Welcoming Kayleigh Dobbs
Flame Tree Press welcomes writer-podcaster Kayleigh Dobbs to talk about her story TBR, 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, Dobbs shares an excerpt from her story along with a short glimpse into her inspiration.
Excerpt:
"When she looked directly at me, it was the first time I didn’t want her to. How ironic that every other time I’d seen her, I was dying for her to see me back, and now here she was seeing me, and it was the most horrible moment of my existence. I tried to throw myself into that beam of burning sunlight. I couldn’t, of course. That’s the problem with having no agency or autonomy and being at the mercy of those more powerful. Existence requiring manipulation. Needing them while being paralysed, and they don’t see you and
don’t want you and don’t even care that their apathy hurts it hurts so much what changed why doesn’t she love me why doesn’t she care why
and for just a second, because I couldn’t move myself, I willed her to fall into the sunlight instead of me and for it to burn her up. I envisioned her hair catching fire first. I fancied I could even smell it. I heard her screams and saw the flames reflected in her lovely brown eyes and I – I am ashamed to admit – desired it. I yearned for her to light up and light us all up with her, and then we’d all finally just be together, and there’d be no more waiting and wondering and hurting."
Dobbs writes:
"The protagonist of this story is an amalgamation of how I spent years feeling, my unhealthy attachment style (which, thankfully, I have now worked past), and as sincere a reflection as I was capable of drawing of how awful feeling so irrelevant for so long can feel. The character is also a reflection of what I could have become, drawn from the entitled, possessive behaviour I endured from others, who were also suffering their own traumas."
As well as Dobbs’ 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
She lives with her husband and cats in a house in which the books on her TBR pile seem to multiply every time she turns out the lights. She can be found on Facebook, Instagram, and at: https://happygoathorror.com/
This Way Lies Madness is out September 9th 2025: Pre-Order Now
