Indie bard pens fiction.

John Darnielle, acclaimed lyricist and leader of 4AD folk rock outfit The Mountain Goats, has written his first novel.

Due out this September, Wolf in White Van tells the story of a California man who invents a intricate role-playing game played through the mail, and how the game impacts the lives of two Florida teenagers.

Here’s the description:

Isolated by a disfiguring injury since the age of seventeen, Sean Phillips crafts imaginary worlds for strangers to play in. From his small apartment in southern California, he orchestrates fantastic adventures where possibilities, both dark and bright, open in the boundaries between the real and the imagined. As the creator of “Trace Italian”—a text-based, role-playing game played through the mail—Sean guides players from around the world through his intricately imagined terrain, which they navigate and explore, turn by turn, seeking sanctuary in a ravaged, savage future America.

Lance and Carrie are high school students from Florida, and are explorers of the Trace. But when they take their play into the real world, disaster strikes, and Sean is called on to account for it. In the process, he is pulled back through time, tracing back toward the moment of his own self-inflicted departure from the world in which most people live.

Darnielle is a seasoned writer already, having published a book on Black Sabbath’s Master of Reality for the 33⅓ series back in 2008 as well as writing a regular column for Decibel Magazine.

Wolf in White Van will be published on September 30, 2014 through Farrar, Straus and Giroux. [via CoS]