The Box of Dead Heroes Is Out Now
Today, The Box of Dead Heroes is officially out in the world.
That sentence feels strange after everything that went into getting here.
For months, this book has existed as drafts, notes, proofs, corrections, cover files, conversations, questions, and an increasingly intimidating number of documents with words like FINAL in their filenames.
Now it is simply a book.
A finished thing that other people can pick up, open, and make their own decisions about.
This is where A Funeral for the Living begins
The Box of Dead Heroes is Book I of A Funeral for the Living, a completed dark fantasy trilogy.
It follows Elias Whitlock, a homeless man in his seventies who has spent sixty years carrying a box left behind after the death of his father and the legendary heroes who once tried to save the occupied city of Titan.
When Elias finally opens it, he does not find the heroic inheritance he expected.
He finds people.
And once he begins seeing the people beneath the legends, he starts noticing the living people Titan has taught everyone else not to see.
The book grows outward from there.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
One person noticing another.
One small choice becoming another.
Grief becoming participation.
That is the core movement of Book I: not conquest, not destiny, but the first step back toward life.
What kind of book is it?
This is a slow-burn, character-first adult dark fantasy.
It is about grief, memory, found family, institutional horror, ageing, usefulness, and the ways people learn to treat terrible things as ordinary.
There are heroes in its history.
But the book is much more interested in the people beneath the statues.
There is no chosen one waiting to discover that they were secretly destined to save the world.
There is no central romance.
The hope is mostly practical.
Food.
Names.
Work.
A hand offered.
A door opened.
People who are afraid and tired and still choose to move.
That is also the promise I make in the author’s note: this is not a story where pain simply disappears, but one where small things still matter when large answers are unavailable.
And the story is already complete
If you are understandably wary of beginning an unfinished series, I can promise you this:
A Funeral for the Living is finished.
All three novels are written and proofed.
Book I — The Box of Dead HeroesOut now
Book II — The House That Would Not Hide31 October 2026
Book III — The City That RememberedNovember 2026
This was written as one continuous story in three books, and publication is following quickly behind it.
You will not be waiting years to find out whether I finish the road.
I already have.
Thank you
A lot of people have helped this book reach today.
Early readers.
Friends and family who listened to me talk about Titan for considerably longer than any reasonable person should have been expected to.
People who offered feedback.
People who encouraged me when I was not particularly good at encouraging myself.
People who shared posts, agreed to review advance copies, or simply said that the premise sounded interesting.
Thank you.
This book was written during one of the darker periods of my life. I wrote people trying to find one another because I needed to believe they still could.
Now they are no longer only mine.
Elias has his box.
Jack has his work.
Titan has its doors.
And you get to decide what happens when you open the cover.
The Box of Dead Heroes is available now.
If you read it, I hope you enjoy your time in Titan.
And if the book works for you, an honest review or recommendation to another reader would mean an enormous amount to an independent author.
Thank you for giving these people a chance to be seen.
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