Tom DeLonge's Poet Anderson franchise, the science fiction saga about the adventures of a vivid dreamer introduced on the 2014 Angels & Airwaves album "The Dream Walker," enters a new phase this week.

On Friday, Sept. 4, AVA releases a new EP, ...Of Nightmares, which will be a companion to Poet Anderson...Of Nightmares, the first of three planned novels written by DeLonge and best-selling author Suzanne Young. Billboard is exclusively premiering the four-track EP's lead-off track, "Home," below. Listen:

The song reflects a different kind of creative mindset that DeLonge brought to the table this time. "When we thought about, 'How would the music work with (the novel)?,' it was best for us to do something that was just very left of center, an art project in and of its own and something that was totally experimental for us," the guitarist explains. "I think there's, like, one normal song on the EP; the rest of it was meant to just be really pushing the envelope, something that is unorthodox, at least for Angels & Airwaves. These are not songs I wrote in my living room and said, 'Let's go in and record these verses and choruses.' We didn't do it that way."

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"Home" was inspired by an art installation DeLonge saw online, and by the music that accompanied it. "It had a really hypnotic piece of music that really resonated with me," he recalls. "So the very, very first notes of 'Home' are my interpretation of what I heard at that one time, and that's how it started. And then you get inspired to do another thing; 'I'll put this here' or 'How about this? How about this?' And the next thing you know you have something."

The Poet Anderson...Of Nightmares novel is due out Oct. 6, and DeLonge plans to begin working on the second one with Young before the end of the year (watch the trailer for the book, which Billboard is exclusively premiering below). Meanwhile, he's in discussions with a major film studio for a movie version of the Anderson story following the release of the animated short Poet Anderson: The Dream Walker and graphic novels last year.

This is the first of five ambitious multimedia franchises the onetime Blink-182 guitarist plans to launch with his company To The Stars.

"Each franchise is an art project in and of itself and has a publishing component with novels, sometimes non-fiction books as well, documentaries, animations, feature films, television, graphic novels -- so a little bit of everything," DeLonge explains. "We're releasing them in pieces over a group of years, a handful of years, but each one has to stand up on its own. None of them can be mediocre pieces of art, but they all work together."

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He's not tipping his hand about the future projects, but DeLonge (who tells Billboard that he would consider playing with his Blink bandmates Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker again after their acrimonious split earlier this year) acknowledged discussions with Cirque du Soleil as well as meetings with staffers from Area 51, the Air Force Space Command and "a very famous astronaut" whom he filmed for a documentary. More Angels & Airwaves music is on his docket, too, though DeLonge says playing live with the band these days is a whole other matter.

"I'd really like to put the band in these environments that we're talking about," he says. "I have no desire to just tour clubs and grind away because it's very labor intensive, and it'll take me away from these other things I'm doing. I mean, I'm doing a lot of crazy shit, and I just don't have time to be touring around in clubs, if that makes any sense."