Welcoming Ryan Cole

Flame Tree Press welcomes author Ryan Cole to the blog to talk about his short story “We Don’t Talk about the Sink”, which appears alongside a stellar line-up in the groundbreaking anthology This Way Lies Madness, releasing in September from Flame Tree Press in our Beyond & Within series. In the introduction to the work, the book’s co-editors, Dave Jeffery and Lee Murray, say the anthology “defies convention by bringing together authentic, sensitive portrayals of mental illness in a genre that has notoriously lacked such tenets.” Comprising 23 stories and poems, the book also includes accompanying vignettes offering insight into the authors’ motivation for their work.

Today, Ryan Cole shares an excerpt from his story along with a short glimpse into his inspiration.

Excerpt:

This is how it always is. You’ve only been home for winter break for three days, locked in your bedroom when you aren’t out with your friends, hiding from me – the younger brother you’ve abandoned – and Mom, who still acts as if you aren’t half-dead. Who doesn’t hear the catch in your voice when you lie, the groan of the pipes when you leave the shower running for close to an hour, making us believe that you’re as clean as you appear. As if you aren’t by the sink, your mouth over the drain, feeding the creature you can’t live without. Who you’ve kept at your side ever since you left for college.

Don’t try to deny it. You brought it home with you. Again.

Cole writes:

“…this story was born from a place of me feeling helpless. Someone very close to me has suffered from an eating disorder since they were a kid. It kills me to see their pain, to not know what to do or say, to see the negative impact of my own unhealthy tendencies and habits on them. So, I chose to write a story about a boy who did know what to do, who did know what to say, who wanted to help no matter the cost to himself.”

As well as Cole’s story, Murray and Jeffery invite readers of This Way Lies Madness to 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.”

"A mesmerizing and remarkably ambitious mosaic of delicate minds possessed, of spoiled and haunted hearts, of gaping wounds both seen and unseen. This Way Lies Madness weaves a beguiling and profoundly revealing tapestry of psychological terror with such nuance and depth in each collected story." – Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

Ryan Cole is a speculative fiction writer who lives in Virginia with his husband and snuggly pug child. By day, he reviews contracts and wields the mighty red pen of a paralegal. His work has appeared in Clarkesworld, PodCastle, Factor Four, Gallery of Curiosities, and Voyage YA by Uncharted, among others, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Find out more at www.ryancolewrites.com.

This Way Lies Madness is out September 9th 2025: Pre-Order Now