This week I’ve been chatting with horror writers Dave Jeffery and Lee Murray, whose recent collection This Way Lies Madness (2025) offers a variety of fictional interpretations of madness and mental illness. Bringing together a range of commissioned authors and stories selected from a hugely popular submissions call, the collection was last week nominated for the Bram Stoker Awards’ Superior Achievement in an Anthology.

Its stories explore the darkness of mental illness.  The twenty-two authors, who include Alan Baxter, Ramsey Campbell, and Marie O’Regan, tackle the subjects of trauma and guilt, paranoia and persecution, anxiety, and addiction. Using motifs of monstrosity and the sense of dread that the horror genre evokes so well, the stories capture the terror of living inside your own head.

At the same time, the collection moves beyond stigmatising mental illness. Instead of depicting sufferers of mental illness as dangerous serial killers or disruptive hysterics who threaten normalcy as they are shown in some of the most iconic horror texts, we empathise with and recognise the experiences of these different protagonists and characters. The collection does important work in portraying the horror of mental illness without othering those who experience it.

This Way Lies Madness is published by Flame Tree Press and is out now.