Arden: love at the centre of other worlds
Mirari Press has a fourth imprint. Arden publishes speculative romance – romantasy, science-fiction romance, paranormal and gothic love stories – and it's edited by Nerine Dorman.
In As You Like It, Shakespeare sends his exiles into the Forest of Arden. They lose their courts, their names and their certainties. Then they find each other, and nobody leaves the forest the way they came in.
That's the imprint we're launching. Arden is named for that forest: a place you reach by being cast out of the ordinary, and leave changed by love.
What an Arden book is
Dragons and starships, ghosts and gods, crumbling manors and drowned cities: Arden's worlds are as strange as anything Mirari publishes. What changes is what sits at the centre. In an Arden novel, the love story is the story. The speculative world is what makes that love impossible anywhere else.
We'll publish four kinds of book, and everything that lives between them:
Romantasy: love in secondary worlds, from court intrigue to quest to war.
Science-fiction romance: space opera, first contact, futures near and far.
Paranormal romance: vampires, shifters, witches, the fae, and whatever else goes bump in the night.
Gothic romance: dark houses, darker secrets, and desire with a shadow.
Every Arden book makes the same promise to its reader. The romance carries the plot. The magic, the monster or the starship is crucial to the romance: take it away and the love story falls apart. Every kind of love is welcome, queer romance especially. Heat runs from closed door to scorching.
And every Arden novel ends happily, with a happily ever after or a happy for now. A lot of fiction mistakes bleakness for depth. Romance makes the braver promise, that love outlasts the dark. We think the happy ending is a conviction, not a compromise.
Why Mirari, and why now
Romance readers have been at our tables all along. They're at our launches, in our anthologies and on our mailing list. Immortals and Exalted, our vampire and angel romance anthologies at Mirari, show us how many writers want to tell these stories. They also show us how few places there are for a novel-length speculative romance written from Southern Africa or the wider Global South.
Arden is that place. It gives romance its own imprint inside a house that already takes worldbuilding seriously. Mirari Press stays home to fantasy and science fiction where the romance is a thread. Mirari Revel keeps publishing queer short stories. Arden is for the novels where love is the whole point.
Meet the editor
Nerine Dorman leads Arden. She is an award-winning author and editor with more than two decades' experience. She is the author of the Winter Mage and Scatterlings of Fates series with Mirari Press. At Arden she acquires and edits every title on the list.
In Nerine's own words:
"Who can resist a good love story? Whether it's an infuriating love triangle, enemies to lovers, a second chance or a dangerous liaison, romantic tension adds spice to an already cracking good read. Great love stories are eternal and universal.
"Whether you close the door or let it all hang out, romance is a perennial favourite, and it is embedded in the fabric of storytelling. Other than a stirring action scene, the 'will they, won't they' of a great love story keeps you wondering how the lovers will overcome great obstacles to be together, triumph against evil, or overthrow empires. Be it shifters, vampires, wizards, or witches, princesses embarking on quests to redeem a cursed prince, or two princes who yearn for each other, science fiction and fantasy abounds with unforgettable sagas about love found, lost, and (hopefully) redeemed, against all odds.
"Love makes us believe there is still good in the world, and it's worth fighting for."
The first Arden books
Arden's first list will come from this submissions call. We're not launching with a backlist bought in from elsewhere. We want the imprint's first novels to be the books this call finds.
The first two Arden novels are planned for late 2027 — confirm against Astra. They'll be published in print and ebook, sold in South African bookshops, through online retailers and direct from the Mirari Press website.
Send us your novel
Arden is open to submissions from 23 October to 15 December 2026. Here's what we're looking for:
Complete, revised novels of 70,000–110,000 words.
Romantasy, science-fiction romance, paranormal or gothic romance, or anything between them.
A happily ever after or a happy for now.
Any heat level, from closed door to open door.
Unpublished work in English. If the book has been self-published before, tell us.
Writers anywhere in the world, agented or not. We give priority to writers from Southern Africa and the wider Global South.
Send a cover letter, a one- to two-page synopsis that includes the ending, and the first three chapters. Simultaneous submissions are welcome. Nerine reads every submission, and we reply to everyone, whatever the outcome.
The full guidelines, the FAQ and the submission form are on the Arden page: miraripress.com/arden.
Enter the forest. Come out changed.
— Marius du Plessis, Publisher, Mirari Press