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About WtD Books

When the Dead Books is a small book company started in Seattle, WA and run by owner and author Michelle Butcher (writing as Michelle von Eschen). WtD Books offers quiet, literary horror and bizarre fiction.

If you’re looking for strange, different, and keep-you-up-past-your-bedtime reading, you’ve found it. If you’ve read something from us, drop us a line and let us know your thoughts!

Our main author Michelle is also active on TikTok, Twitter (general content), and Instagram as yourquiethorror (main account) and the murk of us. Please stay connected with her there!

We are not currently hiring editors or running any submissions for anthologies. Please check back for future opportunities.

What Readers Are Saying

On OFOtN

Is post-apocalypse gothic a thing? If it’s not, it should be … or maybe it is now

Christine Morgan
Author of Lakehouse Infernal, Spermjackers From Hell, and others / Website

On WYBAB

Michelle von Eschen has such a fantastic voice, and it's evident in all of her work. Her prose is beautiful and almost poetic, lulling you into a false sense of security before she pulls the rug out from under you.

Sara Ferrarese

Heartfelt, intelligent, darkly poetic, and beautifully figurative while also being economical

Tylor James
Author of Matters Most Macabre / Website

von Eschen crafts haunting short stories of quiet horror through the lens of loss and grief . . . [She] has a fantastic sense of pacing.

Bob Foster

On MIMDtZA

...slick and clever...

Peter Clines
Author of The Fold, the Ex-Heroes Series, Paradox Bound, and others / Website

As a fellow writer and publisher, generally full of confidence, Michelle is one of those authors whose stellar writing temporarily shakes my faith in my own. She's THAT good.

Jonathan Lambert
Author of GUGGA and Betwixt the Dark & Light: A Collection of Oddities / Owner, Jolly Horror Press

[Michelle] puts words to paper in a way that makes you feel like you're there, on the pages, dancing among the words like it is your whole world and the only one you've ever known. It all feels so natural and relatable. It's a terrifying experience, but in the best of ways.

A. Burke
Reader, Pirate, Software Engineer

[Michelle's] writing will emotionally crush you and physically destroy you. And you come back, asking for more.

T.J. Tranchell
Author of Cry Down Dark and Asleep in the Nightmare Room / Website

You’ll never see salmon sushi the same way again. [To find out more, read The Madness Coil, featured in When You Find Out What You're Made Of]

S. Reese Brook
Reader, Badass, Grandmother

Latest Release

This is How We Burn book cover This is How We Burn
by Michelle von Eschen
eBook | short story

An ancient symbol, a mission call, a fiery plague…there’s something in the flames.

Available now on Godless.com



[All Persons Fictitious]

These stories, characters, and plot lines are the creation and property of Michelle Butcher. Any similarity to persons alive, dead, or undead is purely coincidental.

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