And you don’t know me, but when you’re done, you’re going to know Saying, ‘Right, I’m going to get hold of you and not let go. You’re actually putting this page in front of them and Writing the stories is a power trip - and the trip is that you’re actually "Having people writing letters to me is just wonderful. And they tend to find other things in the book." Getting turned into a vampire, and they love the fight at the end, andĪll that stuff. I know that theĬhildren who read Thief of Always love the adventure, and love Harvey It means something very different to you than if you read it in yourģ0's or 40's. If you read Something Wicked This Way Comes when you are 10, Which take me back to Ray Bradbury, who is one of the great masters of "There are things in the Thief of Always that have a simple beauty to them He explained more to Craig Fohr at Lost Souls and to Douglas Winter, including why a book like The Thief Of Always ![]() I think we're at 1.5 million copies in print in America, so it wasn't bad for a Taught in a lot of schools now, which is fun. It has since turned out to be a very successful book. "Actually, they ended up giving me a silver dollar for it.Īnd the thing went from there. I gave it to HarperCollins and said, 'I realise you're taking a huge risk with this, because here's a children's book coming fromĬlive Barker, and maybe nobody will buy it! So I'll sell it to you for a dollar.' "It took about three months to write, probably another couple of months to do fixes on, and then Wasn't particularly eager about it, so I went into a corner and just did it, because it was a story I wanted to write. "The story had occurred to me a while ago and I'd written it down in short form called The Holiday House and I showed it to my I wanted to write a tale to join those books on the shelf." Many of my favourite books - stories I return to again and again -Īre books that would be found in the children’s section of a bookstore: Peter Pan, Treasure Island and The Chronicles of Writing a book for a younger audience never went away. "As the years went by, and my career as a writer of adult fantasy and horror books grew, the notion of His time writing this kind of book instead of writing another 'grown up' book. That is a very dark element of the story,īecause Harvey is empowered by realising that he has this desire toĪ question his publishers at HarperCollins asked him more than once! Especially as they really didn't want him to waste Harvey into a vampire like himself, and Harvey uses those skills rightīack at the creature. Which Hood, in his ignorance, taught Harvey. "In fact, unlike some of the cruder, critical readings of theīook, that suggested that what Harvey does is Indiana Jones-esque, Reading the interviewer said he realized what the book's subtext was I had a very interesting interview,Ībout three or four weeks ago, where somebody said to me, 'When Iįirst read the book I thought you'd gone all Spielberg on me - theīook had become this celebration of childhood wonder.' In the second In the Holiday House.? How can Harvey deal with that? Clive explained a bit more to Lot of times in my life when I wished more was going on and I thought this would be an interesting fantasy to play with."Ī soul-stealing vampire. Saying, ‘Don’t wish your life away, don’t wish your life away.’ But the story wasn’t based on anything except that there were a Thought, ‘OK, well how long is it to Christmas?’ I mean, you’re constantly saying that. Think, ‘Oh, how long is it to Thanksgiving?’ (in America - in England it was Bonfire Night). Every kid does that - you finish your summer holidays and "Even as a kid, I was aware that I lived from holiday to holiday. So, yeah, there’s something of Harvey in me. I also wanted to give Harvey some of my imaginative energy. Where I was brought up, and I wanted to reflect that in Harvey. Lot of reading, but even reading can’t take you away all the time, away from the grey reality of life in Liverpool in the ’50s, which is So there was a lot of downtime, time where you were just waiting. Now, but as a kid I didn’t have those diversions. "I think we, all of us, as children feel bored a lot of the time, waiting for adults to do whatever adults do. Shapes for the things that were running round my head." I think I’ve spent the years since being that 10 year old kid finding formats, finding ![]() "Harvey Swick is very much the 10 year old that I was: a very angry little kid who had very strange dark imaginings that he He's a 10-year old boy who thinks a lot like Clive did at the age of 10!
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