Dead Ink Books bags two-book deal with horror writer Vanessa Santos

Dead Ink Books has bagged a two-book deal with horror writer Vanessa Santos for her short story collection, Make a Home of Me, and debut novel In Your Heart a Devil. 

Commissioning editor Harriet Hirshman acquired world English language rights, including audio, from Seren Adams at United Agents. Make a Home of Me is scheduled for publication in summer 2025. 

The short story collection “explore[s] the fragile border between safety and peril, community and isolation, the desire to be close and the urge to run away” while Santos’ In Your Heart a Devil is a “gothic tale of love and alienation” pitched as Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca meets Ottessa Moshfegh’s Death in Her Hands. 

Hirshman said: “I fell for Santos’ unusual and disquieting writing style. Santos has an outstanding way of infusing her stories with dread, expertly quickening the reader’s heart as she spins her webs. There are many showstopper stories within Santos’s collection, and her novel will build on this tradition, while exploring the fertile ground of Scottish folklore.”

Santos added: “Make a Home of Me let me explore my favourite topics: boundaries, connection/disconnection, the illusion of safety. These stories explore the homes we make of houses and of each other, and how often those homes fold into darkness. What can we really know of the world and what can we really know of each other?”