Joshua Pilbert
An ordinary Game Master with dangerous knowledge, bad instincts around heroism, and a growing suspicion that planning only helps until the world starts improvising back.
Debut fantasy novel · Book One of The Far Road Campaign
No Heroes Are Coming
A Game Master wakes up inside his own campaign world and discovers that knowing the story is not the same as surviving it.
For fans of portal fantasy, tabletop role-playing game chaos, found family, reluctant heroes, and fantasy adventure with teeth.
He knows the towns. He knows the villains. He knows where the traps are hidden.
Unfortunately, the world knows how to hurt him anyway.
About the book
Joshua Pilbert knows exactly how the story is supposed to go.
He should. He wrote it.
For years, Joshua has spent his Tuesday nights behind a Game Master screen, guiding his friends through danger, drama, reckless plans, and impossible choices in the fantasy world he built for them. Then he wakes up inside that world with no phone, no dice, no character sheet, and no heroes coming to save the day.
At first, Joshua thinks his knowledge is the ultimate advantage. He knows where the quests begin. He knows where the treasure is hidden. He knows which villains are waiting in the dark.
Unfortunately, knowing the story is not the same as surviving it.
The party he expected does not exist. The world is more real, more dangerous, and more unpredictable than anything he planned. If Joshua wants to live long enough to face the threats ahead, he will need to stop waiting for heroes and build a party of his own.
No Heroes Are Coming is the first book in The Far Road Campaign, a fantasy adventure about found family, bad plans, impossible choices, and the strange courage it takes to become the person everyone else is counting on.
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The party
He was never supposed to survive alone.
Seria Thalen
A precise elven wizard whose discipline, intelligence, and quiet compassion make her far more dangerous than she first appears.
Pimwick Tallow
A gnome rogue with a quick grin, quicker hands, and a talent for turning survival into a joke before anyone notices it hurt.
Marda Hearthshield
A half-dwarf, half-giant blacksmith and guardian who can stand in front of death, bluntly tell the truth, and mean every word of it.
Urzha Rootblood
A nonbinary orc druid whose magic feels less like spellwork and more like nature deciding it has had enough.
About the author
Jeremy Olson
Jeremy Olson is a fantasy author, Game Master, and lifelong lover of stories about magic, impossible choices, found family, and people becoming braver than they thought they could be.
Raised on comic books, manga, anime, turn-based role-playing games, and more hours of Final Fantasy than he should probably admit, Jeremy spent much of his adult life using storytelling in sales and marketing before finding his way back to creating stories for joy. Tabletop role-playing games helped reignite that part of him, and he has been borderline obsessed ever since.
As a gay author, Jeremy is especially drawn to stories about chosen family, reinvention, and the strange courage it takes to become yourself.
He lives in New York, where he runs campaigns, tends a large vegetable garden, cooks whenever possible, and shares his home with his partner and their Basset hound/Beagle mix, Reggie. No Heroes Are Coming is his debut novel and the first book in The Far Road Campaign series.
Reviewers, podcasts, and media
Want to cover the book?
Jeremy is available for interviews, podcast conversations, BookTube outreach, and advance reader copy consideration related to fantasy fiction, tabletop storytelling, Game Master culture, portal fantasy, found family, and self-publishing a debut novel.