New shows based on Nightbreed and Hellraiser, a new Candyman film directed by Nia DeCosta and produced by Jordan Peele, and a movie based on his legendary Books of Blood debuting next week on Hulu…all of a sudden works adapted from Barker’s stories seem to be everywhere.
But that’s not all: five years after the publication of his last novel, The Scarlet Gospels, Barker has a new one coming out called Deep Hill, along with a collection of both out-of-print and new short stories called Fear Eternal, which will include a fresh novella titled Mercy and the Jackal. There’s also a book of 250 poems on the way as well.
Asked about both his own creative resurgence and his new presence in movies and TV, Barker tells Den of Geek, “Things are cyclical. For a while, I was doing a lot of fantasy, and I did obviously (fantasy novel) The Thief of Always, and stuff like that. I’ve got a bunch more stories (like The Thief of Always), which are coming. But I also felt the need to go back to my horror roots, and doing it unapologetically.”
While he enjoys being involved in the movies and TV series that are being developed from his material, Barker added he feels most at home on the page.
“The idea of doing Deep Hill, which is the novel, and then following it with — whichever order they go in — Fear Eternal, which is the collection of short stories…there are a lot of short stories,” he says. “I’ve always been a big fan of (Stephen King’s) The Mist. I wanted to do something at that length. So I’ve done something called Mercy and the Jackal, which is a novella that’s about that length.”
