More than 40 years ago, Clive Barker picked up a pen, put down the stories that would collectively become the Books of Blood, and pushed horror lit into an outer realm of the perverse and macabre that sunk its hooks and chains firmly into readers. The short stories stretched across six volumes and built an epicenter of the author’s work, in which characters like Mahogany (“The Midnight Meat Train”), Harry D’Amour (“The Last Illusion”) and the Candyman (“The Forbidden”) would find life on page before the screen.
Now, Clive is ready to return to the short form literary format, with the recently announced LIBRARY OF THE DEAD.
The LIBRARY OF THE DEAD encompasses three new books – Fear Eternal, Pyres of Bedlam, Dark Descents – each containing a mix of both new and previously published material. The spiritual successor to the Books of Blood, LIBRARY OF THE DEAD is but the cornerstone of a year of Barker that’ll see the coming months served with a remastered Books of Blood set, new art prints and various other experiences. Launched as a Kickstarter initiative as a means to circumvent the shackles of modern commercial publishing, the campaign surpassed its goal within hours of going live. As of this writing, it’s comfortably cleared the $1 million mark, affirming the idea that Barker fans are excited to go back into the shadows with the beloved artist.
Clive recently spoke with RUE MORGUE about the forthcoming project.
LIBRARY OF THE DEAD marks your return to the short story format that both you and your readers hold dear, but this new collection is no mere dark fiction anthology – it’s art, words, collectibles and remastered works, encompassing the next year or so of your life. Sounds like a pretty big undertaking!
The first thing I’d like to say in the time since I published Books of Blood 40 years ago, is that there hasn’t been a lot of short story collections. I don’t know why that is. You go to the horror section in Barnes & Noble and you’ll find many humongous novels but few collections of short stories. I don’t know if that has to do with the taste of the audience or other reasons. I do remember when I first presented the first Books of Blood stories to my publisher, they said, ‘We don’t do short stories.’ It was my first attempt at writing and I was somewhat disappointed. Then they read them and changed their minds. The rest is history, as it were. In that time, in those 40 years since, you have to look hard to find a lot of collections of short stories. Stephen King does some which are wonderful, but the new generation of young writers are not writing short stories. I think a lot of this has to do with expectations that short stories are harder to adapt into other media like television and movies.
What’s paradoxical about that is that some of the greatest horror fiction is short fiction. Going back to Edgar Allen Poe and a whole slew of 19th century writers. They were built on that format. There are 30 stories in Books of Blood. If I had tried to turn any of those into long-form narratives it would not have worked. The strength of them lay in the fact that they are shorter. It allows the writer to slap the reader hard in a way that longer stories can’t. The long form just doesn’t work in the same way. I’ve written some big novels, but the most effective of my fiction is the short fiction. It’s one of the great fun things about doing these new stories for LIBRARY OF THE DEAD. There is some very brutal stuff and there would be no equivalent to that if I tried to do them as longer stories.
Each book contains both new and out-of-print material. In curating the collections, were there any previous stories or poems that were a pleasant rediscovery for you?
Oh yes. There’s a bunch of things which got limited exposure when they were originally published. But we also include stories like “Chiliad,” which is a much longer story, and we’re including it because I feel that it is probably the best short story I’ve ever written. There are others as well, but it’s a real joy to bring these stories to an audience across the different books in the LIBRARY OF THE DEAD to discover for the first time or to enjoy again.
Your art pieces are as coveted as your books, and this collection contains nine new prints at select backer tiers. Any hints into what we can expect?
Actually, thanks to the amazing support of the backers on Kickstarter, there will now be a dozen new prints. There’s a lot of very intense material in LIBRARY OF THE DEAD that these new art pieces will expand upon. We’re seeking to satisfy the audience with artwork that has intensity, is outrageous on occasion, but is accessible. Like the stories, my artwork is different from piece to piece and what supporters will see reflects this. Now that we are publishing ourselves through Kickstarter, it is providing the freedom to express my creative desires not only with the written word but also in the artwork that accompanies it. The Librarian features in one of the stories, for instance, and making a piece of artwork that captures that story is satisfying. Just as Pinhead is central to the Hellbound Heart, the Librarian will be at the core of LIBRARY OF THE DEAD, and being able to tell more about the character in art adds depth to the entire project. I want to tell a story about that character and build its own mythology and show different sides of it with a darkness that is complete unto itself.
Audiobooks used to be an easy-to-digest complement to their printed counterparts, but the last several years have seen the format develop into something more. Tales are now full-on productions with ensemble casts and musical scores, and the immersive quality seems a wonderful fit for your stories. Are there any plans for that with LIBRARY OF THE DEAD?
I’d love to produce the audio books in a way that pulls in the audience in a more meaningful way. I’d love to use music and cast the roles and build this up to make this a richer and fuller experience on audio.
Honestly, I’d love to play a part in this kind of production but I think what it comes down to is reserving some of the surprise we’ll be giving to backers of the project. We’ll have more to share soon. I will say that I think fans of my earlier work will be surprised at who’s involved [with the audiobooks].
While the LGBTQ+ community has always had to fight for its existence, we currently live in an era where those “in charge” are undertaking extreme measures to demonize queer people. As a famously gay writer who’s never pulled punches in exploring sexuality in his work, did you create any of your new stories to push back on the wayward state of affairs?
Yes. I want to make sure that the material that I’ve written has a flavor which presses the limits and, while not directly pushing anything political, remains a reflection of many life experiences. The material I wrote in the original Books of Blood was notable for the amount of sexuality and the extremes it pushed. I had two editors who were both women. The publisher of the first books, Sphere, was very conservative. They forbade me from publishing certain stories, so I withdrew the books. Remember, these were my first books. I was not going to be censored even if this was the first and last opportunity that I ever received. A week went by without response, and they eventually came back and said they wanted two sentences from “In the Hills, the Cities” removed. Again, I said no. Either publish it as I wrote it or I would find someone else. Now, I didn’t have anyone else, but they eventually relented without saying they were relenting. And it was never spoken of again.
For LIBRARY OF THE DEAD, these issues no longer exist. I address the specific things that concern me, but I don’t think there’s purpose in being too overt in your intentions. Instead, I focus on the work and stories that move me. All my stories are very important to me and stories can push me in ways that connect with readers in certain ways. All have elements of this, but some are more overt than others. There’s a lot of unused and unexploited opportunity to write about and I want to be able to explore feelings without being tacky or overexploitative.
For the filmmakers out there, is there one specific story within any of the three volumes that you feel is just screaming for a movie adaptation?
“World Without Witnesses” is an autobiographical story set on the island of Guernsey in the Channel Islands. My godparents lived in Guernsey. They had a huge house. This story is about going to the house as a young man and discovering the ghosts that haunt it. I think it would make a fuck of a movie. Interestingly, we’ve had several producers approach us after seeing the success of LIBRARY OF THE DEAD, so your question is a good one. Just as we’re exploring these stories in my artwork, I would love to see what could happen with them on film as well.
