Dead but Not Ready

Can the architecture of a dream withstand the collapse of the mind that built it?

Denlon is a D.C. architect whose visionary but unrealized “Temple in Lime” represents his life’s greatest ambition. When he receives a grave diagnosis, he finds himself lured to the limestone caves and coal mines of his Appalachian youth, where he’s forced to reckon with the ghosts that shaped him.

As malignancies disrupt his brain, spectral guides lead him through a labyrinth of memory and madness. The natural world turns predatory, and in a fever dream of mortality, he struggles to reconcile his life’s purpose with roots that refuse to let him go…

Dead but Not Ready plunges readers into a disintegrating mind caught between ambition and origins. It is at once a madcap dark comedy and a lyrical reflection on the dreams we carry and the earth that must ultimately reclaim us all.