Many years ago, I took an interest in all things paranormal (note: not supernatural) and as part of this interest, I trained as a hypnotherapist and practised for a short time, but soon returned to my real love, the written word.
During this period, I stumbled across an account of an event known only as The Heidelberg Case. It involved the abuse of woman carried out in Heidelberg, Germany from 1927 to 1934 when the perpetrator was finally capture and imprisoned. His control weapon was hypnotism. Not the routine hypnosis as used by therapists, not the more forceful variety as deployed by stage performers, but a deep-seated control designed to alter the victim’s perception of reality. Using this depth of hypnosis, Franz Walter subdued a woman name only as Mrs E for a total of seven years, during which time, he used her for his own gratification, sold her into prostitution, and generally subjected her to cruel punishments. He had her attempt the murder of her husband on no less than six occasions and he even persuaded her that she was terminally ill and in order to avoid a long, protracted, slow death, she should take her own life. He almost succeeded and it took a long time for the true story to emerge.
As a writer of fiction, I brought this premise up to date in a work entitled The Handshaker and along with a couple of contacts, presented it to a British TV channel as a 5-hour serial. After receiving an assurance that it would be commissioned, we were rejected on cost grounds. It would be simply too expensive to produce.
So I turned it into a novel and it was published by Crooked Cat to abject failure. A marketing failure that is.
The rights were returned to me and in 2018 I self-published it under the title, Dominus, by Robert Devine.
Why the pen name? Because Dominus did not fit with the tamer and humorous works I turn out.
After another marketing failure, I withdrew it, and now that I’m more savvy on the marketing front, I’ve brought it back to life, and while I cannot guarantee follow ups, I will be making an effort to build on it.
Learn more about Allan Cain and Dominus at: https://mybook.to/domin