Welcoming Jonathan Maberry

Flame Tree Press welcomes NYT bestselling author Jonathan Maberry to the blog to talk about his story The Scarlet Angels of Regret, 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, Jonathan Maberry shares an excerpt from his story along with a short glimpse into his inspiration. 

Excerpt:

   "His desire to pursue evil was not something passed down. He was not trying address cultural, ideological, or religious issues. This was purely existential and, as far as he was concerned, no one else’s existence really mattered. His sure as hell hadn’t mattered to anyone.
     So…evil. It was simple, comfortable, even imperative.
     Evil masterminds, he decided one windy autumn morning, did not need to be liked. Hell, it’s not like he was starting a cult. None of that personal exploitation of charisma. He didn’t have to go all Jim Jones and give long-winded speeches. He didn’t have to justify his actions to followers and then encourage them to buy in. He didn’t need to build a compound somewhere and convince the sheep to turn over their money to him and let him screw their wives or any of that nonsense. Please. He had self-respect, even if no one else respected him. Nope. He went for evil mastermind and leaned into that hard."

Maberry writes:

   "So much harm is done on any given day when worldviews collide. Worse, still, when someone feels that their worldview is the only valid one, and is compelled to enforce that vision. We know about Hitler and Genghis Khan and Napoleon, but there are many more less famous people who acted on their need to rewrite the world to fit what they believed.
     My father was one such."

As well as Maberry’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

Jonathan Maberry is a New York Times bestselling author, 5-time Bram Stoker Award winner, and comic book writer. His vampire apocalypse book series, V-Wars, a Netflix original series starring Ian Somerhalder (Lost, Vampire Diaries), debuted in early 2019. He writes in multiple genres including suspense, thriller, horror, science fiction, fantasy, and action; and he writes for adults, teens and middle grade.

His works include the Joe Ledger thrillers, Glimpse, the Rot & Ruin series, the Dead of Night series, The Wolfman, X-Files Origins: Devil’s Advocate, Mars One, and many others. Several of his works are in development for film and TV. He is the editor of high-profile anthologies including The XFiles, Aliens: Bug Hunt, Out of Tune, New Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Baker Street Irregulars, Nights of the Living Dead, and others. His comics include Black Panther: DoomWar, The Punisher: Naked Kills and Bad Blood. He is a former board member of the Horror Writers Association and the president of the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers. He lives in Del Mar, California. Find him online at www.jonathanmaberry.com

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