Darren Shan's Blog, page 13

Zom-B tour - first victim!

Last week I set off on the first ever ZOM-B WALKING TOUR of London!! A fan called MARTIN had bought the perk when I was running a fundraising campaign for The Terrified Troll. We met in Liverpool Street Station, then set off on a long walk towards the centre of London, during which we passed by several places which featured in my Zom-B series. (Including the block of flats where I lived when I first came up with the idea for the books.) We discussed Zom-B, my other books, and a whole lot more....

Abseiling

If you've ever wanted to push Darren Shan off the top of a very tall building... here's the next best thing!! :-) I'm going to be abseiling off the top of Thomond Park, home of the Munster Rugby team, on Saturday, April 20th. It's to help raise funds for a rebuilding project at the school which my children attend. I'll be abseiling 45 metres/125 feet from the roof of the building. It's something I haven't done in almost 40 years, so hopefully I still have a head for heights!! If you'd li...

Goodreads - most followed in Ireland

I was surprised (and pleased!) to see this posted on Goodreads recently -- apparently I was the 10th most Followed person in Ireland on the Goodreads site in 2023!! I use Goodreads to log a score for every book that I read, and the list goes back to when I first started rating books when I was a teenager, so it covers pretty much all my reading life, except for the first several years! Although I mention it occasionally in my social media posts, I never make a big thing of it, or promote it ...

Tattoo Tuesday - Kaidyn

It's TATTOO TUESDAY and this week it's bad news for all you arachnophobes out there, because the star of the day is... MADAM OCTA!!!! This was shared with me by a Shanster called KAIDYN, and I absolutely love their version of the infamous web-spinner. Has she ever before looked this simultaneously beautiful and terrifying?!? Kaidyn even worked in the motif from the UK Demonata covers underneath, which was a nice added touch. Bravo!!! 

CodyCross

A fan of my books on Twitter, called LaraJean, spotted this last week when playing a crossword on CodyCross. I wonder how many people on the day got it right on the day without having to check online?!? Cirque Du Freak would have been a more recognisable clue, but I imagine The Demonata wouldn't have proved much help to those not in the know!!! :-) :-) 

Email from JJ Kimmorist

I've always loved getting fan mail, and try to respond to most of it, even if it's a just a quick email to say thanks. Most of the letters, emails or posts I get from fans are on the short and sweet side, quick to read and quick to reply to, but occasionally a longer one comes through that takes more time to mull over. The one I'm copying in below, from fellow author JJ KIMMORIST, was one of those. It's such a beautiful email, that pleases me in so many ways, from her talking about reading my bo...

Finished signing!

My fundraising campaign for The Terrified Troll (my first ever picture book) finished last week. The artist, Eva Byrne, and I far exceeded our financial goal, which is going to make it a lot easier for Eva to devote time to the project, so hopefully we're going to get it to publication stage before the end of the year -- though there's a LOT of work still to be done on it, so I may well be back here in the summer or autumn time begging for a bit more patience from those who pre-ordered a copy of...

Rereading Cirque Du Freak as an adult

What's it like re-reading my Cirque Du Freak books as an adult?!? A fan called Luke Henderson found out last year when he decided to re-read the series more than a decade after he read them as a child. He posted reviews for the first six books, capturing his thoughts and how hie reading of them differed now that he was a grown-up. Here's the link for book 6, and there are links on that page for the other reviews that he wrote: https://medium.com/@lukewhenderson/re......

Return to work

Back in November 2022, when we had to move out of our home following a house fire, I'd been working on a new Darren Shan YA book. That's lain idle since then -- with all the trauma of the fire, moving into a new house, and the logistics involved in dealing with insurers and slowly edging towards being able to move back into our home, I just wasn't feeling the vibe to sit down and work on anything new. I did go back and edit Father Of The Future into shape, and put together the crowdfunder for Th...

School events 2024

Although I'm busy doing Zoom calls and in-the-flesh meetings with people who bought those perks in my Terrified Troll fundraising campaign a while back, I'm still squeezing in the occasional virtual SCHOOL EVENT or two. I didn't do many in the run-up to Christmas, but I have a few set up for the coming weeks, and I'm open to scheduling in more if any teachers or librarians out there wish to reach out to me with a request. These photos were taken a while back, when I did an event with the stu...