Small Axe Books is the Home Page of Sid Prise.

Sid is a writer of historical and fantasy fiction, as well as essays based on his Mad Pride and Community Activism.  He is out as a Queer Schizophrenic, and makes his Madness an integral part of his fiction and his political analysis.  Currently, he has published three books with Chipmunka Publishing, the best-known publisher of Mental Health concerns in the world.  The UK-based Chipmunka has a link is on this website, and he encourages you to support this wonderful not-for-profit publishing house.  His books with Chipmunka include two historical novels, It Will Not Last the Night and The Wobbly, and also An Ethics of Sanity, an essay analyzing what it means to be Mad in an insane society, focusing on how his personal madness and the madness of civilization relate and interact.  Embracing Madness as a healthy and empowering political identity can point a way to healing society of its own mental illness.

Sid has self-published a series of fantasy novels as well, set in a world called “T’luria,” based on role-playing games he and his friends have played between 2004 and the present.  Sid has chosen to publish these books under a Creative Commons Sharealike License, which allows others to create stories in the same world and publish them independently for profit if they choose.  Sid has benefited immensely from sharing in Mad and Queer community, his role-playing and creative expression a primary means to achieving better health.  By “re-narrativizing” his mental illness, Sid has taken control of his hallucinations and paranoia, and has helped others to do the same.  Allowing other people to write and play in the world of T’luria, to benefit financially as well as spiritually from their creations, is a way Sid hopes to give back.  He hopes others find the same freedom from the negative aspects of mental illness that he now enjoys.

Sid is pioneering a new kind of treatment which he calls “Re-Narrative Therapy.”  It involves schizophrenics, bipolar and depressive people, those contending with dissociative identity disorder, and many other diagnoses (as well as their loved ones) taking control of their symptoms by creating games and fiction in which they triumph over their demons.  His upcoming book on Re-Narrative Therapy will be available from Chipmunka, and can be used as a companion book to the fiction Sid creates.  Stay tuned to the Small Axe Books website for more information about this book, and all the upcoming essays and fiction Sid is in the process of creating.