By Ron Evans
TRIGGER WARNINGS: Uhh...pretty much all of them, actually.
In 2012 I was vending at Emerald City Comicon where I met horror fiction writer Michelle von Eschen. It became clear that we shared a similar sense of humor and a taste for the gruesome as we discussed some of her works. I picked up a copy of her first novel, When The Dead (a claustrophobic doomsday zombie nightmare) and loved it. I was impressed with the quality of the writing and how good she was at getting you hooked on a story so quickly. Von Eschen has remained incredibly prolific over the years publishing several novels and being featured in numerous anthologies.
A few years ago von Eschen left her Seattle area home for Texas (briefly) and then made the voyage to England where she now lives with her husband Jonathan Butcher. Butcher is also an established writer with an appetite for the dark and twisted. The duo wasted no time in plotting a book together — the result; Motel Styx. And let me tell you…this book is deranged, demented, devilish and damn hard to put down! If the synopsis on the back of the book doesn’t already repel you…
Fueled by online trends, a shift in the American zeitgeist has led to the instatement of the Lazarus Act, legalizing the ‘recreational use’ of human corpses.
Ellis Mercer, recently bereaved, embarks on a secret mission to America’s first ‘necrotel’ to recover his wife’s remains, before her corpse and his memory of her are desecrated by the motel’s twisted membership.
As he uncovers the murky inner workings of Motel Styx, evading its suspicious staff and encountering a wild array of death-obsessed guests, he will be forced to face an unsettling truth: there is more than one way to define love.
Still with me? Then I should also make it clear, the authors leave little to the imagination when describing the ‘inner’ workings of a place where you pay to fuck the dead. And as messed up as the scenes and situations are, they are worded with such care and gravitas that it reads almost medical at times. Other times…Jesus. These writers should probably be in jail!
And while it may seem easy to dismiss such a premise as shock fiction – irreverent for the sake of being irreverent – there’s a unique kind of heart to the story. A fucked up kind of heart but heart all the same. Not sentimentality, but a real thoughtfulness. The kind that makes you stop and truly contemplate the kind of society we are living in. Where we may be headed. And, whether the authors intended it or not, there are a lot of places where you will find yourself doing a little check-in with your own set of morals.
I chatted with these two lovely maniacs about how they found their way to Motel Styx.
Michelle von Eschen
Jonathan Butcher
First off, give the readers a little background on both of you.
M: I’m from Washington State. I grew up in Kenmore at the top of Lake Washington. I’ve always been interested in writing, but usually shorter form poetry and the occasional song. I self-published my first novel When the Dead in 2012 after spending six years casually writing it and I continue to write, publishing something (usually short stories) once a year on average. My writing is on the quieter, more literary side of the Horror genre, with Motel Styx being an exception.
J: I’m from southwest England but I’ve lived all over the UK, as well as briefly in Australia and South Korea. I recently completed a Master’s degree in Crime and Thriller Writing at the University of Cambridge. I’ve been writing horror since my age was a single figure, and my best-known work is the extreme horror/thriller What Good Girls Do.
Talk about what sparked the idea for this new book.
J: Michelle and I met online during the first summer of the Covid pandemic. We watched a lot of movies and talked on Skype. I was going to watch Nekromantik, a German film about necrophilia, for an upcoming podcast I was invited on and I asked Michelle if she wanted to watch it with me.
M: It was the first movie to make me gag. I came very close to barfing, but the film stuck with me and soon after I saw a Reddit post about ethical necrophilia through consent prior to death. My mind went a bit crazy after this with the possibilities. I thought of combining the Bunny Ranch, a legal brothel in Texas, with the Body Farm in Tennessee, which is a study facility for forensic anthropology that I’d read about in Death’s Acre by Dr. Bill Bass. Basically a bunch of dead bodies rotting in the elements. So yeah, consensual necrophilia in the privacy of a little motel out in the desert. Motel Styx was born.
It would be easy to simply rely on the shock and gross out factor of this story, but you somehow managed to give the tale a bit of heart – talk about how you came up with the idea for the ‘protagonist’ to deal with elements of suicide and loss.
M: I’m naturally drawn to writing about death in all its forms and I’ve written about suicide and loss before. I’ve lost family to natural causes, accidents, and suicide. I think having unanswered questions and anger without an outlet can both be compelling forces to draw someone forward and to make them do things they might not actually otherwise do. Our main character doesn’t feel like he has a choice against these forces. It’s a huge risk he takes and we needed to make sure it made sense why he’d even try.
J: Yes, writing about Ellis as a compelling protagonist with a number of secrets was perhaps the biggest challenge of the story, for me. Michelle had come up with his “going undercover” storyline, but it needed fleshing out, greater consistency, and more meticulous structuring, so I came in with my magnifying glass and tried to ensure that his decisions felt convincing throughout.
There are many instances that read as satire (to me) but also as allegory for things like puritanical politics, body autonomy and other moral issues. Were you setting out to make any kind of statement with this story?
M: Honestly, no. We treated it as though the motel and the Lazarus Act (our fictional law allowing for “recreational use” of corpses) were real things and we simply explored how different people or groups might respond to such a controversial business. What might feel like satire or allegory for our real world are merely reflections of it.
J: As Michelle said, we didn’t set out to write a satire, but in considering how people might react if a radical law like this came to be, it was impossible to avoid considering the likely reactions there would be across social media and the media in general. We wanted the book to be fun as well as grotesque, so I just made some of my input a little tongue-in-cheek, though not so playful as to be ridiculous.
There were so many times in the book where I had to stop and think – god, that must have been fun to write. Things like slogans on the t-shirts in the necrotel gift shop, chants from the religious protesters and thoughtful musings from patrons and staff of Motel Styx. Talk a bit about creating all of those elements, and the experience of trying to get into the mindset of the people who fuck the dead.
M: All the extras–the products in the gift shop, the slogans, the entire culture and setup of the business–were one of my favorite parts of writing the book. I love running with a concept/theme. I used to own and operate a graphic and web design company so the brand building comes from that experience. There’s a lot that was cut because it was just this extra, fun stuff that didn’t add to or move the story along. Jonathan was good at trimming the fat I kept trying to add. As for writing about people who fuck the dead, I did as much reading as I could about case studies.
J: I don’t think I trimmed much of the fat that Michelle wanted to add—I mainly just tried to ensure that it was spread throughout the story instead of info-dumped.
Was this always a fun project? Were there times when it got a bit much to imagine these scenarios?
J: The most fun part for me was writing the pre-chapter quotes, which I wanted to use to hint at the wider societal implications and opinions regarding our Lazarus Act, and to be a little cheeky with some of the folks I quoted. The addendum to the quote from the pastor is one of the parts I’m most proud about, haha. And no, it never got too much. It almost became too normal for us to be discussing corpse sex, and we had to remember to lower our voices while we were in public!
M: I can’t think of one time when it ever felt like too much to imagine. I found it fascinating and I still do. Also, the beauty of a collaboration is the ability to share the load and pass some of it on to the other contributor if needed.
Were there times where you thought – is this too much? Should we hold back, for the sake of the audience?
J: I usually write the most extreme of the most extreme stories, but I saw the potential for a wider reading audience for Motel Styx. I wanted us to write a book that might appeal to readers wanting a more hardcore horror than they might usually read, but not an all-out shock-fest. So I actually pulled a scene Michelle wrote back, just a little, which was strange considering she usually writes quiet horror! The subject matter ensured that some explicit content was necessary though; as Michelle often says to me, how can you write a book about necrophiles without writing about necrophilia?
M: Jonathan and I talked about this a lot during the writing of the book. Should we go all-in? Should we clean it up a bit, be less gross? It was a heavy and important decision to make, books are made or broken by audience reception. The Extreme and Splatterpunk subgenres have very active and voracious readers so it was tempting to write something for them alone, but those who generally read my writing opt for less violent, less gory stories and I didn’t want us to exclude those from it who might be brave enough to push a few personal boundaries in reading Motel Styx. You can see this ‘bridging of the gap’ in some of our 3-star and lower reviews. Some readers really wanted more sex with dead people, some of them had to pull out their garbage bins and DNF it because they found it too much sex with dead people. But the pull of the concept brings a diverse and larger group to the motel. That’s what we wanted in the end. No vacancy. And what I wanted above all else is a book that makes people think and feel a lot. It’s definitely a conversation starter!
Co-writing a book is not super common, walk us through the process a little bit. Did you each take turns, or take specific scenes? Or was most of the collaboration in the overall arches and concepts? Were there any disagreements about which way to go with it?
J: The book and the outline for the plot and characters were 100% Michelle’s ideas. Her ideas are always better and smarter than mine! She essentially let those ideas germinate for a while and then wrote a basic first draft/outline. Two of my strengths in writing are structuring and characters, so I took the work Michelle had done and expanded on it, developed what I saw as its main strengths, told Michelle about the parts I wasn’t so keen on, and then wrote a more detailed full draft containing all the beats of the completed piece. Then we passed it back and forth until it was ready for other folks’ eyes.
M: Basically he gave the body I’d haphazardly built an actual skeleton, some good bones to hold it all up. There were things I really wanted in the book that didn’t make it, but it’s an important part of writing, letting go of what doesn’t serve the story. At a point I stopped comparing his drafts to the draft I’d handed him previously. I stopped scanning to see what else had been removed and started reading the draft for what it was, looking at the whole from afar instead of the small details. We ended up with a book we’re both hugely proud of. Even if the process was difficult, I trust it. I trust him.
I always say that writers likely have some of the most confounding (or incriminating!) internet search histories. Talk about any research that went into Motel Styx.
J: Reddit is an amazing resource, so I put a post out onto r/morticians and asked if there was anyone willing to help with our research. Thankfully I’m semi-active there, so I was able to demonstrate that I wasn’t just some demented pervert wanting to discuss necro-sex for kicks, and that I’m a legitimate author seeking research help. Their input was invaluable. People can be so wonderful, and are often willing to share their expertise just because someone wants to hear it.
M: The thing about necrophilia is that there is surprisingly little written about it when compared to other topics. A handful of scientific papers, a small collection of fiction books, random newspaper articles of rogue morticians or teens behaving badly, a mention here or there in history of someone famous keeping a dead wife longer than they should have. Necrophilia is so taboo and illegal in most places, many who feel lust for the dead do not admit it. They practice in private or not at all and we usually only hear about them when they get caught breaking laws. I found some incredible case studies detailing perpetrators of the different types of necrophilia, but I wish there were more interviews with actual necs, like the one with Karen Greenlee, the embalmer who stole a hearse with a man’s body in it to have sex with him and who later admitted to other relations with the dead. I want to hear from people who choose this lifestyle.
How long were you working on the book and how did you publish/distribute it?
J: Two years! They were very tumultuous years, and saw us battling against both life and death at times, as well as moving home twice, but yes, it was a long-term project to be sure.
M: The idea began to percolate from the moment we watched Nekromantik, which was back in August of 2022 when I was living in Texas briefly before relocating to England. It’s crazy to check the date on the first file. It feels so long ago now. We self-published the book back in June of this year and it is now available in all formats via Amazon and Audible.
I’m a sucker for a good book cover and Motel Styx has a fabulous design. Talk about the designer and the process of coming up with cover art for this and your other books.
J: Basically, I scribbled an idea for the cover that resembled a 3-year-old’s half-assed doodle, and Michelle turned it into the Mona Lisa of corpse-diddling.
M: Thanks for liking my work! I have done all of my book covers and interiors, though the beautiful images of the farmhouse on Old Farmhouses of the North and the fire on This is How We Burn were photographed by my twin sister Rebecca Marson and the zombie on The Spread was painted by a talented Vancouver, Canada-based artist named Lyle Schultz. Jonathan has worked with artists for some of his other covers and I have been teaching him a few programs to format and design his books himself. We also put together the full cover of his What Good Men Do. As fun as it is to have the ability to do it, I think it’s important for writers to recognise when they need outside assistance and to be willing to pay for quality art if it serves the story. I can’t draw to save my life so I would love to hire an artist when I need one.
The audio book just popped up on Audible a week before writing this so I gave it a listen, the narrator (Christian Shay) is great. How was that process? Casting, recording, directing?
J: We were immediately taken with Christian’s narration, and while we had a number of others audition, I don’t think there was any doubt between us that he was the reader for us.
M: We lucked out with him, he brought it all to life and with flavor. He was also super receptive to our feedback for any edits we had. We found him through ACX and the entire process felt quite quick and painless.
What has the overall response been like? Favorite feedback – good or bad? Has any of your family disowned you?
J: I’d say it’s generally been good, and our families know what we’re like by now, haha. A lot of fellow horror writers gave us amazing comments to use in our marketing, and our talented friend Judith Sonnet even seems to think it might be in the running for a Splatterpunk Award next year. We’ve also had some fantastic Booktokers kindly post about our book too, which we have been endlessly grateful for (shout-out to the amazing @ghostlyreads, @eve.reads, and @redrum.reads!)
M: The overall response has blown us away. We’ve had a lot of eyes on it already, in such a short period of time. It’s exciting! My favorite feedback is when readers have said they want Jonathan and I to do another collaboration. I think we’re a good team, but it’s awesome to hear others confirm that feeling. I also love the reviews from people who have been made sick by it or who usually read erotica of the living and how uncomfortable they’ve been made over all the nec-rotica! It’s going to have sex with dead people, that is a promise! Every review matters, good and bad, because they all give potential readers more information to make the decision to book a room or not.
Any plans for a Motel Styx sequel?
J: I don’t think we’re entirely done with the motel just yet, but whether or not there will be a full sequel remains to be seen. We’ve another collaborative project to write that we’re both pretty damn excited about.
M: There is no way this is the end of Motel Styx. It’s simply too fun to play in that world and I’ll be very happy to extend others’ stay in it too.
What’s coming up next for you?
M: I have a literary novella, a quiet horror short story collection, and the aforementioned second collaboration with Jonathan in the works. I think the collaboration is the priority now after seeing the success of Motel Styx.
J: I’m currently writing my first non-extreme novel, which is about a cosmic haunting. It will either be my best work to date or a dreadful mistake.
Website/links/where to buy your books.
J: jonathanbutcherhorror@bigcartel.com for signed books and swag, or Amazon for all my work.
M: whenthedead.com/ or linktr.ee/yourquiethorror for various book and social links. My books are available on Amazon.
