Brom is one of the most respected and acclaimed fantasy artists of his generation. He started his career as a fantasy artist at TSR working on Dungeons and Dragons projects and was the lead visual designer behind the Dark Sun world. Hes painted dozens of book covers for Michael Moorcock, R.A. Salvatore and many others and worked as a designer for movies and video games. Brom has also written a number of books including The Plucker, The Devils Rose, and The Child Thief, a retelling of the Peter Pan story. Two books collecting his artwork have been published, and next year will see the release of a major career retrospective from Flesk Publications.
His newest book is Krampus, the Yule Lord, a particularly dark and twisted holiday tale about Santa Claus enemy set in contemporary West Virginia. Its brutal and dark but its also about the power of art and the meaning of hope. Its a great antithesis to a saccharine holiday. We spoke with him from his home in the Pacific Northwest.
ALEX DUEBEN: I really enjoyed Krampus and not sure what that says about my holiday spirit
BROM: [laughs] It just shows that youre a traditionalist. You love the true spirit of Christmas.
AD: Where did this book start for you?
B: It goes back to postcards. My wife collected these Krampus postcards. I knew nothing about him. He was just this creepy, cool Christmas demon thats running around putting naughty kids in sacks and spanking the bottoms of buxom women. What a great guy. [laughs] When I started digging into it, the first thing you find out is the fact that people actually celebrate Krampus at Christmas. That in itself is very shocking because maybe Ive been raised in a bubble thinking that Santa Claus is what were used to this traditional North American Santa Claus and its bizarre to learn there are so many variations [of Christmas] in European countries.
AD: The character of Krampus and how hes portrayed seems to straddle line between satyr and demon.
B: Exactly. When I started digging in more I discovered this current mythology and celebrations going on in European countries. There are so many variations. In some he is Santas sidekick. In others he has his own role. Hes changed over time. The farther I dug back, Christmas traditions come from Yule and the pagans and like you were mentioning, originally Krampus was another one of these horned nature spirits that so many early primitive European tribes worshipped. The earliest thing I could find was the yule goat which makes a lot of sense that the yule goat would turn into Krampus because Krampus is very much a goat-like, horned deity type of fellow. You see a lot of that imagery when you start digging into pagan mythology. Whats interesting is those characters are kindly to humans. Theyre benevolent. They were spirits that helped women to be fertile, the lands to be fertile and when the church came through instead of just trying to do away with all the old traditions they usurped them and took these characters and turned them into the bad guys and demonized these originally positive nature spirits.
AD: You wrote about this in the books afterword but you tied Santa and Krampus into Norse mythology.
B: When you start digging, in every region the mythology is a little different and they all have their own versions and different names even though a lot of the creatures are similar. Again, going back to Yule, both Krampus and Santa Claus come out of very similar roots. Krampus came first and then Santa. In some countries and cultures, Santa and Krampus are very similareven in early America the Pennsylvania Dutch and some of the German communities have a variation of Krampus and Santa sort of combined together where you have a being that essentially rewards good children and punishes bad childrenand people, for that matter.
AD: Are you a big fan of Norse mythology?
B: I love all mythology and folktales and folklore. For the most part Ive been more focused on American folktales, but it seems to be that a lot of the writing that I do ends up tying into European mythologies. Im fascinated by all mythologies and the farther back you dig they have a lot of very similar archetypes.
AD: You mentioned American folktales. Most of Krampus is set in West Virginia and Hank Williams is referenced early on. I couldnt help but feel theres a Hank Williams spirit to the book.
B: [laughs] Part of that is that as writer you have to write what you relate to. So much of this is European based and I wanted to set it in rural America because thats something I understand and the contrast is fascinating. I have a love of early country music and that ties into the folktales. And I think by putting it in a setting, that I could make realistic, I hoped it would make the fantastic elements more real.
AD: The book also touches on the idea that just as people and cultures have a lifespan, so does mythology. The archetypes remain, but the figure die out and are replaced.
B: And that was part of the fun. The fact that Krampus lost touch with humanity and him trying to make sense of what has become and what man worships now, whether its the moving picture screens or the drugs that have taken over certain parts of culture, was both tragic and humorous.
AD: I did start laughing at the image of all the children putting their shoes out for Krampus to leave them gold coins.
B: Im hoping it will catch on for real. Krampus is fascinating. The roots are there in yule tradition. Every year he seems to become a little more popular so Im hoping he does catch on. It would be fun if Christmases were not only celebrating Santa Claus but wed have our little glowing Krampuses out front as well.
AD: Youre an illustrator and you drew a few illustrations for the book. Im curious and curious whether part of you wants to write a book without illustrations or whether you want to draw every scene and every page?
B: Ive always considered myself a storyteller with pictures or words. When I was young, I did bothI drew the pictures, wrote the stories, got the stapler out and made little books. Thanks to technology, I can sit in my room and paint paintings and write stories on the word processor and put it all together in the computer and still make books. I feel like Im doing the same thing Ive done since I was a young child.
Back to your question about illustrating, Im obviously very visually driven. As Im writing Im seeing every scene and I would love to bring them to life. It would be fun to of course turn this into a film and bring all the visions to life, but its sort of organic the way it develops. I often see the images firstthe characters and the visual ideas of them. Thats how Ill explore them. Ill get out the sketchbook and start trying to visualize them and often that process helps me visualize them in the prose, as well. Then the two go back and forth. Ill discover something in the prose that ends up in the painting and then when I flesh them out in the painting Ill discover more about the characters. The two really support each other. Just from a creative point of view, I find as I get older that if I do too much of any one thing, I tend to get a bit burnt out. Its really nice to be able to write for three months and then paint for a month or two and then go back to the writing and back and forth. It keeps both creative disciplines fresh and keeps me interested.
AD: Next year theres an art book of your work coming out from Flesk Publishing. How did that happen?
B: Ive done two other art books in my career. Ive been very fortunate; there seems to be a solid audience for my work. Lately Ive been so focused on my books and on various projects that I just havent had a chance to put together one. I had enough new work that it was time to put out a new one. Also the technology has changed and I can get better reproductions now. That was exciting to be able to take the best of my older work and get new scans and color corrections. Im looking forward to being able to present those maybe a little truer to how the originals look. This is a much more ambitious book so it should also give me a chance to do some close ups of the paintings and explore the process. My previous art books had been pretty much just painting plates and not much text. This is going to be 90% images as well but I do hope to go a bit into the creative process and how I got to where I am as well as the technical process.
AD: And this is going to a selection of work from throughout your career?
B: This is a retrospective. Its the best of my older workabout half of it is from previously published anthologies and other places, and the rest is my newer work. Theres sketches and concept work. Im hoping to make this the definitive collection of my work to date.
AD: You started your career working at TSR, which has a great tradition of artists, and you did a lot of the design work on Dark Sun. What was that experience like?
B: It was amazing. Id always done fantasy and horror [art] and when I graduated from art school I was around twenty years old and I went into commercial art because that was the only place I could get work. At first I was happy just to be doing art for a living. I felt very privileged to be able to do that, but after about three or four years of that I was really getting burnt out. I was doing photorealistic product renderings and you can imagine how creatively stagnating that felt. I had all these monsters that needed to get out. I put together a portfolio and started going to conventions trying to get work and I got some early covers that didnt pay hardly anything at all, but I was so happy doing them. I knew I was going down the right path. Id submitted some stuff to TSR and they were looking for a staff artist. I came up for an interview and they werent interested. They said weve got ten other people were looking at before you. I felt dejected. We were going to move and that day we were going to get in the U-haul and drive to New Jersey when the phone rang. Apparently the other ten people werent interested in moving to the small town of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin so the job was mine if I wanted it.
But to answer your question, I was twenty four years old and I went from a commercial artist doing product renderings, struggling to do any sort of fantastical work, to all of a sudden Im a full time fantasy artists. At that time Jeff Easley, Clyde Caldwell, Fred Fields were on staff. Keith Parkinson and Larry Elmore were in the area. Suddenly I had all these talented, knowledgable artists at my disposable. It was this incredible learning curve to just know the right sets of paints and techniques. The point of your question, how it felt, for at least the first year I would go in early before other people. They had these flat files and I would just look at all the artwork. This was all my hopes and dreams since I was six years old and suddenly I was there I was doing it. I was amongst people that I highly respected. It was really magical.
AD: So your time there was more important as far as your education than what you learned in art school.
B: By far. Art schools in the eighties were horrible. [laughs] There were some exceptions, but for the most part you had two choices, you learned very arty farty non-representational art or you learned graphic design. It was so hard to learn basic painting skills, basic figure and anatomy. All that I had to learn on my own. And then when I got to TSR it was thats where I learned all the basic techniques of oil painting because I had these top professional oil painters around me.
AD: I keep hearing stories over the years about art school over decades and I hear so few good stories.
B: [laughs] It is changing so rapidly just over the past couple years. Theres a real renaissance going on both in art schools and in galleries because suddenly theres an audience for representational art. I credit a lot of that to the gaming community because theres these companies that employ large amounts of artists to create these games and that community is supporting and appreciating the aesthetics of traditional painting skills. Because of that, theres a demand to learn those skill sets as well so there are a lot of schools now that are getting better and there are a lot of private teaching workshops for a week or two weeks where you work with artists that you really admire.
AD: Who are the artists that have really influenced you?
B: You have to first give credit to Frank Frazetta because hes the one that opened my eyes to the possibilities. I think so many people, especially from my generation, wanted to be Frank Frazetta. He was a huge influence. Richard Corben was a big influence. I liked all the guys from the Studio crew, meaning Bernie Wrightson, Jeff Jones and Michael Kaluta. Those guys were a big inspiration. Moebius.
Outside of the genre art, as I started to get into high school, I really came to appreciate the traditional American illustrators. Theres no better draftsman than Norman Rockwell. He is the guy who told stories with pictures. You can read so much story into every one of his paintings. Its fantastic. Wyeth. Pyle. Those guys were very inspiring. Then when I got out of school I started to become infatuated with the pre-Rafaelites and a lot of the turn of the century aesthetics such as Waterhouse and Mucha and Sargent, Winston Abbey. So many amazing artists right around the turn of the century. Its sad that so much of that tradition and skill set was lost when the fine art movement took over.
AD: You mentioning those artists, I think thats why your book seems like a good fit at Flesk Publications, because youre part of this tradition and the other contemporary artists published there also have similar influences.
B: Yeah the same influences and aesthetics. John only publishes books from artists he likes. I think that makes his imprint wonderful because there is this cohesiveness there. Even though the artists are often from completely different genres, there is that common thread of quality craftsmanship and a classic aesthetic.
AD: You worked on a lot of covers for some great fantasy artists including Michael Moorcock, R.A. Salvatore, Terry Brooks and many others. Do you have any favorites?
B: The art and the literature that you read when youre younger in your teens and high school years thats the stuff that always makes the greatest impression. Elric was my favorite in high school and junior high school. I drew hundreds of pictures of Elric in my sketchbooks, so when I got to do the cover for the Elric anthology for White Wolf that was one of those life long goal moments. It was so thrilling and such a high to be able to be a part of that. I appreciate any of the authors that Ive worked for. I like all those guys. Unfortunately a lot of the times you dont even get to read the material. You sometimes just get a synopsis or a few key chapters to look over to do the paintings from, so its some of it is kind of removed. Like with the Terry Brooks stuff, in a perfect world you would get this finished novel and you would read it and try to digest it down to its essence and create that cover but unfortunately a lot of the time its, we need this in two weeks, heres a couple pages.
AD: I can see that being maddening. You mentioned Elric, are there any characters or books youd like to illustrate given the chance?
B: Again I think it goes back to the books I read in my youth. Robert E. Howard and Burroughs. Any of the Conan stuff. Michael Moorcocks Elric or Corum or any of his characters. John Carter of Mars. A lot of the early Stephen King I would love to do something with. Even though those arent as visual, it would be fun to feel like you have somehow participated in the literature that inspired you.
AD: What else are you in midst of? Are you working on another novel?
B: I am. Right now Im completely focused on getting this latest art book out. That will probably take until March to get the new paintings done and everything put together. After that I am contracted to do another novel with Harper Collins. I have three or four ideas that I like. Im having a hard time deciding between them, so I hope that by the time March rolls around Ill know which one of those I want to pursue. That will be another novel like Krampus or The Child Thief, a prose novel with paintings or drawings interspersed within the book. Beyond that Im hoping to set aside some time to do some exploratory painting. As you get older its easy to get burnt out and what keeps things fresh and interesting is to be able to experiment and explore. Ive got a bunch of ideas brewing and Im hoping to set aside three months to just let my muse go where it will and see what comes out of that. Hopefully it will be something people find interesting.
AD: I did want to bring up your previous book The Child Thief briefly because I enjoyed your take on Peter Pan as a villain.
B: When you read the original James Barrie versionnot the Disney versionit is very dark. Its not even so much good guy/bad guy; Peters very much an amoral character. He thinks hes doing good and right, but when you look at it from another point of view, its pretty bad. Hes seducing these kids away from their families and homes and hes taking them to an island and hes teaching them to kill. And hes teaching them to kill humans. You can have this lyrical prose where theyre pirates but in that original book theyre having a body count contest and these are nine and ten year olds basically trying to see how many men they can kill. The minute I started thinking about real life and this ten year old kid cutting down pirates with a sword and having a body count, Peter Pan seems very much a demon. Another thing in the book thats very creepy is in the original Peter Pan and when the Lostboys started to grow up, which was against the rules, Peter thinned them out. The book never says exactly how he thins them out or what exactly happens, but its very sinister. That material alone was inspiration. Thats what I like to do with most of my novels, take something that is often handled in a more fantastical way and try to make it as gritty and real as possible. What would this really feel like? What would this experience really be like? Thats what gets me excited about writing.
His newest book is Krampus, the Yule Lord, a particularly dark and twisted holiday tale about Santa Claus enemy set in contemporary West Virginia. Its brutal and dark but its also about the power of art and the meaning of hope. Its a great antithesis to a saccharine holiday. We spoke with him from his home in the Pacific Northwest.
ALEX DUEBEN: I really enjoyed Krampus and not sure what that says about my holiday spirit
BROM: [laughs] It just shows that youre a traditionalist. You love the true spirit of Christmas.
AD: Where did this book start for you?
B: It goes back to postcards. My wife collected these Krampus postcards. I knew nothing about him. He was just this creepy, cool Christmas demon thats running around putting naughty kids in sacks and spanking the bottoms of buxom women. What a great guy. [laughs] When I started digging into it, the first thing you find out is the fact that people actually celebrate Krampus at Christmas. That in itself is very shocking because maybe Ive been raised in a bubble thinking that Santa Claus is what were used to this traditional North American Santa Claus and its bizarre to learn there are so many variations [of Christmas] in European countries.
AD: The character of Krampus and how hes portrayed seems to straddle line between satyr and demon.
B: Exactly. When I started digging in more I discovered this current mythology and celebrations going on in European countries. There are so many variations. In some he is Santas sidekick. In others he has his own role. Hes changed over time. The farther I dug back, Christmas traditions come from Yule and the pagans and like you were mentioning, originally Krampus was another one of these horned nature spirits that so many early primitive European tribes worshipped. The earliest thing I could find was the yule goat which makes a lot of sense that the yule goat would turn into Krampus because Krampus is very much a goat-like, horned deity type of fellow. You see a lot of that imagery when you start digging into pagan mythology. Whats interesting is those characters are kindly to humans. Theyre benevolent. They were spirits that helped women to be fertile, the lands to be fertile and when the church came through instead of just trying to do away with all the old traditions they usurped them and took these characters and turned them into the bad guys and demonized these originally positive nature spirits.
AD: You wrote about this in the books afterword but you tied Santa and Krampus into Norse mythology.
B: When you start digging, in every region the mythology is a little different and they all have their own versions and different names even though a lot of the creatures are similar. Again, going back to Yule, both Krampus and Santa Claus come out of very similar roots. Krampus came first and then Santa. In some countries and cultures, Santa and Krampus are very similareven in early America the Pennsylvania Dutch and some of the German communities have a variation of Krampus and Santa sort of combined together where you have a being that essentially rewards good children and punishes bad childrenand people, for that matter.
AD: Are you a big fan of Norse mythology?
B: I love all mythology and folktales and folklore. For the most part Ive been more focused on American folktales, but it seems to be that a lot of the writing that I do ends up tying into European mythologies. Im fascinated by all mythologies and the farther back you dig they have a lot of very similar archetypes.
AD: You mentioned American folktales. Most of Krampus is set in West Virginia and Hank Williams is referenced early on. I couldnt help but feel theres a Hank Williams spirit to the book.
B: [laughs] Part of that is that as writer you have to write what you relate to. So much of this is European based and I wanted to set it in rural America because thats something I understand and the contrast is fascinating. I have a love of early country music and that ties into the folktales. And I think by putting it in a setting, that I could make realistic, I hoped it would make the fantastic elements more real.
AD: The book also touches on the idea that just as people and cultures have a lifespan, so does mythology. The archetypes remain, but the figure die out and are replaced.
B: And that was part of the fun. The fact that Krampus lost touch with humanity and him trying to make sense of what has become and what man worships now, whether its the moving picture screens or the drugs that have taken over certain parts of culture, was both tragic and humorous.
AD: I did start laughing at the image of all the children putting their shoes out for Krampus to leave them gold coins.
B: Im hoping it will catch on for real. Krampus is fascinating. The roots are there in yule tradition. Every year he seems to become a little more popular so Im hoping he does catch on. It would be fun if Christmases were not only celebrating Santa Claus but wed have our little glowing Krampuses out front as well.
AD: Youre an illustrator and you drew a few illustrations for the book. Im curious and curious whether part of you wants to write a book without illustrations or whether you want to draw every scene and every page?
B: Ive always considered myself a storyteller with pictures or words. When I was young, I did bothI drew the pictures, wrote the stories, got the stapler out and made little books. Thanks to technology, I can sit in my room and paint paintings and write stories on the word processor and put it all together in the computer and still make books. I feel like Im doing the same thing Ive done since I was a young child.
Back to your question about illustrating, Im obviously very visually driven. As Im writing Im seeing every scene and I would love to bring them to life. It would be fun to of course turn this into a film and bring all the visions to life, but its sort of organic the way it develops. I often see the images firstthe characters and the visual ideas of them. Thats how Ill explore them. Ill get out the sketchbook and start trying to visualize them and often that process helps me visualize them in the prose, as well. Then the two go back and forth. Ill discover something in the prose that ends up in the painting and then when I flesh them out in the painting Ill discover more about the characters. The two really support each other. Just from a creative point of view, I find as I get older that if I do too much of any one thing, I tend to get a bit burnt out. Its really nice to be able to write for three months and then paint for a month or two and then go back to the writing and back and forth. It keeps both creative disciplines fresh and keeps me interested.
AD: Next year theres an art book of your work coming out from Flesk Publishing. How did that happen?
B: Ive done two other art books in my career. Ive been very fortunate; there seems to be a solid audience for my work. Lately Ive been so focused on my books and on various projects that I just havent had a chance to put together one. I had enough new work that it was time to put out a new one. Also the technology has changed and I can get better reproductions now. That was exciting to be able to take the best of my older work and get new scans and color corrections. Im looking forward to being able to present those maybe a little truer to how the originals look. This is a much more ambitious book so it should also give me a chance to do some close ups of the paintings and explore the process. My previous art books had been pretty much just painting plates and not much text. This is going to be 90% images as well but I do hope to go a bit into the creative process and how I got to where I am as well as the technical process.
AD: And this is going to a selection of work from throughout your career?
B: This is a retrospective. Its the best of my older workabout half of it is from previously published anthologies and other places, and the rest is my newer work. Theres sketches and concept work. Im hoping to make this the definitive collection of my work to date.
AD: You started your career working at TSR, which has a great tradition of artists, and you did a lot of the design work on Dark Sun. What was that experience like?
B: It was amazing. Id always done fantasy and horror [art] and when I graduated from art school I was around twenty years old and I went into commercial art because that was the only place I could get work. At first I was happy just to be doing art for a living. I felt very privileged to be able to do that, but after about three or four years of that I was really getting burnt out. I was doing photorealistic product renderings and you can imagine how creatively stagnating that felt. I had all these monsters that needed to get out. I put together a portfolio and started going to conventions trying to get work and I got some early covers that didnt pay hardly anything at all, but I was so happy doing them. I knew I was going down the right path. Id submitted some stuff to TSR and they were looking for a staff artist. I came up for an interview and they werent interested. They said weve got ten other people were looking at before you. I felt dejected. We were going to move and that day we were going to get in the U-haul and drive to New Jersey when the phone rang. Apparently the other ten people werent interested in moving to the small town of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin so the job was mine if I wanted it.
But to answer your question, I was twenty four years old and I went from a commercial artist doing product renderings, struggling to do any sort of fantastical work, to all of a sudden Im a full time fantasy artists. At that time Jeff Easley, Clyde Caldwell, Fred Fields were on staff. Keith Parkinson and Larry Elmore were in the area. Suddenly I had all these talented, knowledgable artists at my disposable. It was this incredible learning curve to just know the right sets of paints and techniques. The point of your question, how it felt, for at least the first year I would go in early before other people. They had these flat files and I would just look at all the artwork. This was all my hopes and dreams since I was six years old and suddenly I was there I was doing it. I was amongst people that I highly respected. It was really magical.
AD: So your time there was more important as far as your education than what you learned in art school.
B: By far. Art schools in the eighties were horrible. [laughs] There were some exceptions, but for the most part you had two choices, you learned very arty farty non-representational art or you learned graphic design. It was so hard to learn basic painting skills, basic figure and anatomy. All that I had to learn on my own. And then when I got to TSR it was thats where I learned all the basic techniques of oil painting because I had these top professional oil painters around me.
AD: I keep hearing stories over the years about art school over decades and I hear so few good stories.
B: [laughs] It is changing so rapidly just over the past couple years. Theres a real renaissance going on both in art schools and in galleries because suddenly theres an audience for representational art. I credit a lot of that to the gaming community because theres these companies that employ large amounts of artists to create these games and that community is supporting and appreciating the aesthetics of traditional painting skills. Because of that, theres a demand to learn those skill sets as well so there are a lot of schools now that are getting better and there are a lot of private teaching workshops for a week or two weeks where you work with artists that you really admire.
AD: Who are the artists that have really influenced you?
B: You have to first give credit to Frank Frazetta because hes the one that opened my eyes to the possibilities. I think so many people, especially from my generation, wanted to be Frank Frazetta. He was a huge influence. Richard Corben was a big influence. I liked all the guys from the Studio crew, meaning Bernie Wrightson, Jeff Jones and Michael Kaluta. Those guys were a big inspiration. Moebius.
Outside of the genre art, as I started to get into high school, I really came to appreciate the traditional American illustrators. Theres no better draftsman than Norman Rockwell. He is the guy who told stories with pictures. You can read so much story into every one of his paintings. Its fantastic. Wyeth. Pyle. Those guys were very inspiring. Then when I got out of school I started to become infatuated with the pre-Rafaelites and a lot of the turn of the century aesthetics such as Waterhouse and Mucha and Sargent, Winston Abbey. So many amazing artists right around the turn of the century. Its sad that so much of that tradition and skill set was lost when the fine art movement took over.
AD: You mentioning those artists, I think thats why your book seems like a good fit at Flesk Publications, because youre part of this tradition and the other contemporary artists published there also have similar influences.
B: Yeah the same influences and aesthetics. John only publishes books from artists he likes. I think that makes his imprint wonderful because there is this cohesiveness there. Even though the artists are often from completely different genres, there is that common thread of quality craftsmanship and a classic aesthetic.
AD: You worked on a lot of covers for some great fantasy artists including Michael Moorcock, R.A. Salvatore, Terry Brooks and many others. Do you have any favorites?
B: The art and the literature that you read when youre younger in your teens and high school years thats the stuff that always makes the greatest impression. Elric was my favorite in high school and junior high school. I drew hundreds of pictures of Elric in my sketchbooks, so when I got to do the cover for the Elric anthology for White Wolf that was one of those life long goal moments. It was so thrilling and such a high to be able to be a part of that. I appreciate any of the authors that Ive worked for. I like all those guys. Unfortunately a lot of the times you dont even get to read the material. You sometimes just get a synopsis or a few key chapters to look over to do the paintings from, so its some of it is kind of removed. Like with the Terry Brooks stuff, in a perfect world you would get this finished novel and you would read it and try to digest it down to its essence and create that cover but unfortunately a lot of the time its, we need this in two weeks, heres a couple pages.
AD: I can see that being maddening. You mentioned Elric, are there any characters or books youd like to illustrate given the chance?
B: Again I think it goes back to the books I read in my youth. Robert E. Howard and Burroughs. Any of the Conan stuff. Michael Moorcocks Elric or Corum or any of his characters. John Carter of Mars. A lot of the early Stephen King I would love to do something with. Even though those arent as visual, it would be fun to feel like you have somehow participated in the literature that inspired you.
AD: What else are you in midst of? Are you working on another novel?
B: I am. Right now Im completely focused on getting this latest art book out. That will probably take until March to get the new paintings done and everything put together. After that I am contracted to do another novel with Harper Collins. I have three or four ideas that I like. Im having a hard time deciding between them, so I hope that by the time March rolls around Ill know which one of those I want to pursue. That will be another novel like Krampus or The Child Thief, a prose novel with paintings or drawings interspersed within the book. Beyond that Im hoping to set aside some time to do some exploratory painting. As you get older its easy to get burnt out and what keeps things fresh and interesting is to be able to experiment and explore. Ive got a bunch of ideas brewing and Im hoping to set aside three months to just let my muse go where it will and see what comes out of that. Hopefully it will be something people find interesting.
AD: I did want to bring up your previous book The Child Thief briefly because I enjoyed your take on Peter Pan as a villain.
B: When you read the original James Barrie versionnot the Disney versionit is very dark. Its not even so much good guy/bad guy; Peters very much an amoral character. He thinks hes doing good and right, but when you look at it from another point of view, its pretty bad. Hes seducing these kids away from their families and homes and hes taking them to an island and hes teaching them to kill. And hes teaching them to kill humans. You can have this lyrical prose where theyre pirates but in that original book theyre having a body count contest and these are nine and ten year olds basically trying to see how many men they can kill. The minute I started thinking about real life and this ten year old kid cutting down pirates with a sword and having a body count, Peter Pan seems very much a demon. Another thing in the book thats very creepy is in the original Peter Pan and when the Lostboys started to grow up, which was against the rules, Peter thinned them out. The book never says exactly how he thins them out or what exactly happens, but its very sinister. That material alone was inspiration. Thats what I like to do with most of my novels, take something that is often handled in a more fantastical way and try to make it as gritty and real as possible. What would this really feel like? What would this experience really be like? Thats what gets me excited about writing.