Released on 28 August – preorder The Glorious Dead here.
I’m back with a new novel, The Glorious Dead, and this time it’s personal.
The Glorious Dead – Epic Fantasy with a Personality
Writing and rewriting The Glorious Dead became far more than a creative undertaking: it was a way of confronting grief and survival while reconnecting with the profound closeness I shared with my father, who was also a novelist.
I shaped this epic fantasy during an extraordinary period, in which I read to my father from an early draft during his final days. I later discovered that I, too, had developed the same cancer that had claimed his life.
So, naturally, I returned to the manuscript and allowed it to carry me through bereavement, treatment, and convalescence. My father’s wit and style guided my hand. Writing with my father brought us closer, and now that is true both in life and in death.
This is the first instalment in a trilogy, following the protagonist on a journey through pain, protection and redemption. It marks the arrival of a fantasy series with a deeply personal heart but an even deeper sense of humour.
Let the record show how the enemy crept into the general’s tent on the night after the battle, assassinating him in his bed. It was a cowardly act. They sneaked past his guards and staff officers and then disappeared unheard and unseen into the night.’
‘Sounds good to me, sir,’ Flint said. ‘And when exactly did General McAvoy meet his end?’
‘Oh, I don’t know Flint, how about in twenty minutes time? He should be asleep by then.’
A Giant-Slaying Protagonist
So, you see it is not all doom, gloom and (as they say) grim-dark. My role as author is to throw the worst at my protagonist, but aside from his giant-slaying heroics there is a most amusing cast list replete with rogues, kings, anti-heroes, and worst of all, bureaucrats.
‘Protecting the more vulnerable should be a hanging offence, it’s practically sedition,’ Moralles puffed, ‘but, if I can’t hang him, I’ll do the next worse thing.’
‘Excellent, sire, and what would that be?’
‘I’ll promote him, he’s unlikely to survive that.’
My father showed me many things, how to write, how to love, how to laugh. He showed me how to confront cancer with dignity and honour. Thankfully I survived. Sadly he did not. So it goes.
Chief amongst my father’s words of wisdom was the constant refrain, ‘keep going.’ I use that in life and in my writing. I tell that to my children, ‘I believe in you,’ in other words. And I tell it to my characters. My protagonist keeps going despite everything I throw at him.
What else was there in this world except alive and dead? There were only two states — being and not being. The purpose of life was to be in the former and avoid the latter; that was all there was to it, and no one should pretend differently.
The name of my protagonist? The Teacher, of course.
David J Harrison 