Unearthing the UnderSlumberBumbleBeasts
Before I started writing novels in late 2012, I was a serious writer of screenplays and stage plays, and a dabbler in poetry and short fiction—including a story that I had intended for children. My debut novel, Baby Teeth, was published in 2018, and it includes passages where the father reads aloud to his seven-year-old daughter.
It became immediately obvious while writing Baby Teeth that I couldn’t insert snippets of an existing, published children’s book into my chapters because of copyright issues. So I dug out that quirky story I’d once written for young readers, called My UnderSlumberBumbleBeast.
There are moments when writing is a magical process, when one tendril of an idea snakes outward and opens pathways toward more ideas. And that’s what happened when I incorporated my short story into my novel. It became my child protagonist’s favorite book, and led to scenes where Hanna tried to create her own version of an UnderSlumberBumbleBeast—using a potato!—and the repercussions that followed.
Then came a family activity where her parents helped her craft a beanbag toy inspired by Lollipop Hand (the leader of the UnderSlumberBumbleBeasts) that Hanna named Skog. Skog remained a cherished little friend right into adulthood with Dear Hanna, the continuation of Hanna’s story. And My UnderSlumberBumbleBeast left an indelible impression on Hanna and her creativity.
Do you remember the horror film The Babadook? In the film, the child receives a strange book which becomes crucial to the story—and after the film was released, they created a real-life special edition of that strange book. With The Babadook in mind, I thought it would be awesome if my book-within-a-book could exist in the real world, too. But finding support for that vision has taken over seven years.
Various people in publishing were intrigued by My UnderSlumberBumbleBeast, and I wrote numerous drafts, but ultimately it was considered too odd to shop to traditional publishers. The problem wasn’t the content per se, but the fact that the book didn’t fit neatly into the prescribed categories and formats of children’s literature.
It was always intended to be an illustrated book, but was too long to be a standard Picture Book. With 12 short chapters, it might be considered a Chapter Book, but those are rarely highly illustrated. Books for Early Readers might have more pictures, but don’t include the kind of vocabulary that requires a glossary (Pru, the main human character, loves and collects big words). A key marketing consideration for traditionally published books—for all ages—is always “Where will it be shelved?” And by those metrics, My UnderSlumberBumbleBeast was an oddball.
When Doug Murano started his independent press, Bad Hand Books, he reached out to me to submit a short story for his first venture, an anthology—which became a Shirley Jackson Award winner—called The Hideous Book of Hidden Horrors. As it happened, that was my first published short story, and the beginning of my collaboration with Doug and Bad Hand Books. As the editor and publisher of an independent press, Doug is free to break whatever conventions he likes, and ascribe his own set of criteria to the work he chooses. And publishing the homeless, wayward work of established authors has become something of a touchstone for Bad Hand Books.
Doug immediately recognized that finding the right illustrator was vital. Originally we were thinking of perhaps one drawing per chapter—both of us sensitive to the possible expense of creating an illustrated book. We talked about style, and whether or not we should stick to black and white pictures. Finding someone for such a unique project wasn’t the easiest thing, and for a time it looked like it wasn’t going to get off the ground. And then Doug secured the talents of J.E. Larson. And he was all in.
For a few months the three of us talked over Zoom, discussing the best ways to bring such peculiar characters to life, and how we wanted the book to feel timeless. We reminisced about favorite childhood toys, and oohed and aahed over J.E.’s original sketches—in which he insisted on a consistent, though imaginary, creation process for how the BumbleBeasts would construct themselves. Then he retreated to his artist’s cave to create not the 12 drawings that we’d first considered, but 48! (The brilliant color scheme was all his too.)
As I write this, the book’s publication is visible on the horizon. A publicist is on board, and I recently saw pics of the first printed copies of the book—and it looks incredible! While I created the story—and its pivotal connections to Baby Teeth and Dear Hanna—My UnderSlumberBumbleBeast truly excels because of J.E. Larson’s illustrative vision. He captured everything Doug Murano and I were hoping for (and more) when we imagined a book that would appeal to both children and adults.
With its nine-year-old protagonist, it’s fundamentally a book for seven- to 10-year-olds (or to be read aloud at bedtime). But with illustrations that blur the line between adorable and ghoulish, adults who’d prefer to celebrate Halloween for 12 months a year will probably be equally as enchanted.
My social media posts about My UnderSlumberBumbleBeast have gone from “I hope someday it’s a real book” to “It’s going to be a real book!” to “It’s finally here!” Sometimes things take a more circuitous path than we expect, but in this case that seems fitting for a collaborative project that celebrates eccentricity and ingenuity.
Check out Zoje Stage’s My UnderSlumberBumbleBeast here:
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