Darren Shan's Blog, page 186

We have facelift!!

The new Darren Shan web site went live today. It's still at the same URL: http://www.darrenshan.com The site is still being worked on, so you might find some broken links and missing information. We'll also be tweaking things slightly — for instance, the links on the left hand side of the home page will change, to make it easier to access the News sections and subscribe. There's also been a bit of downtime, when we've had to temporarily suspend the site to deal with certain issues. But most o...

Doubling up

Finished my final edit of Birth of a Killer!! Now that my books are going to be coming out at the same time in America as the UK, the editing process has got a bit more complicated. In the old days, I'd work exclusively with my UK editor, knock the book into final shape, then simply approve or reject any changes that my American editor suggested later. Now I have to juggle both at the same time. To give you an idea of how it works, I edited the UK proofs and made some minor last-minute...

Homeward stretch

I've almost finished my final draft of the UK proofs of Birth of a Killer. I'm pleased with how nicely it all hangs together. I've had to add several new sections to the book since I wrote the first draft a few years ago, to fill in more of the blanks from Mr Crepsley's early years and give the first book more focus. I see the four books as one large single story — in fact, when I first wrote them, I carried the chapter numbers forward from one book to the next — so the more dramatic scenes a...

Ferry nice!

I actually quite enjoyed the trip home! Caught the train from Euston, and that made a huge difference — trains are definitely a lot more comfortable than buses!! The journey to Holyhead passed swiftly, it was easy to get onto the boat, there were plenty of seats onboard. I went to the cinema and saw Valentine's Day — not very good, but perfect for a venue like that, and it passed most of the journey. No problem getting a taxi in Dublin port — there was the longest lines of taxis I'd ever...

Homeward bound… slowly!!!

Had another fabulous day at football on Saturday — we beat Chelsea 2-1!!! Historically Spurs fans have never been that bothered about Chelsea — for a very long time they were never more than an average team, and we beat them more often than not. But the tables turned in the 1990s, when we hit a long-lasting slump and they found investors to pump loads of money into the club. For years, we became their whipping boys. That's changed in the last few seasons, and we've been started...

Permission to kill!!!

I received an amusing email from Anthony Horowitz yesterday. He has a book of short stories coming out later this year, called More Bloody Horowitz. One of the stories in it is called The Man Who Killed Darren Shan!!! It's his "revenge" for when I based a character on him in one of my books (Wolf Island — the thinly disguised Antoine Horwitzer) and put him through the wringer!! I'd heard about this before, and was tickled pink at the thought of being featured in such a grisly way —...

The ecstasy after the agony!!

On Tuesday I went for a very nice lunch with my agent. For my main course I had calf's brain!!! It was surprisingly tender in texture, a bit like a scallop. It had a very distinctive taste too, not quite what I was expecting. An interesting experience, one which I think I'll be incorporating into a book in the not too distant future…

On Wednesday I went for an even more elaborate lunch at the famous Fat Duck, the world's #2 rated restaurant for the last several years. I went there last ...

Terrible title!!

Spent Saturday with my brother, Declan, who was moving to a new flat, and then with my uncle Derek and his boys. A nice, relaxed day. On Sunday I went to Wembley for the FA Cup semi-final — Spurs were playing Portsmouth, who are bottom of the league, already relegated, and bankrupt. It should have been an easy victory, but I had a bad feeling ahead of the game, and it was borne out when we lost 2-0. A gutter of a game!!!

Today I went in to HarperCollins to sign a thousand copies of The...

Love? Nay! Valentine? Yay!!

Flew over to London on Thursday and saw Love Never Dies at the theatre. It's the sequel to Phantom of the Opera, and alas it was as redundant as I imagined it would be. A slow, poorly structured and plotted, lumbering mishmash of a musical. The sets are good, as are the costumes, and the songs are OK — but nothing as catchy as any of the best Phantom tunes. And where the original ticked along nicely, this one just drags. The first half is particularly poor. The second half is better...

Hard day's thinking

Spent today playing around with ideas for the later books of my new series. I've already written the first five, so you'd think I'd have a good idea of where to go next!! But although I know where I want to end up, the route is still pretty murky, so I'm having to play around with lots of different ideas, explore plot lines, and basically scrabble around in the dirt of my mind in the hope of unearthing story gold!!!! That's the way it often is with writing — sometimes an entire book will hit ...