Earlier than we do anything, let’s simply do some awkward whirligig dance, praising the darkish gods past the steps and saying huzzah and hooray, The Staircase within the Woods is now on the cabinets of bookstores and libraries and, ideally, in your bookshelf or lurking in your digital machine. And so I provide unto you your procurement choices —

Signed and customized from Doylestown Bookshop, or from any of the shops I’m visiting on tour — but in addition?

Bookshop.org, Kobo, libro.fm, B&N, Apple Books, Amz, PRH Web site

There. With that out of the way in which, some temporary ideas.

It’s bizarre writing a ebook. You are taking all this time to write down the primary draft. Three months, six months, a 12 months, no matter. Then it enters not one, however a sequence of chrysalises — subsequent drafts, developmental edit, copy-edits, web page proofs, tweaks, covers, advertising and marketing plans, launch plans, after which sooner or later, in what seems like fucking ceaselessly because you wrote it, the ebook bursts free from that last chrysalis and — it’s the ebook! The one you wrote! It’s type of perhaps a butterfly now but it surely’s onerous to inform since you’ve spent so lengthy with it, and but it’s been so lengthy because you wrote it, it’s in some way each troublingly acquainted and in addition alien on the identical time? You maintain it in your arms and stare it with an uncanny eye, whispering, “I do know you. Don’t I?”

After which it will get weirder as a result of whereas the primary draft was for me, all the things since then has been for another person. And now, now, it’s all the way in which on the market, on the earth, and it’s not mine in any respect anymore, it’s yours.

Writing a ebook is that this mad act of being misplaced after which discovering your manner however then getting misplaced once more earlier than getting discovered once more earlier than getting LOST AGAIN and round and round you go. Carousels and labyrinths.

And, one supposes, staircases to [REDACTED].

Anyway! It’s out! I hope you prefer it. Due to my agent, Stacia, for serving to guarantee it has its house — and due to Tricia, my editor, for serving to shepherd me from what was a captivating and important Ship-of-Theseus-style edit, whereupon the second draft stays basically the identical as the primary, but additionally in some way, completely totally different? And thanks too to the Del Rey workforce for serving to make this ebook look as cool because it does. I’m a fortunate boy.

What’s it about?

It’s a ebook the place I’m fairly protecting of spoilers, so right here I’ll simply go along with what the quilt copy says, which is just about the core of it:

5 highschool buddies are bonded by an oath to guard each other it doesn’t matter what.

Then, on a tenting journey in the midst of the forest, they discover one thing extraordinary: a mysterious staircase to nowhere.

One pal walks up—and by no means comes again down. Then the staircase disappears.

Twenty years later, the staircase has reappeared. Now the group returns to seek out the misplaced boy—and what lies past the staircase within the woods. . .

No, man, what’s it actually about?

Ohhh. I see what you’re asking. Like, what’s it about about, proper? Nicely. I don’t know! I imply, a few of that’s so that you can determine. For me, a minimum of, it’s about… friendship is magic? Friendship can also be onerous particularly as an grownup? About how getting misplaced is vital, about how remorse could be a horrible self-inflicted burden, about how how if we don’t unload our luggage from time to time it would most likely kill us? I dunno. You learn it and inform me. I’m nonetheless type of dancing round it, seeing by totally different home windows.

Why do I would like it?

As a result of it’s assured to make you cheerful and spiritually fulfilled and in addition in case you don’t purchase it I’ll cowl you in ants OKAY FINE none of that’s true.

It’s creepy, it’s escapist, it’s puzzley. It’s emotional and darkish (perhaps the darkest ebook I’ve written, although I by no means write with out a gilding of some gentle, if solely to border out the darkness). It’s twisty and turny and peculiar.

As a result of it’s type of a sister ebook to The E book of Accidents.

As a result of it has a number of little… Easter Eggs connecting my different books.

As a result of horror is reassuring, in its bizarre manner?

As a result of books are a fairly good worth on this economic system, many hours of escape from the *gesticulates wildly* for a fairly low worth?

BECAUSE I WORKED REALLY HARD ON IT OKAY

Are there set off warnings?

Not formally, however I’m glad to supply what are, in my view, the triggers within the ebook, however I’m hiding them behind a ROT13 cipher so you’ll be able to translate as you see slot in case you think about these items “spoilery” —

frys-unez, fhvpvqny vqrngvba, qbzrfgvp ivbyrapr, puvyq nohfr, puvyq frkhny nohfr

Can I learn folks saying good issues in regards to the ebook?

Positive!

The Guardian stated this:

“Chuck Wendig’s The Staircase within the Woods (Del Rey) takes a seemingly easy format – ‘5 youngsters went into the woods. Solely 4 of them got here out’ – and provides a wholesome dose of horror to it. There’s the police investigation, after all, asking Lauren, Nick, Owen and Hamish what occurred to Matty that night time. However the 4 buddies know that they’ll by no means have the ability to admit the reality – {that a} unusual staircase appeared within the woods, and Matty walked up it and vanished on the prime. Twenty years later, they’ve tried to overlook what occurred. ‘Don’t even give it some thought. Don’t take into consideration that day. Don’t put his identify in your thoughts.’ However they’re introduced again collectively when the staircase reappears, and determine to go in search of the pal they deserted years earlier. I received’t spoil what lies on the prime, but it surely’s pleasingly nightmarish and really tousled. I’ll be sincere: it’s extra horror than thriller, so rely your self duly warned. However for all ye courageous sufficient to enter right here, it’s a deliciously scary story of friendship and braveness – in addition to evil, homicide and all that jazz.”

From Michael Patrick Hicks at FanFiAddict:

“The Staircase within the Woods is a shifty, shifting hodgepodge of inspirations that finally come collectively in distinctive, and uniquely infectious, methods, inside and outside. It cuts and crawls its manner into you, burrowing into your coronary heart and thoughts, twisting and altering because it grows deeper inside you, and isn’t that simply one of the best type of horror?”

From Anna Dupre at Capes and Tights:

“To say it is a haunting novel is an enormous understatement with each alternative current as a ghost that lingers for much longer than the flip of the web page.

In what seems like an post-mortem of the thought friendship itself, The Staircase within the Woods leaves a resonant notion that speaks to every reader individually, a really haunting narrative. It is a novel that revels within the darkest corners of any room, transcending the unusual to ship an emotionally tumultuous journey of advanced friendship. Whereas there’s lots to like on the floor of this story, the underlying tones, reckonings, and reflections of every character echo with a convincing pressure, compounding to type one outstanding narrative. Harrowing for all the appropriate causes, The Staircase within the Woods provides depth to the subjects we’d quite go away shallow.”

From Rob Bedford at SFFWorld —

“Over the previous half-decade or so, Chuck Wendig has risen to the very prime of my must-buy, favourite horror writers (not that he writes solely horror, however most of his stuff has a minimum of a darkish undercurrent to it). The Staircase within the Woods helps to cement his writing close to or on the prime of that record and is a pleasant, emotional, resonant, terrifying novel.”

Oh and did I point out all of the very beautiful blurbs for which I’m grateful?

“Chuck Wendig weaves his magic as soon as extra, turning a lonely staircase within the woods right into a searing, propulsive, dread-filled exploration of the horrors of realizing and being recognized.”—Kiersten White, writer of Cover and Lucy Timeless

“Chuck Wendig is the Frank Lloyd Wright of horror, and right here’s his masterstroke of malaise. The Staircase within the Woods is a real blueprint for terror.”—Clay McLeod Chapman, writer of Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“[A] masterclass in character . . . Unputdownable, with imagery that cuts like a knife—that is Chuck Wendig on the prime of his recreation.”—Thomas Olde Heuvelt, writer of HEX and Darker Days

“Chuck Wendig has given us one other stunner. The Staircase within the Woods is as mysterious, alluring, heartbreaking, ever-shifting, and unnervingly highly effective as the character of friendship itself.”—Nat Cassidy, writer of When the Wolf Comes Dwelling and Mary

“Coronary heart-wrenching and anxiety-inducing. Like if the crew from King’s IT had been thrown into the chaotic hallways of Danielewski’s Home of Leaves, The Staircase within the Woods will develop into lodged in your thoughts, in case you let it in.”—Jenny Kiefer, writer of This Wretched Valley

“Chuck Wendig has crafted a really sinister tackle the acquainted city legend. Extremely unique and deeply disturbing, this one will keep on with you.”—Gwendolyn Kiste, Bram Stoker Award-winning writer of Reluctant Immortals and The Haunting of Velkwood

“The Staircase within the Woods is scrumptious disorienting and deeply charming. It should pull on the threads of your psyche in one of the best ways till you are feeling such as you simply emerged from essentially the most beautiful nightmare.”—Alaina Urquhart, #1 New York Occasions bestselling writer of The Butcher Recreation

“A looking portrait of 4 buddies looking for the issues all of us are likely to lose as we get older: religion, course, hope, happiness, function . . . That’s the guts of Chuck Wendig’s work in these pages, and to learn a ebook that illuminates such profound human truths may be very uncommon certainly.”—Nick Cutter, bestselling writer of The Troop

Are you occurring tour with this ebook?

Heck yeah —

(Hope to see you alongside the way in which! Besides you, over there. You recognize who you might be. YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID.) Hyperlinks to the occasions may be discovered right here.

“Chuck, what can I do to assist?”

Supporting the ebook is large, and that may are available in quite a lot of non-exclusive, non-exhaustive methods — you’ll be able to evaluation the ebook, you’ll be able to inform your family and friends and foes, you’ll be able to ask your native library to hold it, you’ll be able to order it out of your native indie bookstore and purchase 500 copies after which use these copies to construct a staircase within the woods that you simply stroll up after which bounce off of into [REDACTED] and y’know, yeah, there are plenty of cool methods. Even simply sharing this submit round helps.

Regardless of the case, I’m grateful for readers like yourselves who learn these books and care about them and share the ebook love round. I solely get to exist by the fortune and charm of your studying consideration, so for that — thanks so very a lot, and I’ll see you on the opposite aspect.