Darren Shan's Blog, page 188

Shanmania hits Dubai!!

Blimey — I wasn't expecting THAT!!! I had my public event in Dubai this Friday. I was hoping for a good crowd, but you never know when you go to a country for the first time. To my delight, I got pretty much a full house — hurrah!!! I'm not sure of the exact numbers — one person said about 300, but it looked like a lot more than that from where I was standing… And it certainly FELT like a lot more afterwards — I was signing for almost 5 hours in total!!! There was a bit of chaos at the start ...

A quick one from Dubai

Made it to Dubai safely on Tuesday, though it was touch and go for a while — I was supposed to be picked up, to be driven to the airport, but the car never arrived and another had to be called — I only just made it in time!!! Once on the plane, though, it was all smoothness and comfort — the delights of business class travel!! Extrfa delightful when someone else is footing the bill!!!!! After settling into our hotel, we attended the opening ceremony for the Dubai literary festival. Then I...

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Bas and I flew over to Newquay on Friday, then drove down to St Ives, in order to go to a wedding on Saturday in a remote but lovely little spot called Prussia Cove. It was my first time in St Ives. It's a sweet place. We visited the Tate Gallery while there, which was hosting an interesting exhibition by an artist called Dexter Dalwood – I wasn't sure I liked him at first, but his work grew on me more as I wandered round. Then we went to see the Barbara Hepworth sculpture garden...

Extra! Extra!

Finally got a chance to sit down and watch the Cirque Du Freak extras tonight. I started with the deleted scenes. Most of them were fairly minor, and easy to see why they were cut — while several would have rounded out some characters and scenes a bit more, most could hardly be considered essential. One that I would have liked to see in the movie was a scene where Rhamus Twobellies swallowed Alexander Ribs — it didn't move the plot forward, but it was fun!!! There were quite a few more...

Preparing for lift-off

I've spent the last couple of days preparing for my upcoming tour to Dubai and Hong Kong, getting scenes ready, making sure I have enough business cards with me, double- and triple- and quadruple-checking my tour itinerary to make sure I have all my flight, hotel and car details… I feel exhausted and it hasn't even begun yet!!! But it's going to be fun!! You can find all the details for it on the Shanville Monthly on my site by CLICKING HERE. Speaking of which, I spent Monday knocking the...

Another one bites the dust

I was very upset to read in the newspaper on Saturday that the Hughes & Hughes book chain had gone bust in Ireland and was closing down its stores. I've done lots of enjoyable events at H&H stores over the years, and hadn't heard that they were in trouble. It's a shame to see them go, especially as they were Irish-owned. I have fond memories of a prive war between an Easons and H&H store at one of my events. It was in a shopping mall, where both chains had a store. I was siging in Easons...

Bagged!!

Wrote and edited 9 pages to complete the first draft of the latest book!! I was delighted to get it in the bag today, since it means I can now relax and enjoy the weekend! It was extra pleasing because I started a bit later than usual today, and had several other things to deal with. At one point I thought I'd have to finish it after the weekend, but I ploughed on and got there in the end — hurrah!!! First point of order on Saturday will be to see if I can get a copy of The Vampire's...

The Hadza clan

Wrote 9 pages of the new book today. I didn't mind coming in slightly under my daily target, since I'm ahead over the week since the last few days, but also because I'm very close to the end now — I might even wrap it up on Friday, depending on how long the last couple of chapters demand to be. I love being able to finish the first draft of a book in just a couple of weeks!! I've written plenty of long books in my time, books which have demanded months of hard work at the first draft stage...

Legs eleven!!

I've been nice and busy on the writing front — I wrote 11 pages yesterday and 11 today, which I was very pleased about. It's always nice to meet your target every day — but even nicer when you surpass it!!!! I should hopefully be finished in another few days — as I've said before, each book in this series is quite short, a bit shorter than my Vampire Mountain books. I'm going for short, sharp shocks this time round. Each book is a quick, punchy entry. Depending on how long the series ends up ...

The force is with YOU!!!

I had a quiet weekend in the end. I'd planned to go to Limerick on Saturday night to see The Hitchers at Baker Place. The Hitchers are my favourite Limerick band ever. I've seen them many times over the years. They broke up quite a few years back, but get together for a reunion gig every Christmas — I've missed most of those, though I caught one in Galway a few years ago. For some reason they got back together to do three gigs last week. I'd been looking forward to their Baker Place gig for a...