It’s taken me a while to get around to writing this post, mainly because I struggled to figure out where to start.

I suppose I could begin with the obvious: on Oct. 7, Broken Eye Books will release my horror novel Trail of Shadows. This book has been a labor of years — some of the scenes contained within it have been jetsam floating in my mind since the late 1990s.

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Hardcover: Broken Eye Books

It is a very personal novel, in that it’s a very Appalachian novel, and by that I mean filtered through the experiences of someone who has lived here for decades but isn’t from here, has been most often on the outside looking in — and a very strange novel, Weird Fiction with a Capital W-T-F.

To those of you reading this who have the ability to check out galleys on Edelweiss, Trail of Shadows is there for the reviewing. Check it out here.

Reactions from authors who are contributing blurbs to the book have asserted so far that Trail of Shadows is more than a horror tale, which I find extremely flattering.

It saddens me tremendously that my colleague and friend Jaime Lee Moyer did not live to see this book released into the world, as she went so far above and beyond to level this book up, rolled up her sleeves and dug in to sculpt this novel into the shape that it’s in today. Dedicating the book to her was the least I could do.

I want to extend some additional acknowledgments: to Nicole Kornher-Stace, who endured more than one draft of this monster in its early years; to Jennifer Barnes, whose feedback toward the end of the multiple revision processes proved most insightful; to Erzebet Barthold, who published “The Hiker’s Tale” — the short story that would ultimately expand into this novel — in the lovely second paperback volume of Cabinet des Fées: A Fairy Tale Journal in 2007; and to John Benson, longtime editor and publisher of Not One of Us magazine, for publishing the sequel novelette, “Follow the Wounded One,” as a standalone chapbook in 2009.

Those early installments in what became Trail of Shadows can be found in my collections: “The Hiker’s Tale” is in Unseaming, while “Follow the Wounded One” is included in Aftermath of an Industrial Accident. And man, 2007 was a big year for me creatively, as that also saw the first publication of my Nebula Award-nominated story “The Button Bin,” another horror tale that I’ve expanded on greatly in subsequent years.

I’ve been finding myself driven to expand this world even beyond the novel: thus came the story “The Cruelest Team Will Win,” included in with the new book as a bonus; “The Feather Stitch,” collected in Slow Burn, which ties the world of “The Hiker’s Tale” to that of “The Button Bin”; and a story that began its life with the title “Last Legs,” now published under the name “Lewisburg” in the anthology Winter in the City.

I’m tremendously grateful to Scott Gable of Broken Eye Books for giving this ultraweird magnum opus of mine a home: at 105,000 words, it’s the longest thing I’ve ever had publishing in more than 30 years of playing the publishing game. Not only that, I love how he’s brought an artist’s flair to the look of the book that demonstrates that he really got what I’m going for. His cover design idea has been brilliantly realized by Daniele Serra, depicting one of the book’s central characters, who goes by the name Lilith (though she’s not that Lilith.)

And if you buy the trade paperback edition, you’ll find inside cover art by Kirsty Greenwood illustrating one of the most surreal settings from the book — the mind-bending dimension know as the Underground or the Argent Lands and the Silver City that floats in its sky.

It’s a lot for me to process. I hope you’ll soon have one in your hands!