Darren Shan's Blog

Arra Sails remains one of the most popular characters from my Cirque Du Freak books, even though she didn't have a lot of page time in the series. She actually was never planned to be as important a character as she turned out to be -- she just took on a life of her own as I was writing the Vampire Mountain books, and ended up forcing herself into the story. It's always a pleasure when that happens with a character, and I loved getting to bring her back the Larten Crepsley books, so that we coul...

As many of you hopefully already know, I'm releasing my first ever picture book next year, with the artist Eva Byrne, called The Terrified Troll. It's initially coming out as a signed, limited edition, the print run being based on the orders we got to it when we ran a fundraiser in late 2023. We're planning to release it in a more widely available edition after that, ideally with the help of a traditional publisher.I had a meeting with Eva yesterday to look at where we're at and to set ourselv...

A Tweeter called FESTIE recently marvelled at what looks like a very subtle Easter Egg in Birth Of A Killer, the first book of my Saga Of Larten Crepsley series. Mention of a bedpan in the first chapter sent Festive scurrying back to the first chapter of Cirque Du Freak, which mentioned... a toilet! Was this intentional on my part, a little mirrored-scene reward for the most eagle-eyed of my readers?!? Festie certainly thought it was intentional -- but I'm not so sure!!! I do certainly d...

The Shans moved back into our house this day last week, after having been out for almost two years following a fire. The place is currently full of boxes and crates, containing everything that was put into storage when we had to move out. Each box is full of surprises, things we'd forgotten about or didn't expect to see back again. But nothing has been as surprising a find as THIS little baby!!! Mrs Shan hurried to find me last night, while I was reading. She was beaming as she cooed, "You'l...

A busy day on the virtual events front. Did one with a school in the UK this morning, and doing another with a school in the USA tonight. Effortlessly spanning the continents -- that's me!!! These photos are from an event I did last month, with Trinity Academy in Halifax in the UK. Each event is set up differently, depending on the school's needs -- for instance, the one this morning took place in the school library, with the kids up close, sitting on chairs and beanbags -- but this gives yo...

A little update on the Demonata TV adaptation. The team (Max and Ijaz) have been working hard on scripts for the last few months, and have now sent a bunch to me, for me to read through, comment on, and tweak or alter. Once I've done all that, I'll send the scripts back, and they'll go through them again, then maybe I'll go through them again, then maybe they... Once we're all happy, we'll be moving on to the next stage, where we start shopping the scripts around in search of the people ...

For those of you wondering why I didn't post my Shanville Monthly newsletter yesterday... It's because I'm currently in the UK on holiday with my family, and it's too awkward trying to do it on my phone. I'll piece it together once I'm back home, and it should be up and running not long after the weekend. In the meantime, here are some lovely Shan BOOKSHELFIES to hopefully take your mind off the gaping Shanville Monthly-shaped hole in your life!!! In order, these belong to... WESLEYMAT...

If you live in the USA, and have access to MAX, you're going to have a freakily fabulous start to the month, because the Cirque Du Freak movie is streaming on MAX from today!! Yay -- or boo -- depending on your opinion of the movie!!!! For a list of everything else that is new on MAX this month, click here: https://lifehacker.com/entertainment/... And if you don't live in the USA, but want to watch the movie, you can either buy a copy of the DVD or Blu-Ray o...

I wrote in yesterday's post about how teachers and librarians have been great champions of my books over the years. Thankfully (and rather surprisingly), my work has never been strongly targeted by individuals or groups who try to get books banned. But, every so often, they will fall foul of a rogue banner, as happened in some school libraries in Pennridge in the USA a couple of years ago. I'm including the text of an article which explains in depth what happened, but in short, two board mem...

Look what was Book Of The Week at DENBIGH SCHOOL LIBRARY last week!! I love it when teachers and librarians highlight my books this way. Back in 1997, when every publisher in the UK rejected the early draft of Cirque Du Freak, one of the reasons cited was that it would inspire fury among educators, who would call for it to be banned. When the book came out in 2000, not only did this prove NOT to be the case, but teachers and librarians became some of the earliest champions of the book, recom...