Who Are We?
Award winning script-writer, director, author and editor Dean M. Drinkel established DEMAIN Publishing in Summer 2018 and by December 2025 we have published over 150 titles - stand alone novels/novellas/novelettes, titles in the Short Sharp Shocks ! Murder Mystery Mayhem ! Weird Wonderful Other Worlds ! series as well as poetry !
DEMAIN was set up originally with the sole purpose of giving younger and not-so-well-known authors a break. Dean knew full well what it was like when he was starting out all those many moons ago - it was hard to be seen/read. Dean also wanted to pay something back as a thank you to those that took on his early work (and continue to do so).
Of the writers that DEMAIN has published, many have received ‘best author’ nominations and awards and have gone onto bigger things. We are proud of every writer, every book we publish and will try our hardest to make their title a success.
It is always an honour when an author chooses DEMAIN and even more so when they come back again and again and again…
2026 will see (at last!) the official launch of some audio titles AND after a couple of years away, attendance at a couple of well known genre conventions.
And whilst we are currently closed for submissions (current January 2026), Dean is always happy to chat and is available at: dean@demainpublishing.org
A NOTE:
We must take this opportunity to thank Adrian Baldwin who is responsible for all DEMAIN's branding and covers - Adrian can be found at: About (adrianbaldwin.info)
A big shout out also to Dark Artist Roberto Segate - his brilliant artwork has also graced DEMAIN's covers (particular Dave Jeffery's A Quiet Apocalypse series)! His art can be found here: Roberto Segate (@robertosegate) • Instagram photos and videos
LATEST NEWS
PHANTASMAGORIA - DALEKS SPECIAL
OUT NOW !
Trevor Kennedy has been a great friend to DEMAIN for a number of years - as well as being an amazing writer himself (please see the Book of the Week tab below), Trevor publishes his regular magazine PHANTASMAGORIA and several specials throughout the year. The most recent one - containing many DEMAIN authors and friends, as well as cover design by Adrian Baldwin - is about Doctor Who's most fearsome enemy, the Daleks. Please check this special out, you won't be disappointed - especially as DEMAIN's owner, Dean has two pieces in it !
AUTHOR SIGNING - DEREK MUK
For our US friends, Derek Muk will be doing a 'meet and greet' in March 2026 - all details below...
A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM ALL AT DEMAIN PUBLISHING - WE HOPE THAT 2026 WILL BE A GREAT ONE FOR ALL
BLEED FOR ME - MARIE O'REGAN
Ebook and Paperback
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What’s scaring a girl and her mother so much at Christmas… and what’s the purpose of a sinister parade on a different holiday celebration?... What does a travelling salesman find so enticing about his hotel room’s sea view?... What’s so terrifying about some uncovered bones?... What lurks at the crowd’s edge, and who is collecting victims one fateful night? A riveting collection of stories by award-winning #1 bestselling author/editor Marie O’Regan (In Times of Want, The Last Ghost and Other Stories, Celeste), which comes with an introduction by World Fantasy Award-winning author Angela Slatter (Vigil, The Path of Thorns, The Bone Lantern, The Cold House) and cover art by Adrian Baldwin.
This one is guaranteed to draw blood.
'Marie O’Regan knows what makes a good story, she especially knows what makes a good horror story, and it’s a pleasure – a deep, dark pleasure, a bit like boarding the ghost train – to read some of them here.' – Angela Slatter (The Path of Thorns, The Bone Lantern, The Cold House), from her introduction to Bleed For Me
‘I’m incredibly impressed. It’s beautifully crafted, elegant work. She’s extraordinarily talented.’
(Clive Barker – Hellraiser, Nightbreed, The Last Illusion; best-selling author of Books of Blood, The Hellbound Heart, Imajica, Sacrament, Abarat)
‘Marie O'Regan writes punchy and vivid short fiction in which the reader is disarmed and then dismayed with almost surgical ruthlessness. Nothing here can be trusted; not the world you know, nor the people around you, nor the ground on which you stand. Not even, when she's got you backed into a corner, that final hiding place you call your self.’
(Stephen Gallagher – Oktober, Chimera, Lifeline, Eleventh Hour, Crusoe; author of White Bizango, The Spirit Box, The Kingdom of Bones)
‘Marie O’Regan’s stories are deliciously, satisfyingly nasty, and it’s refreshing to read someone who so obviously relishes the genre concocting her unique tales with vigour and lack of pretentiousness.’
(Muriel Gray – bestselling author of The Ancient and Furnace)
LIMITED EDITION!
MISERY AND OTHER LINES BY CC ADAMS
A limited edition of CC's 'Misery And Other Lines' has been released in hardback - there will be only 100 copies published and once they're gone...they're gone!
Cover design by Adrian Baldwin.
Cover design by Elderlemon Design.
BLEEDING HEARTS by PAUL KANE
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Where do you go when you lose the love of your life, and who do you turn to? What if you ended up cursing them by mistake? Is it really a sin to fall for the wrong person, and what happens in a relationship when reality and fantasy begin to merge? Can dating in the modern world really be that dangerous, and what are the consequences when you take advantage of other people’s adulation? What happens when godlike beings fall in love, does it have an affect on us mortals? And how far would you actually go for the one person you think the world of? Inside the pages of this book are the answers, as we follow the Bleeding Hearts courtesy of award-winning and # 1 bestselling author Paul Kane (Sherlock Holmes and the Servants of Hell, Dark Reflections, Before, The Roads Less Travelled). With an introduction by Barbie Wilde (Hellbound: Hellraiser II, Voices of the Damned), this collection of twisted tales is sure to make you lovesick…or sick of love!
(cover by Adrian Baldwin)
‘Paul Kane is a first-rate storyteller, never failing to marry his insights into the world and its anguish with the pleasures of phrases eloquently turned.’ - Clive Barker – Bestselling author of The Hellbound Heart, Abarat, Mr B. Gone & The Scarlet Gospels
CORPSE ROAD BLUES by ERIC NASH
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This collection of short stories explores the many ways we are haunted.
And highlights social issues including homelessness, domestic abuse, hate crime, and the rise of Nationalism; philosophical viewpoints, such as free thought; while discussing themes of grief and loss.
Inside, you’ll find someone’s daughter lost in a puddle; a young artist struggling with his inability to feel pain; a niece resorting to an unusual form of exorcism upon herself; a transplant patient haunted by a past that isn’t his own; a Christmas Tree that helps the dead, with terrifying results for the living...
Cover illustration by: Mutartis Boswell
Cover Design by Adrian Baldwin
VIRULENT
by DAVID MASSENGILL
Paperback and Ebook
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"Macabre maestro David Massengill delivers a bone-chilling, twisty, provocative tale with Virulent, where “the perfect getaway” on a resort island becomes a descent into terror. Set during the pandemic’s most deadly and panic-filled days, Virulent is the story of one man’s dangerous obsession for a dark, enigmatic stranger, whose lure may be beyond lethal. With this edgy, tantalizing thriller, Massengill shows us he’s a horror-genre genius."
—Kevin O'Brien, New York Times bestselling author of The Enemy at Home and Unspeakable
APRIL 2020. COVID-19 grips the globe. Stuck in a Seattle apartment like thousands of others, Ben receives an invitation to escape lockdown life and flee with his wealthy sister and teenage niece to a waterfront resort on one of the idyllic San Juan Islands. The opportunity’s tempting, yet Ben’s hesitant. His OCD and the loss of his partner a few years ago have kept him more isolated and restrictive than most since the start of the pandemic. But Ben knows the family bubble’s probably a healthier place to be than alone with his Purell and disinfectant wipes.
On the ferry ride to Madrones Island, Ben meets an arrestingly handsome stranger. The man has dark curls, penetrating eyes, and a large Roman nose protruding dangerously over the top of his surgical mask. The brief encounter will invade Ben’s thoughts more than the virus replicating across the country. Will Ben be able to continue his cautious existence on the island, or will smoldering brushes with this magnetic stranger burn away the family bubble?
When desecrated corpses start showing up around the island, Ben suspects there’s something outside his protective sphere that’s even more insidious—even more VIRULENT—than covid.
Mesmerizing, dread-inducing, and shocking, David Massengill’s queer covid horror novella splits open the myth of safety and unleashes the terror of transformation.
(with a cover by Adrian Baldwin)
OUT NOW!
Misery And Other Lines
by CC Adams
She's out there. Looking for someone.
It doesn't matter if you're going somewhere special. It doesn't matter if you're going nowhere special. It doesn't matter if you're going home. Because once you're on the Underground this Hallowed Eve, the sly and sinister have you marked.
But she's the worst of them all.
So, watch your step...and mind the gap...
With a cover by Adrian Baldwin
THE VENUS COMPLEX by BARBIE WILDE
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A man rises out of an abyss of frustration and rage and creates works of art out of destruction, goddesses out of mere dental hygienists, and beauty out of death. It’s also about the sickness and obsession that is love. Enter Michael’s world through the pages of his personal journal, where every diseased thought, disturbing dream, politically incorrect rant, and sexually explicit murder highlights his journey from zero to psycho.
Cover Art by Steph Sciullo
Cover Design by Adrian Baldwin
“Wilde is one of the finest purveyors of erotically charged horror fiction around.” (Fangoria)
“The Venus Complex is a delicious collision of noir thriller and visceral horror. Whip-smart devious and jolting!” (Jonathan Maberry, Bram Stoker Award winner and New York Times best-selling author of Code Zero and V-Wars)
“Wilde expertly charts Michael’s diabolical descent into voyeurism, stalking and murder in a transgressive tale that would make Patrick Bateman blush.” (Rue Morgue)
"Damaged people, ultraviolence, murder and explicit sex--what’s not to love about her work?” (Chris Alexander, editor in chief, Fangoria #321)
"Barbie Wilde follows the tradition of Ellis's American Psycho and Oates's Zombie yet breaks new ground in the field of sadistic crime fiction. If you like the lurid and shocking, you'll love The Venus Complex. It's Dexter, without a moral code.” (Midwest Book Review)
OUT NOW!!!!
MONUMENT
by Dave Jeffery
Yes, it's true - DEMAIN is proud to announce that we've published an omnibus of Dave's 'A Quiet Apocalypse' stories for the first time ever. Including:
A Quiet Apocalypse
Cathedral
The Samaritan
Tribunal
AND, the origin story - written with Tom Jeffery:
The First Samaritan
Already we've been receiving great comments about this heavy (but important) tome:
“Jeffery’s A QUIET APOCALYPSE series is a terrifying yet oddly uplifting exploration of people in crisis. Frightening, bleak, and yet filled with empathy and humanism. Absolutely compelling!”—JONATHAN MABERRY, NY Times bestselling author of NecroTek and The Dragon in Winter.
“Jeffery has produced something very special, four novellas building a story that is unique, powerful and thoroughly compelling. It makes for a mature, brutal, but quite beautiful work, putting A QUIET APOCALYPSE up there with the greatest post-apocalyptic fiction.” —TIM LEBBON, author of AMONG THE LIVING and THE SILENCE.
“Dave Jeffery’s A QUIET APOCALYPSE series is an emotional gut-punch. Raw and relentless tales of the everyman—people like you and me—navigating a frighteningly possible future, Jeffery’s work resounds with universal truth.”—LEE MURRAY, USA Today Bestselling author and multiple Bram Stoker Award® and Shirley Jackson award winner.
"Imagine you and others unexpectedly lost your hearing due to a pandemic—how would you cope? How would society respond? An intense and uniquely told story.”—NYLE DiMARCO, Deaf activist, and NY Times bestselling author of DEAF UTOPIA.
A HOME IN THE DARKNESS
By MICAH CASTLE
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A group of people wake up in a house they don’t remember how they got to, and quickly discover the house doesn’t care about the whims or wants of its occupants.
And it’s not night outside...
(with a cover by Adrian Baldwin)
Micah Castle
Micah Castle is a weird fiction and horror writer. His stories have appeared in various magazines, websites, and anthologies, and he’s the author of The World He Once Knew (Fedowar Press) and Reconstructing a Relationship (D&T Publishing).
While away from the keyboard, he enjoys spending time with his wife, playing with his animals, spending hours in the woods, and can typically be found reading a book somewhere in his Pennsylvania home.
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WOLF WORLD
by Terry Grimwood
Mark Allen almost collides with an identical car to his own, driven by a double of himself.
When he recovers, he finds himself in an alternative world in which a segment of the population transforms into werewolves once a month.
Meanwhile, the werewolf version of Mark is trapped in this world and has come home to Mark's wife...
"Grimwood certainly knows how to tell a compelling story." Andrew Hook author of Candescent Tales
Terry's book is available as an ebook or paperback
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MY SHADOW MOVES AMONG YOU
by Adrian Cole
Adam Davey is a young stevedore, working night shifts in a busy warehouse, for the most part closed off from the city, a loner whose unusual size and strength has led him into more than a few scrapes and isolated him in a bleak, unsympathetic world.
One night a bizarre sequence of events plunge him into a conflict that has raged for centuries, a clash between opposing races, elemental and demonic forces.
Adam’s gradual immersion in the struggle for power pulls him deeper into a world within a world, leading him on a flight across dangerous, haunted terrain until he faces the truth of his own identity in a chilling, tragic climax.
Adrian Cole’s novella is an increasingly fast-paced story, mingling elements of fantasy and horror, a gripping, relentless race against an old darkness and terrifying powers.
Adrian's book is available as an ebook and paperback
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BEING FOLLOWED
by Derek Muk
Claire Goldman is a strong, independent woman with a pro-feminist background to substantiate it. She doesn't like to be pushed around or intimidated. But when she starts receiving threatening letters because of a book she wrote it gives her pause. And she is human, after all!
Enter her ex-husband and college sweetheart, Albert, who will do whatever it takes to protect her from harm's way and wants to rekindle that flame of romance and love they once possessed from when they were younger.
Will the two of them get over the stigma of being each other's 'ex' and reunite successfully and will they manage to escape from the wrath of dark evil that threatens to smother and destroy not just Claire and Albert but the rest of the nation as well?
Derek Muk says of 'Being Followed': "My book is a topical, modern-day, real-life, current events horror story (mixed in with mystery, suspense, thriller, and romance) that mirrors what's going on in the U.S. and I think readers will relate to that. The book was inspired by racial tensions sparked by the 2017 Charlottesville, Virginia rally, the January 6 coup/storming of the U.S. capitol, the murder of George Floyd, and the fascist atmosphere of the Trump Presidency."
Derek's book is available as an ebook and paperback
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THE CILICIUM QUADRA
by Barbie Wilde
Sister Cilice has such sights to show you...
A woman is placed in a convent against her will and fantasizes against power, domination, sensuality and freedom - all the things which are forbidden to her. Discovering a key to the Schism that brings forth the Order of the Gash, she fearlessly summons the Cenobites, who are astounded at her willingness to trade her humanity for infernal, eternal sensation.
Enter Sister Cilice's dominion, where puzzle boxes find a new diabolical purpose, a female rebellion rises up from the fetid air of hell and a mother of all demons is created.
Cover Art by Steph Sciullo
Cover Design and internal illustrations by Adrian Baldwin
Author Biography
Barbie Wilde is an author and actress. She is best known for playing the Female Cenobite in Hellbound:Hellraiser II.
Editorial Reviews
“Wilde is one of the finest purveyors of erotically charged horror fiction around.”
— Fangoria
Sister Cilice topped Dread Central’s list of the 8 most gruesome Hellraiser stories told outside the movies: “This is a messy, viscera-soaked, disturbing story that’s also lurid and steamy in a way that would make [Clive] Barker proud. Above all, it’s a great addition to the overall mythology, expanding on the briefest glimpse of this Cenobite’s human form shown in Hellraiser II.”
“Barbie Wilde’s Sister Cilice is devastatingly haunting [and] piercingly erotic...”
—All Things Horror
“Sick, but in delicious ways.”
—Doug Bradley, Hellraiser’s ‘Pinhead’
Barbie's book is available on kindle and in paperback
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SONS OF SOUL
by Kevin R McNally
Tony Smith and Percival Prendergast, genius graduates of the Edinburgh Space Propulsion Academy, have developed a space engine which will revolutionize travel and trade around the colonies and beyond. A project that will do a lot of good for mankind…and be very lucrative to boot! Many are interested but some are unwilling to pay. After being abducted from the Gagarin Space station by a glamorous but unscrupulous Bounty Hunter, Smith and Prendergast embark on an epic cat and mouse chase around the solar system. Will they become the gazillioinaires they hope, rot in a Centauran jail pressed into forced labour or be blasted into space by murderous space traders? Only space and time will tell...
Sarah Pinborough (New York Times and Sunday Times #1 Bestselling Author of 'Behind Her Eyes'): "I absolutely loved Smith and Predergast and their adventures had me gripped and also, at moments, laughing out loud. Great for fans of Douglas Adams and David Quantick..."
Actor, writer, director, raconteur, Stephen Fry said: What a read! I think one sign of its thrillingly readable quality is that I, who am a complete stranger to this genre of fiction, was absolutely captivated. Like all the best science fiction it tells us so much about now, about current human problems of greed, ambition, betrayal, desire, hope and heroism… I’d recommend it to anyone…"
Kevin's book is available as an ebook or in paperback