UNKNOWN

Norman Reed (Not Reedus) is just a gravedigger. A simple man with a shovel, a crossbow, and absolutely no desire to deal with anyone else's problems-especially not the ones that crawl out of their graves without asking.

But in a world where people don't stay dead for long-thanks to a corrupted, bureaucratically bloated respawn system-being a gravedigger is not just pointless... it's practically suspicious. Corpses return. Dungeons overflow. And somewhere deep beneath the earth, something monstrous is waking up.

Norman doesn't care. Or at least, he tries not to.

That is, until the system breaks in his own backyard. Suddenly, Norman finds himself the accidental recipient of an increasingly passive-aggressive quest, a talking progress bar, and a sidekick-a glitchy undead mess named Gary-7 who respawns wrong every time, and thinks Norman is his dad, his best friend, or possibly a sandwich.

Now, with a Ministry auditor breathing down his neck, an ancient proto-core whispering in his skull, and the fate of the respawn grid unraveling like cheap toilet paper, Norman must do what no one else is willing to:

Put things in the ground, and make sure they stay there.

But this isn't a hero's journey. Norman isn't chosen. He isn't brave. He isn't even particularly nice. He's just the last person left who remembers how to bury something properly.

And he's very, very tired.

Norman Reed (Not Reedus) is a darkly comic mashup of grim fantasy, broken magic-tech, and bureaucratic horror.

Expect:

• Improperly filed undead
• Graveyard sarcasm
• Corrupted dungeons with flesh walls
• Highly illegal use of a shovel
• Mild to moderate existential dread

This is Book One of the Norman Reed (not Reedus) series.

It begins with a gravedigger.
It ends with something... else.

Mark Adams is 43 (so he says) writes fiction that's dark, funny, and occasionally smells like grave dirt. Specialising in fantasy and humour, he crafts stories full of sentient paperwork, malfunctioning resurrection systems, and the kind of dungeons that would give OSHA an aneurysm.

He's currently working on Norman Reed (Not Reedus)-a gloriously grim and graphic series following a grumpy gravedigger, his undead sidekick, and the broken respawn system that ruined everything (again).

When not knee-deep in plot holes and sarcastic footnotes, Mark can be found arguing with goblins, sharpening metaphors, or misplacing important plot devices in cursed filing cabinets. He believes a thesaurus is a weapon, not a tool, and has no intention of writing anything "normal."