“Back and back following the exile of the Great Witch, the dumas came from shadow into shadow, a stupefied boy shuffling behind them. The forest was a low place, filled with a brooding, shapeless rage and dripping with malice. But the men would make it lower still, the boy’s blood sealing the pact. Thus began the kohlas . . . and by this, the dumas fed the sleeping Dragon.”
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Below is the suggested reading order for the series. Anthology Vol. One can be read independently of the series. However, if you want to read it with the main books, it fits perfectly after A Greedy Shadow, Glint & Shade Book Two.
Terms, Lore, and Geography
I have an ever-expanding glossary of terms. I often discover very interesting side stories, mythologies, and geographical oddities as I am defining terms for use in the series. If you are even half the nerd I am, you may be intrigued by the many tangents from the main story I’ve discovered while navigating the lush, and often dark hinterlands of the world of the Glint. Also, this is a great place to look up a word if you don’t know what it means. Assuming it is a word I invented, of course.
SERIES ORIGINS
In 2001, the summer before I began working at a youth home for troubled teenage boys, I had an epic dream while directing a summer camp for underprivileged children in the Appalachian foothills. I recorded the dream in a journal and even sought a job at the youth home in part because of the dream. Eventually, I wrote it into a short story which went through several variations. It became a novella, and then a novel. Though the dream served as the kernel at the heart of the story, the novel expanded well beyond the dream and is now a series of novels and anthologies. The premise of the dream was straightforward: the country folk living in a specific valley region had a generational tradition of sending their seven-year-old sons on a coming-of-age journey to hunt scarecrows. The people living in the valley believed this was the way boys grew to become men, and the mystery surrounding the rite became their religion. Most of the boys, known as scarecrow hunters, returned many years later as young men and repeated the process with their own sons. It was the way things had always been, but the young men were never the same after they returned home.
The dream became the first two novels in the series. Book one, titled The Scarecrow Hunters, follows Eliot as he navigates the final years of his quest while everything he believed true about himself and his people crumbles. Book two, titled A Greedy Shadow, continues Eliot’s story after he completes his quest and tries to piece together all his shattered fragments into something resembling a real person. Originally, the first two books were together in a single volume, and readers should read them together to get Eliot’s full story. Book three, The Singing Bones, introduces the reader to a new character, Grey, and uncovers her strange and unsettling connection to Eliot’s son, Dathan. The Gathering Grim, book four, brings Grey, Dathan and Eliot’s stories into one narrative and broadens the scope of the series, turning us at last toward the dark dawn coming with the return of the sleeping Dragon. Each anthology, beginning with Glint & Shade Anthology Vol. One, uses short stories to reveal more of the world of the Glint, scenes that provide a closer look at many of our characters in the main series, and the songs, poetry and sacred texts used throughout the books. The anthologies also include author’s notes that reveal behind-the-scenes insight into the writing process.
For readers of the Dark Tower Series, dark fantasy, and gothic horror fiction, this series is a satisfying fever dream of twisted characters set in the macabre world of the Glint. The author leans toward literary fantasy, trusting the reader to think for themselves. Descriptive slow burns, the Glint & Shade books are true dark fantasy with elements of gothic horror and should be read by adults who love dark tales and root for well developed, often complex characters.