of people like us, the horror community appears eager to embrace what we are calling ‘a literary mental health renaissance’ in the genre. In these times of enlightenment, only good things shine, and as such echo what is at the heart of all those recovering from mental illness, and that is the presence of hope. Our hope is that This Way Lies Madness entertains and thrills readers, and those who endure mental illness on a day to day basis can see that the genre is changing in a way that shows we understand, that we see them. For writers, the anthology provides guidance on how mental illness can be portrayed with sensitivity in their work, encouraging them to write confidently about mental health themes and issues.
Dave Jeffery is a British Fantasy Award and The Bridport Prize nominated writer of speculative and dystopian fiction. He has written 19 novels and 3 collections and is recipient of the Horror Writer’s Association Mentor of the Year Award. His screenplay adaptation of his Moods Swings collection was a finalist in the 13 Horror.com Screenwriting Contest, 2025. Prior to his retirement in 2019 to write full time, Jeffery worked as a mental health practitioner for 35 years and remains an active mental health advocate within the horror community. He is an anthologist with Flame Tree Press and his current book This Way Lies Madness (co-edited with Lee Murray) was released in September 2025. His next novel, False Prophet is released October 3rd through Eerie River Publishing. Read more at www.davejefferyauthor.com
Lee Murray ONZM (Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit) is a writer, editor, poet and screenwriter from Aotearoa New Zealand, a Shirley Jackson Award and five-time Bram Stoker Award® winner. A USA Today bestselling author with more than forty titles to her credit, including novels, collections, anthologies, nonfiction, poetry, and several books for children, Lee holds a New Zealand Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Fiction, and is an Honorary Literary Fellow of the New Zealand Society of Authors. Among her recent works are feature film Grafted (directed by Sasha Rainbow), horror anthology This Way Lies Madness (Flame Tree Press) co-edited with Dave Jeffery, and prose-poetry collection, NZSA Cuba Press Prize-winner Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud (The Cuba Press). Read more at https://www.leemurray.info/
Ordering information for THIS WAY LIES MADNESS:
Published by Flame Tree Publishing
Distributed by Hachette (UK) & Simon & Schuster (US)
ORDER HERE:
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Greg Chapman (Cover Art Detail and Frontispiece) is an illustrator and graphic designer based in Queensland, Australia, specialising in the horror field. Greg has provided artwork for various magazines, comics, graphic novels and promotional designs for the Horror Writers Association and the Australian Horror Writers Association. He also specialises in book cover design and has created cover art for many authors and publishers.
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER:
Winner of the Independent Publisher of the Year Award, 2024, FLAME TREE PRESS is the imprint of long-standing independent Flame Tree Publishing, dedicated to excellent original writing in horror, science fiction and fantasy. The list brings together fantastic new authors and the more established; the award winners, and exciting, original voices. Learn more at flametreepress.com and connect on social media @FlameTreePress.
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