Everville - Children's Novel
...The title 'Everville' seems to have been knocking around for, well,
ever... Its first plotline as a children's book appears to have
disappeared never to be resurrected before it settled down to be just
a proud little city in a valley in the State of Oregon where one or two
miracles might be just around the corner...
"I'm delivering to Harper [August 1991] a short children's
novel called Everville, though I hope it will have
crossover appeal."
Boundless Imajination
By WC Stroby,
(i) Fangoria, No 109, January 1992
(ii) Horror Zone, No1, August 1992 {Note : interview took place in
August 1991}
"[The Art - Book 2] is going to be a little time because
I've got Everville, the children's book as it were, to
write. And then I'll do my next movie with Universal [Eden USA]. Then I'll start
on whatever the next large novel will be. I'm not sure
exactly when, but certainly before the end of the
century !"
Imajiman
By Jon Gregory,
Hellraiser, No 2, 1991
"Everville, a children's book and novel, is halfway finished. It's
about the length I suppose of Something Wicked This Way Comes. A novel
for children which will hopefully work for adults. I read Something
Wicked when I was nine, read it again when I was thirteen, again when I
was seventeen and I still go back to it. I think it is a tremendous
piece of fantastical writing."
A Pilgrim's Progress Through The Worlds of the Imajica
By [ ],
World Of Fandom, Vol 2 No 15, Spring 1992
"It [Everville] will be a short, by Imajica standards, fantasy book.
It will probably be about 200-250 pages long. It's set in Middle
America and has three young people as protagonists. It is a fantasy
set in the past, the present and the future. It has elements of horror
fiction, it certainly has elements of fantasy, it even has elements
of science fiction. It really is a melange of a book...
I think we have
to be careful with the term 'children's book'. Something Wicked This
Way Comes I read as a child. It's certainly approachable as a child.
This is no more a children's book than Something Wicked This Way
Comes, nor any less. It's a book which I think young adults will be able to
read, but people with a sense of wonder at 92 will also be able to read
it with pleasure. I've also just done a deal with HarperCollins to
publish a short (5000 - 6000 word) fable which I have written for
children. [Thief of Always]"
Dread Speaks with Clive Barker
By [Michael Brown],
Dread, No 3, December 1991
[Re. writing Everville for children] "[Ray Bradbury] was a guy who
truly touched my life as a child in a significant way and had an impact
on me right through my years as a teenager. I'd like to approach that
kind of continuity."
Profile Horror Writer Makes Pact To Hold Back Nothing
By Valerie Takahama,
Orange County Register, 4 September 1991
"It's called Everville and I'm about halfway through it at the moment.
It comes out of my enthusiasm for CS Lewis's Narnia books and Ray
Bradbury's work; Something Wicked This Way Comes and The October
Country. I still enjoy those kinds of fiction and I had an idea which
I thought I could do something with. A book for and about children.
Something Wicked This Way Comes is both for and about [children], but
it's also for adults. I think that, like all great fantasy, Bradbury's
books grow with you and you find more things in them as your life
experience accrues. The best children's fiction speaks to adults and I'
m not saying I'll be able to achieve it without a struggle but it's
certainly a high ambition to go in there with."
Barker USA
By David Howe,
Starburst Yearbook 1991/92, Special No 10
"There are two books before [Eden USA]. One is a short fable for
children [Thief Of Always] (though it will probably dement more
children than it will delight), and another fantasy book called
Everville. I've just finished the first draft of that. Everville is
for the sort of audience who would read 'Something Wicked This Way
Comes'. I first read Something Wicked... when I was eleven. When you
read it again you find it has glories you didn't even notice the first
time around. I think I've read it three times already and I bought
another copy of it again yesterday... Everville will make sense to 12
year-olds but it will also make sense to a 92 year-old. I think that
was true of Weaveworld. Weaveworld has a lot of young fans... Everville
probably won't be published until the spring of 1993."
An Interview With Clive Barker
By Robert Errera,
Hecate's Cauldron, Vol 1, Issue 3, 1992 (note - interview took place
4th January 1992)
"I'm writing a couple of small books right now for children. Get to
'em young, I say. I said to my publisher, 'If Edgar Allan Poe had
written for kids, this is what it'd would be like.' We'll see. That's
a whole different area of work. Fantasy fiction is very powerful. And,
again, you can get to people while their imagination is still open...
One book is for 7-year-olds and one is for 15-year-olds. There's a lot
of subversive children's literature, way back to Where The Wild Things Are."
The Interview from Hell
By Christian Gore,
Film Threat, Volume 2, Issue 5, August 1992
"I'll probably do these two short books, Everville and the fable book,
before I start my work on the next movie... Everville is one book and
the fable book will be the other.
"[About Everville?] Only that it's a short book, that it will be
illustrated, not by me, but we're talking with a bunch of illustrators
at the moment. It has its dark side - it's a short dark fable. I
think fable is literally the best word for it, in that it has a moral,
and it has a kind of moral underpinning to it, and it's a story which
I've wanted to write for a long time. So that's gone along on its
merry way. And I'll turn that in to them in the Spring of next year."
A Conversation With Clive Barker
By Tyson Blue,
Cemetery Dance, Vol 4 No 1, Winter 1992
Craig Herman : "Clive will have his first children's book
published in the fall of 1992, a fable called Everville."
Imajica - Press Release
By Craig Herman,
HarperCollins Press Kit, August? 1991
...Written in the Summer of 1971 between school and university, this
was dedicated to Barker's closest friends. Barker submitted it to a
publisher but lost interest in the revisions they suggested...
"I wrote a novel for children called The Candle In The Cloud. It was a
fantasy book, set both in the here and now and in an invented world. I
did send this book off to a few publishers and one of them was
interested in it. However the publisher wanted some changes made and I
was about to go to university, so I put off polishing the novel until
the following summer vacation. When I went back to it almost a year
later, the enthusiasm I had felt for the story had withered away."
Introduction to Clive Barker's Thief Of Always,
By Clive Barker, 3 August 2001
[On the revisions] "I was about to go into university and I just wasn't up for it."
Hydra Rising
By Douglas E. Winter, Clive Barker: The Dark Fantastic, 2001
"The first novel I wrote, which was called The Candle In The Cloud, I wrote when I was seventeen and it was a novel for young people
and nobody would publish it, of course – and probably very good for my reputation that they didn’t! – But I’ve always loved children’s
fiction…"
Barnes and Noble Stage Presentation
By Brein Lopez, LA Festival of Books, 25 April 2004
"I wrote a novel called The Candle In the Cloud when I was seventeen… And I sent that off to a couple of publishers. I actually
had one publisher who wanted to publish it but wanted
changes made. I, at that time - by the time I'd started the novel, finished the novel, had it typed out, had it copied - which was all
much more difficult back then, I actually paid my father's secretary the money to type out the novel - by the time I'd done all that and
received the letter saying, 'Yes, we'll take the novel,' but they want to change it, I was about to go to university and it just was
impossible to contemplate a university career and taking on the job of reworking the novel so I politely declined and said, 'Hopefully
when my university career is over we'll talk again.' And by the time university was over The Candle In The Cloud felt so remote and I
was so changed by the university experience, not necessarily for the better. I studied English and Philosophy and had drowned in
words and my theatre company at that point, as you know, became a mime company - which tells you something. You know, I
was just not interested in words; I'd just had too much of it. And the notion of going back again to the novel, or even starting a new
one was unthinkable."
Sowing The Seeds Of The Story Tree
By Phil and Sarah Stokes,
28 August and 4 September 2006 (note - full text here)
...Due to have been illustrated by his then Crouch End neighbour, now
award-winning artist, Jane Ray, reasons for this one falling by the
wayside are unknown. However, nearly twenty years on, Clive maintains that this is not abandoned, and that he continues to
add to it from time to time - maybe we'll see it yet...
"I'm at present working on a selection of projects. A large novel, the
subject of which I have to keep under wraps for a while, but which will
take my work in another direction entirely to the Books of Blood. Also,
an illustrated book for children which I've been shaping up for the
past eighteen months, returning to it whenever deadlines allow."
Clive Barker
By William J. Grabowski,
The Horror Show, Vol 4 Issue 2, Spring 1986
"I've got a book coming out which is being illustrated by a lady friend
of mine which I really like, which is about the creator deciding that
the world should be boxed up and put away. Everything. And about a
girl and her iguana who managed to escape this fate with hilarious
results. It's a very strange little book, actually. I don't know what
the kids are going to make of it but I'm having a good time."
An Interview with Clive Barker
Transcript of an interview on KPFA, San Francisco by Richard Lupoff,
Richard Wolinsky and Lawrence Davidson,
(i) Science Fiction Eye, No 4, August 1988,
(ii) Masters of the Macabre II (as "A Talk with the King")
"The Everything is a book to come... That's all I'm tellin'!!"
IRC Online
Transcript of on-line appearance 26 November 1995
"That's still very much there... not finished, but [I've] certainly continued to put detail on it... These are not
abandoned children, they are just children who wandered away for a while... Well, what have I got? Olio - which
is actually The Everything, Olio was my first pass at the title of The Everything."
The Lazarus Muse: Nights Of Magic, Days Of Gore
By Phil and Sarah Stokes,
2 June 2005 (note:
full text here)
The Adventures Of Mr Maximillian Bacchus And His Travelling Circus
...An illustrated work for children, written in the
Winter of 1974, this was submitted to publishers without success and remains unpublished...
Pete Atkins : "[It was] an idealised wish of what the Theatre of
the Imagination might become. Clive thought he was Maximillian Bacchus,
and we were his travelling circus - although, in the illustrations, Max
looked more like Phil Rimmer, and Jozabiah Bentham, the villain, looked
like Clive."
Hydra Rising
By Douglas E. Winter, Clive Barker: The Dark Fantastic, 2001
...While it may be true that very few things are as bad as you fear,
we fear that The Droolies will be staying tucked up in
Barker's house for the foreseeable future rather than invading ours.
Adding to the list of children's projects that never materialised, this
looks to have been a manifestation of the monsters-under-the-bed story...
Very few things are as bad as you fear they'll be. This the Droolies
knew. So they were expert at making you believe the worst. Huge eyes,
that seemed in the dark to belong to a much bigger and more ferocious
animal; teeth that were made for gnashing, but were bad at gnawing;
fingers that felt, when they touched the back of your neck, as cold
and as deep-sea slimey as an octopus' kiss. But it was all in the mind.
The Droolies, when seen in daylight, were pale, thin, apologetic
creatures, whose worst trait was a nervous and insipid giggle.
from The Droolies by Clive Barker
...As far as "outtakes" from the volumes of the Books of Blood waiting to be
discovered go, the short story Coming To Grief was the "finished" story
that failed to make the out-and-out horror grade when putting the
final running order of the first three books together (but was later published in Douglas Winter's Prime
Evil). One or two more,
however, existed in draft and we'll leave them
here in "Books that got away" until we find out whether any of them
subsequently became standalone short stories...
"There was nothing to select really, as I only had fifteen stories. We
did reject one, however, which was too mild, and there was a great
argument as to whether we should include In The Hills, The Cities."
The Author Of Blood
By David J Howe, Starburst Winter Special 1987/88
"I have a couple of short stories from the early Books of Blood which I finished but didn't ever get into a second draft. I got to a first draft and then I came up with an idea I preferred. But they're in a very rough-and-ready state."
Clive Barker : Trust Your Vision
By WC Stroby,
Writer's Digest, March 1991
"There were a few and there's a couple of things which in the course of
time I may publish, having gone over them again. There wasn't anything
which was finished, polished, and done. There were things which I had
either abandoned or felt that I wasn't ready for, or occasionally there
were ideas which found their way into novels, subsequent things which I
knew would brim over if I tried to do them as short stories."
Riding The Waves With Clive Barker
By Carnell,
Carpe Noctem, Vol 2 No 3, 1995
...Between 1977 and 1979 Barker scripted a 14 act, 17 hour Commedia
dell'Arte piece, designed to be performed in three segments over three
consecutive nights. It had one read-through, but was never staged.
We'll be picking this one up in our illustrated history of the plays - see
this page for details of our "Plays Project"
with Clive...
"I have long contemplated an edition of my plays, including the fourteen-act, and consequently unproducible, Comedy Of Comedies. "
Shadows In Eden: Afterword
By Clive Barker, Clive Barker's Shadows in Eden, 11th June, 1989
"There is also an unpublished play which I'm thinking of putting
together as a book, probably illustrated, called The Comedy of Comedies. It's probably
unproducible because it's 14 acts long! It's about the Commedia dell'
Arte, which has always been an interest of mine. I'm very interested
in Fools: fools obsess me and always have, clowns too. "
Transcript of talk at UCLA 25 February 1987
Clive Barker's Shadows in Eden
Pete Atkins : [On the read-through]
"It took us an entire day, and it was extremely good."
London Calling
By Douglas E. Winter, Clive Barker: The Dark Fantastic, 2001
|
