Life is weird and I know it frequently surprises us with heartache and tragedy. But sometimes amazing things happen, kind of out of nowhere, leaving us wondering what we did to deserve such good fortune.

Undertaker Books is one of those amazing things.

At the beginning of 2024, I worked for a different small press (name tactfully withheld; I’m keeping it positive here). There, I met D.L. Winchester and Cyan LeBlanc. We quickly allied ourselves, and then bonded–the three of us had similar work ethics, and acted on the same principles: do a good job for the authors. Conduct ourselves in a way that allows us to respect ourselves. Put out books that make us proud.

Well, that press fell apart. And because phoenix analogies are a little tired, I’ll use a different one: D.L. and Cyan and I looked at the house that had fallen down around us, and we inventoried what we could salvage. Then we hauled it away to a new site, put on our damn overalls, and got to work building something new.

While we planned carefully, the paint on the shutters was still wet when we got our first houseguest: Elizabeth Broadbent, with her breakout Southern Gothic novella Ink Vine. Her stock of copies sold out at AuthorCon III, and Ink Vine topped Amazon’s charts all that weekend (and hovered there afterward). Reviews are still coming in, and they are great! The Horror Tree just gave it five out of five crows. (Do you like sexy scary swamp magic? Then get yourself a copy!)

Quickly, one guest became a whole party, and only a couple months in, our new little publishing house is full to bursting with good people and good cheer. Our calendars for the rest of 2024 AND all of 2025 are full, and the lineup is amazing. Just to name a few, in addition to Eliza, we’ve signed Kathleen Palm, Robert Ottone, Emma Murray, C.M. Saunders, and, through an agreement with anthology guest editor T.J. Price, Christi Nogle, Ai Jiang, Carson Winters, Caleb Stephens, Ivy Grimes, and Erik McHatton. More news is coming soon–watch our social media feeds for signing announcements!

Because the hosts are allowed to celebrate, too, we are also putting out a few of our own books–have a look at Cyan’s new releases, Mastering the Art of Female Cookery and The Taste of Women, and D.L.’s chapbook story collections, Shadows of Appalachia and A Terrible Place (forthcoming). My ghost story collection, The Hauntings Back Home, with an introduction and thirteenth story by Jonathan Gensler, will be out next year.

And if you will allow me to gush about my publishing partners (and who’s gonna stop me? This is my blog. Ha!), I want to say how much I appreciate them. Cyan is our publisher and formatter, and also the handler of most of our marketing. (Wanna get on an ARC/galley list? Message us!) D.L. is our head of business development and manages all of our contracts and our master schedule. He is also our short fiction editor, running most of our anthology calls. (He will also be editing my story collection and a few long fiction projects.) Yours truly is editor in chief–I edit most of our long fiction projects and scout talent (and by that I mean pester people whose work I love–you know who you are–your DMs haven’t seen the last of me). All of us are novice cover designers who are determined to learn new skills and improve. (I still throw out nine of ten designs, but that’s okay–art is all about trial and error.) The three of us work well together, and we’re so excited to be a part of bringing so many wonderful books into the world.

Undertaker Books runs on integrity, professionalism, honesty, and transparency. We communicate openly with our authors and expect them to do the same. We want to sustain our business but we know money doesn’t fall from the sky, so we will work hard to make sure we are successful. We’ve heard from a lot of authors who have been let down by their former publishers–some of those authors have signed with Undertaker, and we vow to be the rebound who makes them believe in love again.

Undertaker Books: Stories You’ll Take To Your Grave (and folks who will be nice to work with).