Darren Shan's Blog, page 6

Dealing with bad reviews

A budding writer called BEX emailed me today, having been hurt by a review of her work in progress: "I hope this is OK to send but I would like to pick your brains about something. Next year, I’ll be self-publishing my debut novel. I’ve chucked the plot about in a private author group only for it to get torn to shreds and it triggered something inside me, spiralling me down a stressful pit of despair and asked myself ‘am I good enough?’ "It then brought on the concern of how do I take cr...

Tattoo Tuesday - Kaidyn i

It's TATTOO TUESDAY!! Today's tantalising tat comes to us courtesy of a fan called KAIDYN, who refers to this as her "trifecta" tattoo, as it contains three elements drawn from my books -- Madam Octa, obviously... part of the logo from the British editions of The Demonata... and a long cut which has been inflicted by a vampaneze or one of my other villainous creations!! How cool is THAT?!? 

The absent Queen

A fan called RYAN sent me an email recently, raving about my Archibald Lox series, and ending with a question about the books: "I wanted to ask you about Archibald Lox. This was the first series from you that I didn’t read as a kid, after re reading Cirque and Demonata (both of which held up and then some. Seriously amazing adventures). Turns out, this became my favorite of your work. Had no clue what it was going in, loved it as I was reading it, loved telling my girlfriend about all the tw...

Fan Art Friday - Zero in the Lake of Souls

It's Fan Art Friday time again -- probably my favourite posting day of the week!! An artistic fan called ZERO -- their Twitter handle is @Charlie0_4869 -- is nearing the end of my Saga Of Darren Shan / Cirque Du Freak series, and has been drawing lots of images inspired by scenes in the book. Here are four derived from Book 10, The Lake Of Souls. I've arranged them in random order, using the titles Zero assigned to them -- I'll leave it to you guys to work out which section of the book each ...

Finicky Finnish review

A Finnish blogger reviewed my Saga Of Darren Shan / Cirque Du Freak series last year. It wasn't an entirely gushing review, with the blogger highlighting what, in their view, were some weaknesses, but overall it was pretty upbeat. If you'd like to check it out, click on the following link -- my browser offered me the option of translating it into English, and while it was a far from perfect translation, it did the job well enough: https://meridianliterature.blogspot.c......

Brimington School

I did an online event with a class of kids at Brimington Junior School last week, and their teacher sent me the following letter a few days later. What a lovely response!! It's always amazing to get follow-up feedback like this after an event -- usually I don't get to find out how my chat went down and what the students got out of it. I especially like Archie's comment near the end!! (I had a weird start to the Q&A session with the kids. The first boy up was Archie, so course I told him that...

Fan mail that warms my heart

Back in the day I used to get lots of letters and lengthy emails from fans of my books. That's changed with social media, as most of you now contact me via Facebook or Twitter, where your messages tend to be more truncated. But I do still get the occasional old-school letter or long email, and one was sent to me a few months back by a Mum of a young boy who had just discovered the joy of reading. It's the kind of email that reminds me, on my glummer days, why I became a writer and how important ...

Demonata audio books recap

I seem to get asked about audio books for The Demonata every other day! I've summarised before, but here's the skinny again for those who missed it previously... The first 6 books were released as audio CDs in the UK many years ago. My publishers decided to stop at that point, much to my dismay. They have never been made available to buy through sites like Audible. I've urged my publishers to rectify this situation many times over the years, but so far I've enjoyed no success. I plan to go b...

Storytellers Sanctuary

A podcaster called JACK, whose podcast is called Storytellers Sanctuary, devoted an episode to Cirque Du Freak, the book that he says turned him into an avid reader. It's long -- almost 1 hour 20 minutes!! -- so brew yourself a nice cup of hot chocolate, settle back into a comfortable chair, and hit PLAY when you get to the podcast by clicking on the following link: https://pca.st/4q8w89k2 

Chloe’s Demonata vlog

A lovely, lengthy vlog from CHLOE, talking about my Demonata series and how much it meant to her as a child. It starts with a short piece about Roald Dahl, but then the rest of it is pretty much demons!!!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpDU8...