Now And In Time To Be

The Twenty-Sixth Revelatory Interview
By Phil & Sarah Stokes, 1 and 4 January 2010

Revelations : "On this auspicious first day of a new decade, we'll be looking forward but, for completeness' sake, let's just quickly close off on 2009 by talking about the Imagining Man photography and art exhibition that ran through to Christmas Eve?"

Clive : "Sure! It was awesome. You know, this is a bad time to have art sales..."

Revelations : "Which makes it difficult for you and Bert Green to maintain any kind of momentum."

Clive : "Absolutely right. So, we sold a lot of pictures, we made the most money of any exhibition Bert's had but, in comparison with the other exhibitions, I'd obviously brought prices down, I'd done everything I possible could to make it available to people, you know? It was all about volume. I mean, we're talking about photographs now at 150 bucks and that was fine: I mean, once I've taken the picture, I've taken the picture, all I need to do is sign an edition of 10 or whatever."

Revelations : "And you were doing different versions, some on very high quality photographic stock paper and some less expensive prints."

Clive : "And those were just literally sold off the wall, I mean they weren't even signed it was just, bam! You put another one up on the wall! I mean there are 90,000 images."

Revelations : "And that's always been your hope: to spread the reach."

Skulls sketch

Clive : "Oh, you're so right. I am delighted that there are so many women who have bought these pictures - far more women than men. I would almost say overwhelmingly straight women, buying for themselves and going away with four or five images, which I thought was just super - it was just bam, yeah, go for it baby! And they would come back and get another one or another two - it was wonderful, it really was, it was great to see that happening. And you know, a lot of them made very off-beat choices. The pictures on the wall were off-beat... but it was wonderful to have somebody be so articulate about their enthusiasm for the pictures, so passionate about it all, it was great!"

Revelations : "And the set up looked great too - the way the artwork was mingled with the photographs, was mingled with the props..."

Clive : "Yeah, I loved that too. You know we had all those skulls, well, Gareth my nephew was here and he said he wanted a skull tattoo and I did fifty or whatever designs and he chose one and people had fun buying those too I think. That was just pure accident, you know, Gareth was just there and he said, can you design me something and of course, I can never design one thing, so there were fifty of them and they looked pretty good. I mean I'd just pulled them out of my notebook and they had the little holes in them, and I think people liked that too. There was something about the whole exhibition which was very, 'you are in my studio,' it was very much of that flavour. And, this was great: nobody touched anything. I was afraid that we were going to have people rip stuff off the walls or whatever - we had hundreds of people through and not an issue."

Revelations : "And we now see that, though Artprojx at Zazzle, people can have those skulls on shirts and ties... "

Clive : "Oh yeah, we're looking into all of that. In this economy, with films being harder to set up, with Joanna Cotler no longer having her own imprint, with everything changing, I really have to be protean."

Revelations : "You have to play in all these places."

Dark Bazaar from Disguise

Clive : "Exactly right. So you know we've got the Halloween stuff coming from Disguise and it is superb, I mean it is beautiful. There will be 19 things in the first year, we're now designing the second year and the take-up from stores all across America has been universal. I don't expect we'll see a lot of money quickly because I think in that kind of business you need to get your feet under the table, but I think I've got to be practical about this, you know - I'm not Stephen King, I can't turn out five huge books a year, I just can't. I'm amazed that he can! I really am! I am astonished that, long after he retired, he's still producing three! When he took the Entertainment Weekly job, he said, you know, I'm not really a writer any more, I'm going to bum around - and I don't think his production has gone down much... "

Revelations : "I haven't read On Writing, to know how many drafts he goes through?"

Clive : "Well, he doesn't own up. The book is really great, I highly recommend the book but he's not very revelatory about himself. As you know, I draft and re-draft..."

Revelations : "So, shall we talk a little bit about what you're currently up to?"

Clive : "Oh God - yes, I wish you had a picture - I am putting together all the stories for Black Is The Devil's Rainbow. I have been writing stories for collections of various kinds that never had a real title for a long time and so probably there's ten years' worth of stories here. And many of these stories are very short, you know, they're a page long. And then something like Grail, for instance, is probably going to come in at 140,000 words, so it's a real range. And then there's a lot of stuff which is not finished and the question is well, which ones do I want to finish? Which ones do I want to leave? Which ones are not working at all and should be screwed up and burned? And, let's see, there are one, two... six, seven... thirteen, fourteen.... fourteen piles of papers, the smallest of which is a foot tall! Which is all, this all, you know, stuff which has been clipped together over the years... We have assembled lots of poems...
"The whole idea of the book is to have something like a shelf of books, something that looks like a shelf of books, each of which is different, maybe comes in a different typeface, maybe even different paper, I would love that; I would love to feel that the book would be several books. And in which case I might divide the poems into two collections of poems - one of which would go towards the beginning, one towards the end, for instance... I mean it's a plan whether it will work or not - it's got to go through the money people - Rakesh, my editor and I have talked about that and I think it will be honestly really, really cool if we can do it."

Revelations : "So to give us a sense, the fourteen piles - what's the logic behind what ends up in each pile?"

Clive : "Well, let's see if I can actually describe them by going through them: one of them is a pile of names, invented names - I go through weird, I don't know, weird periods of my life, when for a couple of hours weird names will just pour out of me - Kaspar Wolfswinkel came out that way, he was written on a piece of paper long, long, long before I Collecting names... wrote the character. And so I have a pile of names about ten inches tall, some pieces of paper in which will have twenty names on and some of which will have one name on it, depending on the circumstances in which it was written. What else do I have, oh, I obviously have Grail, I have Jehovah's Bitch, I have a collection of shorter short stories which I'd like to be able to finish for this collection if I can. I'm a little cautious about naming them but there's about twelve of those in two piles, what else do I have? Oh, The Scarlet Gospel stuff, which I forgot I'd written! And so on and so forth, it's everywhere. But that's a cross-section."

Revelations : "And you've been working on the collection for some time now, is Rakesh holding you to a deadline on this one or is it as and when?"

Clive : "Well, I'm ready to deliver most of it now, I mean there's still some typing to be done, I have a little bit to do on Grail and a little bit to do on Jehovah's Bitch but the rest of the stuff's done. So it's really more a question of am I going to hand it in to him piecemeal or am I going to hand it in to him - you know, it's a big motherfucker! You know, you sent me that wonderful list of things that you thought should be in the book and I agreed with all of those - but that's a big book right there, you know?"

Revelations : "So it will still be a mix of new and old, is that still the plan?"

Clive : "Yes, but I think it will tend towards the new, more than I thought, frankly."

Revelations : "Well, I guess if you've got two stories in front of you and you're weighing them up - one of which people already have access to in some form - you're going to go for the new, aren't you?"

Clive : "No question. Though I'm very disappointed: Chiliad, for instance, I really think Chiliad should be in print. It disappoints me that HarperCollins didn't even know it existed! They couldn't even find paper on it. I don't know what it is, honestly, I sometimes think the larger these damn companies become, the dumber they become and the more trapped in these dumb machines and systems, the individuals, the human beings, are. I know that when Joanna Cotler left her own imprint at HarperCollins, I said, you had the dream job, you had your own imprint, you could do anything you liked. And she said yes, but it was a corporation. And corporate America has become - even for someone like Joanna who had her own fiefdom and worked within that fiefdom, obviously was the ruler, once she stepped outside she was still in the corporate wastelands - do you think that's true of England?"

Revelations : "I think it depends on the corporate - certainly in the last twelve months, people have been looking at what will make money and what will not make money and a lot of things have been chopped. I think what happens in practice in certain organisations is that the levels of authority that you have to go through to get something approved just spiral out of control so it's difficult to know how to actually get a decision made. But some corporates do it very effectively."

Clive : "I think both of those things you describe - the cutting back on lists and the hellish ladder of authority - both describe what's also going on in movies."

Revelations : "Well, movies are an expensive business and they're a lot more expensive than a book!"

Clive : "Right, but the upside is usually much, much larger - I saw an article that said this quarter for the first time in England, games made more money than movies."

Revelations : "Actually games haven't had a fantastic last period but are huge now compared to, say, recorded music. But, if you look back over the whole of 2009, box office is up in the UK - cinema's had a fantastic time. When I talk with the cinema owners, they're predicting 2010 will be a good year as well because they're looking at a strong pipeline of things which have already been shot and they know are on the slates for 2010: there's a lot of sequels in there, sequels in good franchises. It's the 2011 ones where the funding, from a lot of the hedge funds and the external financing sources which are not as big and therefore studios have had to make decisions as to what to make now which will funnel through into the 2011 release schedule."

Clive : "Is it so much the kind of movie that's being made or is the level at which the movie can be realised?"

Revelations : "Well, inevitably, they're looking for how strong will a movie be and that's both a combination of genre and star, I think what's been interesting over the last year is that some of the biggest movies haven't had big stars in them."

Clive : "Well, I don't think a star means a fuck of a lot any more, certainly over here it doesn't - you know, Tom Cruise can be in failures, Nicole Kidman can be in failures, I'm trying to think of somebody who is completely untouchable and I can't think of anybody. There are so few movies that attract me now, that literally call me to see it at the movies. My Blu-ray gives me a pristine picture and pristine sound and it comes out in a couple of months anyway, and I can keep it. It's a lot of money, Sarah, if you take the boys, you've got the car or taxi, or whatever, you've got to get them treats when you get there and four tickets - you've already bought two DVDs by the time you step inside!"

Revelations : "I'm not so down on the cinema experience as you are, at all. The very fact that, in a year like 2009, box office can be up - the actual number of people going was up a bit and with the price-point for 3D movies so much higher it was up more in money terms. 3D's an event and an experience in and of itself, and actually I think that has changed the rules somewhat. It'll be interesting when we get away from the movies that want to shake 3D effects in your face and just let it become an immersive experience."

Clive : "I'm much more cynical about that than you, Phil, I think 3D is - even Avatar which purports to be the best of them - is... blah... On the issue of 3D, whether you end up saying, boy, you've got to create and everything has to be in 3D from now on, I think just is not the case. Ten minutes into Avatar, I couldn't have cared less whether it was 3D or not. It wouldn't make me like it any more or dislike it any more if it was. The movie's strengths are about character Disney's Bolt and story and, yes, effects, no question, but I actually took my glasses off and ignored the technology and actually watched the movie! I took them off for about twenty minutes just to see whether I was in any way sort of more or less involved in the action - the answer was no. Now that might be different for the boys?"

Revelations : "Well most of the 3D movies we've seen have been animated features - you know, Bolt from Disney was a great movie in 3D. They loved Monsters Versus Aliens that way too."

Clive : "Right, but with respect, that's exactly the opposite of what we need to see, we need to see ordinary people doing things in 3D to find out whether that's what people want to see, you see? If you're animating something well, you're already in the artificial world, you're adding an extra dimension and that can be pretty cool but - "

Revelations : "It's a whole different ball game - "

Clive : "Exactly, but what if there were a Merchant Ivory movie - would that be different in 3D..? Or any movie which is more about textures and emotional complexities - Brokeback Mountain, would that be any different in 3D? I say no."

Revelations : "So that's 2010 at the movies covered!"

Clive : "It's interesting because some people came to me wanting me to do an animated movie for them, but now they're not sure whether they can afford it and that's, I suppose that wouldn't be for 2011 now, that would be 2012.. woah! The End of the World on the Mayan calendar!"

Revelations : "We're not going for that theory. In any event, we're less than 24 hours into this decade and we've already seen The End of Time... We were five minutes between finishing watching Doctor Who and calling you - so we're emotionally drained here."

Clive : "Woah - what happened..?"

Revelations : "We're not going to tell you anything - you have to wait and watch it and absorb it yourself!"

Clive : "Bastards! Bastards! Fuck!"

Doctor Who - The End Of Time

Revelations : "You know that's the way you want it!"

Clive : "You're my friends and no, no, of course I don't want you to tell me a word! But - is it the end of the series?"

Revelations : "That is the end of David Tennant, so when it comes back in the spring it'll be Matt Smith."

Clive : "That's scheduled for when, Sarah?"

Revelations : "Spring 2010, they've been shooting since last summer."

Clive : "OK, good - did you end up finishing the book?"

Revelations : "Which? The Russell T Davies book? Oh - a wonderful book, just wonderful!"

Clive : "I went through it twice."

The Writer's Tale by Russell T Davies and Benjamin Cook

Revelations : "Yeah, I sat and there were particular Russell T Davies lines that I had to tweet because they said so much about the craft - and the sheer industry and work - of writing."

Clive : "He's very human, isn't he?"

Revelations : "Very. I could not believe how astonishingly open he was about his own feelings about his failures and his uncertainty as to why certain things succeeded."

Clive : "I agree with you. I was going to say also he was open about the fuck-ups and that's after the work has gone in, God knows what he said in the original! "I'm a great one for those things - probably my favourite book in the world is the unexpurgated Cecil Beaton's Diaries - you don't know those?"

Revelations : "I know of them but never read them - "

Clive : "Oh my God, they are just... He put out his diaries during in his lifetime and, after the lawyers, there were about three lines left, you know?! And then a huge, mammoth tome comes out!"

Revelations : "So were they published unexpurgated in his lifetime?"

Cecil Beaton's Diaries

Clive : "Oh no, he had to die before the real thing could come out. I think practically everybody in the damn thing had to die! Just horrible - everybody, everybody - nobody comes out unscathed!"

Revelations : "Ah, there should be some light and shade, surely?"

Clive : "No. Well, yes, art is the light, human beings are the shade. You know, to be fair to him or to be fair to the vision of the book, he was dealing with royalty, movie stars, all the high-end people, lots of money, lots of attitude, lots of ego, lots of condescension. But there are some priceless things, like, toward the end of his life, he's at a dinner, a very posh dinner, bemoaning the fact that in old age his genitals have shrunk into his body and are barely visible and a duchess at the other end of the table says, 'Oh I wish it was true of me!' Implying it's all just spilling out all over the place!"

Revelations : "Wonderful! I love those anecdotes - I don't know if I've told you before, the Winston Churchill one of him sitting in a railway carriage?"

Clive : "The 'I'll be sober in the morning, Lady Astor...' one?"

Revelations : "No, no, another one - he's on a train into London and a woman opposite says, 'Excuse me, Sir, I have to tell you, you've, er, left your flies undone and you're sticking out...' and Churchill looks down and replies, 'Madam, you flatter yourself, I am hanging out.'"

Clive : "Love it! He was a nasty old man."

Revelations : "He was a man for an age, for a certain era and he was perfect for that."

Clive : "I have read every biography written in English about him that is written in America and England - and I still want more."

Revelations : "What's the particular appeal, Clive?"

The Second World War by Winston Churchill

Clive : "He was at everything that affected our lives. Every event that affected our lives in the twentieth century, he was present at and for. Most notably, obviously, the Second World War, but simply he is present. You can spend a lifetime going through his wartime experience and how he affected, very often negatively, the progress of the war because he was a surly, difficult, stubborn man, who was often drunk who was required, in his fifties or sixties, to be sleeping three hours a day - you think about that, think about that as you guys get older. You know, running the White House and sleeping a tiny amount of time, it's no wonder that presidents get old so quickly - Clinton aged twenty years in eight years."

Revelations : "But it takes a certain sort of person to go up for that sort of position in the first place."

Clive : "It does."

Revelations : "You're not talking about an ordinary people, are you?"

Clive : "No. You know Maggie Thatcher only slept four hours a night, ever."

Revelations : "Madness!"

Clive : "I agree completely. What kind of person do you think it takes?"

Revelations : "Altruistically, I'd love to think it takes someone who'd like to make a difference, but actually I think it's people who want control. And that control could be from a fervent desire to make things better or it could be a fervent desire simply to be in control and I think the whole spectrum exists - you see them - we've had terrible scandals this past year with MP's expenses and what they've been claiming simply because it's allowable under the system. And actually, now that the rules are going to be tightened and there's more disclosure, about 25% of MPs aren't going to stand again at the next election."

Clive : "Jesus! Does that imply they were doing it for the money?"

Revelations : "There's certainly a common perception that, while there was an ability to earn enough money over and above the Parliamentary wage, it was worth their while being an MP. And that they don't want to be an MP if that system doesn't exist anymore."

Clive : "Right, right, right, Jesus! And when did all this break?"

Revelations : "Oh, May, June of last year? So it's been going on and on for several months and now there's full disclosure and there's been an enquiry into expenses that people have claimed and rulings from the party leaders that these have to be paid back, but some MPs are saying well, it wasn't illegal under the rules as were so I'm not repaying and you can't make me do it. We had people famously charging for creating duck-houses in the middle of their moats and things like that! Clearly that was the Tory party!"

Clive : "I was going to say, does this have any kind of prejudice towards the right?"

Revelations : "No, not at all."

Clive : "No? I'm glad in a way, because that would have been a cliché."

Revelations : "Yeah, it would. No, they're all in it together."

Clive : "As someone said, I don't care who's President, he's bound to be a politician!"

Revelations : "Or those who say Guy Fawkes was the last honourable man to walk into the Houses of Parliament for 400 years!"

Clive : "Absolutely! I'm sorry, I got off-track..."

Revelations : "Never a problem! Reflecting on our conversation last summer about the different voices that you're very consciously putting into Black is the Devil's Rainbow..."

Clive : "Right."

Revelations : "...and thinking about some of the pieces that you're now re-working, are you putting a new and different voice into some old pieces that's completely changing them around?"

Clive : "I'm not re-working anything, Phil."

Revelations : "You're not? So, something like a Jehovah's Bitch which has been around for a long time... ?"

Clive : "Well all I'm doing in that case is sticking it together... There are pieces missing from the structure so I'm adding pieces that are missing but I'm adding them in the tone, or as best I can, in the tone that I originally put the piece together with. Now, that said, Grail is a new piece, so because Grail is a new piece that has a, what shall I say, contemporary tone to it, a new voice. "My idea for this collection was that it be many books, you know, there'd be a shelf of books. I think right now there are probably two books of poems amongst those, one is of older poems which are much less troubled, if you will. And then there are the poems that I've written more recently that are profoundly troubled and yet, at the same time, from that troubledness, I hope I get - I hope I get - to give beauty. I mean the most you can hope for in dark times is that something you create out of that darkness has a beauty."

Revelations : "Poetry is always a salve you've used for that sort of emotion isn't it?"

Clive : "Yes, I have, but this is, and I don't know if these will be in the final book, but as we're talking I'm looking for the poetry so I can read you some. I have so many poems: not all of them will be in the book. I'd love it if they could all go in the book... I just want to give you a sense... to read you a couple things:
And so with cries the world begins, And angels offer up their skins, to cover naked Humankind. As above, below. As in front, behind. You didn't know this? Yes, we're clothed in what loving spirits first betrothed to us. Our skins a glory newly shed, and to our raw blood sinew wed. Is it any wonder we're divided from ourselves? When God decided we would live with nerves exposed, and only angels interposed on our behalf. And dressed us well. For which, of course, they went to Hell.
Here's another:
I will not leave you, Hungry Eyes; our hearts have business yet. Despite the hurts, the blows and lies I cannot quite forget that we were happy once, and how in a state as drear and poor as the hour through which we're living now, we burned our masks and saw the truth behind our public skins, and seizing the meagre chance that if music washed off all our sins we might yet rise and dance."

Revelations : "I thought it was interesting that you chose to share a poem on stage at the LA Times Festival of Books last year to an audience that wouldn't expect to discover that you write poetry."

Clive : "I think that's why I chose to, honestly. In these poems, knowing so much about how my life has been recently, you will be able to trace very easily the ups and the downs, the good stuff and the bad. Moments of optimism like that, moments when I escape entirely - like the angel poem - and then stuff which is just utterly despairing. And, you know, what I did in Sitges was an attempt to bridge the gap a little bit between what I talk to you about and what I tell the world and just share - though I didn't intend for it to grab me the way it did!"

Revelations : "At one point in that Sitges conversation we weren't even sure you'd remembered there was a camera in the room - when you asked them to shut the doors so no-one outside the room heard what you were saying!"

Clive : "Oh, no, I was very aware. I didn't want people coming to the door. It was like a press reception, so I was very aware of that, but I didn't want anyone breaking the rhythm of it by coming in or going or whatever."

Sitges Festival, 2009

Revelations : "When you already had to deal with the need to pause periodically to have your words translated, which could have disrupted the momentum... "

Clive : "You know, Phil, I think that may actually have been useful to me."

Revelations : "Allowing time to gather your thoughts?"

Clive : "Exactly, and my emotions. I think if I had been speaking entirely in English through the whole thing, well, no, I was, but if there hadn't been those pauses, I think it would have got away from me. And it didn't. Well, it did... "

Revelations : "We thought it was remarkable..."

Clive : "Was it?, he says... Was it?"

Revelations : "Yes, the response to it - forget what we thought - the response to it that other people had. In fact when we asked on Facebook and Twitter ahead of this interview whether people had any burning questions for you, among the questions about status of various projects, there were questions of concern for your well-being as a direct consequence of things you've said over the past year and what you shared at Sitges. We see a far more personal connection developing with people."

Clive : "And I think also Twitter has been useful in that connection, in my being able to almost simply say something stupid... "

Revelations : "Sometimes we can see your tongue is so far in your cheek, it's come out the other side... ! Some days you're just being deliberately provocative in there."

Clive : "Oh, yeah, yeah, you know that but I'm not sure they all know that! I think some of it's about being English, Sarah."

Revelations : "I'm not sure everyone appreciates just how funny you are and I think they think you're always being terribly serious."

Clive : "Absolutely, I think that. But I also think that the Englishness is an issue, don't you? That our sense of fun or, I don't know, irony... Irony is so particular to a certain kind of person, it's a rhythm of behaving and of being in the world - and it's a protection for me."

Revelations : "When people interact with you at signings or appearances, when people come because they have an inherent interest in what you've done, it's different. On Twitter, because of the retweeting, a whole bunch of people can start following you who don't know you, who will either get the sense of it and the rhythm or will tune out very quickly. What we've enjoyed probably most is following the first few comments from people who've announced they're un-following you, saying things like, 'Man, he's weird.'"

Clive : "Oh that is so funny, I've never done that, so there are people who just like shake their heads in dismay?"

Revelations : "Oh yes! Who think you're a complete nutter... I think one of my favourite ones was someone who said 'I've really enjoyed following @RealCliveBarker for the last few days, but I just can't keep up.' Sometimes it's pausing to work out whether you really do mean that the nun with the largest wimple is the biggest goer!"

Clive with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, 2007

Clive : "Oh my God, you're kidding! Nobody for a moment thinks I'm serious, do they? Brilliant. That came, I think I was talking about writing on a Sunday and I said that it keeps me from kerb-crawling nuns, just a throwaway remark and then you realise you can slightly decorate it, filigree it, for example - just slightly - or all the way! - and they are on it!"

Revelations : "And retweet it to their friends, and on and on.."

Clive : "...and on and on..."

Revelations : "That's the beauty of the tree. You shake one branch and the tree twitters."

Clive : "It's interesting that in this, one of the things that a friend said to me is - and I don't have a large following by comparison with the Neil Gaimans of the world or the Kevin Smiths of the world - "

Revelations : "- or Stephen Fry, the undisputed King of Britain who's just gone over a million followers - "

Clive : "... you know these are incredible numbers, and I'm a modest 10,000 guy but I think the effect of the Twitter thing is interesting because it seems to have become sort of the water cooler talk: it spreads, because people who are not on Twitter come back to me with things they've heard about me that I have said on Twitter."

Revelations : "Now, we touched earlier on the timetable on Black Is The Devil's Rainbow, but clearly the timetable that people are most interested in is what's going on with Abarat 3."

Clive : "Oh, Joanna had the manuscript in, what? August? I'm waiting for notes, which are very small, by the way."

Revelations : "The last date we saw anywhere is that Abarat 3 is tentatively pencilled in for the Fall of 2011, which we thought was a long time away."

Clive : "I think that's a lot to do with the complexities of printing an illustrated book. I don't understand it entirely because you would have thought with computers it would be really easy... Joanna's no longer at HarperCollins so it's a whole different ball-game. All I can say is, you know, this is publishing..."

Revelations : "But does that make you keener to have Book Four ready on the blocks waiting to go?"

Abarat companion book

Clive : "I'm just going to go on. As soon as I've delivered Grail, I'm off on to Abarat 4, and the largest pile of papers around me is Abarat 4, which is my various notes I've been collecting up from around the boxes and so on - but actually Abarat 5 as well because I think, in a way, it's impossible to think about the fourth book without also thinking about that too because they are one system."

Revelations : "Which makes me wonder, have you actually written part of Four, in the pieces that you've edited out of Three?"

Clive : "I don't know what I've edited out yet because she hasn't told me!"

Revelations : "So it's still as full as you want it to be?"

Clive : "Yeah. I don't think there's going to be a lot edited out, frankly, I don't know. All I know is the book is damn good!! And that what we'll have in Four and Five is bursting to come out of me! So I'm just going to get on with it -"

Revelations : "Let's close then by recapping on the books we're expecting to come out in 2010 - is Black Is the Devil's Rainbow designed to be out by the end of this year?"

Clive : "I think either the end of this year or spring of next - I'd like to say spring of next. I'd like to have as much new fiction as possible. If that means they can give me an extra couple of months and I can finish off: all of it's begun, it's a question of how much we can get finished, you know."

Revelations : "So what we hopefully will have is the non-fiction collection: The Painter, The Creature and The Father of Lies?"

Clive : "Right, we'll have the non-fiction collection. Will we have the compendium - the Abarat Companion?"

Revelations : "Yes, that's the plan. The only thing that we are unsure on with the Abarat Companion - provisionally called Beneath The Surface of Clive Barker's Abarat - is who will be publishing it. Joanna's very supportive and has started some conversations with HarperCollins as to whether they'll take it on."

Clive : "OK. That would be awesome."

Revelations : "That would be our preference, certainly. That's books, we talked about the Halloween line - and then there will be movies and other things."

Clive : "We've got more to talk about, right? But let's break there for now?"

Revelations : "Sure, we'll have recovered from Mr Tennant's departure by the next time - "

Clive : "You're horrible, horrible - "


Black Is The Devil's Rainbow
Clive's conversation at the Sitges Film Festival - I
Clive's conversation at the Sitges Film Festival - II
Beneath the Surface of Clive Barker's Abarat

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