The Child Thief: The Novel
A few months back, a preview copy of Brom’s The Child Thief: A Novel arrived at my house. As described by the publisher, Eos (An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers), the novel is “a spellbinding re-imagining of the beloved Peter Pan story that carries readers through the perilous mist separating our world from the realm of Faerie. As Gregory Maguire did with his New York Times bestselling Wicked novels, Brom takes a classic children’s tale and turns it inside-out, painting a Neverland that, like Maguire’s Oz, is darker, richer, more complex than innocent world J.M. Barrie originally conceived. An ingeniously executed literary feat, illustrated with Brom’s sumptuous artwork, The Child Thief is contemporary fantasy at its finest—casting Peter Pan, the Lost Boys, even Captain Hook and his crew in a breathtaking new light.” Brom was kind enough to do an email interview with me about the book. My thanks for his time and to HarperCollins’ Pamela Spengler-Jaffee for helping to arrange the interview.
Tim O’Shea: I minored in folklore back in college, so I know of the original unsanitized Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Is that the kind of tone, along with the “dark undertones” of Barrie’s original Peter Pan (as you referenced to it in the book’s advance press), you were aiming for in The Child Thief?
Brom: I loved the old Fairy Tales, which were usually devised as cautionary tales, stories in which bad things happened to children who didn’t listen to their elders. There is certainly plenty of those dark undertones in the Child Thief. But my real fascination lay in peeling back Jame’s Barries lyrical prose and portraying the Peter Pan story in a gritty realistic light.
O’Shea: In the back of the book you acknowledge the influence of Irish, Welsh, Scottish and English folklore on the tale. How much of the folklore did you know from growing up and how much did you learn it through research in more recent years?
Brom: I’ve always had a love of folktales, myths, and legend, so was aware of most of it. I knew I didn’t want to simply retell Barrie’s Peter Pan, but instead create my own Peter, my own world, the darker story behind the fairy tales, so I began to dig into the same myths and legends that originally inspired James Barrie himself and was delighted to find so many connections.
O’Shea: What was the greatest challenge to writing prose after years of being a visual storyteller?
Brom: Learning the craft is an ongoing a challenge, but for the most part I’ve found the experience to be liberating as I can finally give my characters voices and bring them to life.
O’Shea: Now that you have one prose novel under your belt, any chance you might cut back on the artistic elements for your next prose effort or do you enjoy your art too much not to include it in your work?
Brom: I feel that the combination of art and story is what makes my books unique. There are not that many artist/authors. So I plan to continue using both mediums to support each other. I believe it will be more to do with the ratio of illustrations to prose, and that will depend on the type of story.
O’Shea: Did you worry about the story becoming too dark, or did you aim to make it as dark as possible?
Brom: I am always drawn to the horrific in art and story, but in this case I feel so much of the darkness was already there in the original Peter Pan. But no, I didn’t worry about it. It was much more about where the characters took the story.
O’Shea: Being an adult writing some teen characters, did you recruits teen beta readers to make sure you had the right voice for the characters.
Brom: Most certainly – my 2 sons and niece. They were a big help, quick to point out with rolling of eyes and groans any elements of the youth culture that did not ring true to them.
O’Shea: Of the various art pieces you did for the book, did you have any that became a personal favorite of yours in the course of developing the story?
Brom: Hmmm, I guess I’m most partial to the cover. I did that painting before I started writing and it served as a guide to my characterisation of Peter.
O’Shea: When the readers first meet Nick, he is on the streets of Brooklyn. I’m curious, could that aspect of the story have worked as well had it been sit in another major city, like Boston or Chicago?
Brom: Possibly Boston, the setting had much to do with having a large harbor on the northeast coast for Avalon to end up in.
O’Shea: After Peter and Nick, who were the characters that enjoyed writing the most?
Brom: The Captain. He surprised me. Once I set up a characters characteristics in my mind, they tend to do things I don’t predict ahead of time. I intended for him to be a bit meaner, but the sort of soul that would have the strength to hold on to his sanity for so long and through so much would have to have a lot of self-discipline, a strong code to live by.
O’Shea: In structuring a tale that demands you to choreograph warfare scenes, did you try to map the scenes out visually before writing them into being?
Brom: Most certainly. I would draw little maps, trying to be sure to keep things lined up correctly.
O’Shea: Would you say on some level that you viewed Peter as a cult leader when writing him or am I missing your intent with the character when I refer to him as such?
Brom: In a way, yes. Diana Gill (my editor) dubbed him a very charismatic social path and I can see her point.
O’Shea: Looking at the finished story, where do you think editor Diana Gill helped you the most to improve the story in the revision process?
Brom: Diana is an amazing editor, her input and insight improved the novel on all levels, but her most significant contribution was dealing with Peter, as the first draft was almost completely focused on Nick. Diana pushed to flesh out Peter’s side of the tale, to show his back story and such. I feel it made for a far stronger novel.
O’Shea: What’s next on the creative horizon for you–would you care to dabble in the Child Thief’s universe again, or have you said all you want to say with this book?
Brom: It would be fun to play in the Child Thief universe again some day, but for now I have a long overdue art book to finish up. This will be a collection of my work from over the last 25 years with plenty of bio and behind the scenes material. I hope to have it finished before the end of 2010. Also have another novel in the works. Something very different from the Child Thief, but still dark and visual.