Welcoming Stephen Volk
Flame Tree Press welcomes writer and screenwriter Stephen Volk to the blog to talk about his story "Sawn Wife", which appears alongside a stellar line-up in the groundbreaking anthology This Way Lies Madness, releasing in September in our celebrated 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, Stephen Volk shares an excerpt from his story along with a short glimpse into his inspiration.
Excerpt:
"I lay with my stupid grinning head sticking out of one end of the coffin-sized box and my feet protruding through the holes at the other. Kavalyov tweaked my big toe, and I giggled as I always did. The audience laughed. His patter continued as he tweaked his moustache. I gazed up at his face as his jaw moved and a trickle of sweat navigated his cheek. The dye in his eyebrows was running. He grimaced with horse teeth as he leant over, lining up the blade of the saw using an extended index finger for precision, pausing to give me a wink before he started going in.
The wooden box moved under me on its trestle, but not a lot more than usual, though Kavalyov was applying more than his usual gusto. He seemed almost frantic with concentration and a curl of black hair fell onto his forehead.
My smile was intact when I felt the fangs of the tool ripping across my garment, but it was gone when it ripped across my skin. The music of its motion became hypnotic, and I was sure I would pass out. I mean, die. I realised dispassionately I didn’t have the breath to cry out. Probably shock. I didn’t even consider the strangeness of this method of execution. I was busy wondering how long it would take to slice through my internal meat and get to my spine – hello! That’s it, sounds like! Something cracked me open like an egg."
Volk writes:
"I have become fascinated by the idea of psychological ‘splitting’ in relation to people with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), whereby a trigger event may spark fears of abandonment, separation, and severe anxiety (possibly a reflection of previous traumas in childhood). The patient with BPD, viewing everything in absolute terms without being able to accommodate paradoxes or allow for grey areas, becomes unable to reconcile the idea that good and bad can co-exist in the same person. ‘Splitting’ therefore is the psychological defence mechanism that helps them bear, and manage, the intolerable emotions they are feeling. It can lead to a situation where the merest slight can cause a person with BPD to feel betrayed and unloved by someone ‘toxic’, while an idealised partner can find themselves at the mercy of a co-dependent relationship.”1,2
As well as Volk’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
He is a BAFTA winner, a two-time British Fantasy Award winner, a Shirley Jackson Award and Bram Stoker Award® finalist, and the author of four collections of short stories: Dark Corners, Monsters in the Heart, The Parts We Play and Lies of Tenderness, while his acclaimed Dark Masters Trilogy consists of three novellas featuring Peter Cushing (“Whitstable”), Alfred Hitchcock (“Leytonstone”) and Dennis Wheatley (“Netherwood”) – with a guest appearance in the latter by Aleister Crowley.
His most recent books are Under a Raven’s Wing, featuring the duo of a young Sherlock Holmes and Edgar Allan Poe’s master detective Dupin, and The Good Unknown and Other Ghost Stories from Tartarus Press. www.stephenvolk.net
This Way Lies Madness is out September 9th 2025: Pre-Order Now
