Darren Shan's Blog, page 8

Kray’s Cirque Du Freak quiz

Ther are two teachers in California, KEVIN and JENNIFER, happily married and teaching in the same school. Every year, for the last 17 years, they have read Cirque Du Freak to their students, and are still enjoying it after all this time! They get the kids to send me a letter when they've finished the book, and I always love replying. They also give the kids a Cirque Du Freak QUIZ each year, and the one who scores highest wins a copy of the Cirque Du Freak omnibus!! They sent me a copy of thi...

Allie of the Night re-read

What's Allies Of The Night (the 8th book of my Cirque Du Freak series) like if you re-read it as an adult?? A fan called LUKE decided to find out, and documented his take on the book here: https://medium.com/@lukewhenderson/re... ***SPOILERS *** I'm going to talk about events from the book here, so if you haven't read it, and don't want spoilers, my advice is to stop reading NOW. Luke raises a very interesting poin...

Old books for young kids

Nice to see Cirque Du Freak make a list of "old" series on Gamespot entitled: Introduce Your Kids To Some Of The Most Popular Books From Your Childhood This Summer -- even though I still find it hard to believe that almost a quarter of a century has passed since Cirque Du Freak was first released!! The set that they've included an Amazon link for is actually the boxset of the British editions, where the series is known by its original and official title -- The Saga Of Darren Shan. (Though I'...

Newstalk - favourite books

I appeared on The Hard Shoulder, a show on Irish radio station NEWSTALK, earlier this week. I talked about two of my favourite books -- longtime fans of mine probably won't be too suprised by my choices, but newer fans might be caught off-guard by at least one of them! I also mentioned what I was reading at the moment, and we covered some other stuff too. The interview has been archived as a podcast, so you can now listen to it at your leisure, no matter where you live in the world, by click...

Buzzfeed - books that people want to read again for the first time

There was a nice little article on Buzzfeed recently, about people's favourite books, although it had a rather cumbersome heading: Here Are 15 Books That Are So Good, People Wish They Could Relive Reading Them Again For The First Time. That header writer needed a good editor!!! :-) Anyway, there's a sweet mention for Cirque Du Freak in among the mix. To read what they had to say about it, and to check out the other books that got highlighted, click here: https://www.buzzfeed.com/elizabeth_co...

Cirque Du choo-choo!!!

A mother of a student went to his school recently, and was impressed to spot a "literary Tube map" -- this is like the famous London Tube Map, only every "train line" represents a genre of books, with various novels and schools dotted along the way. The Shantastic parent sent me a picture of part of the map, and I was delighted to see a freakishly fabulous book at the start (or end) of the black horror line! All aboard for the Cirque Du Freak!! Choo-choo!!!!! 

Midsummer’s Bottom Mother’s Day sale

To tie in with a Kobo Mother's Day sale in the USA, I've reduced the price of the eBook of my Darren Dash novel, Midsummer's Bottom, to just $0.99 for the next few days. I've also reduced the price across all other sellers of the eBook -- Amazon, Apple, B&N, Google Play, Smashwords, etc -- and in all territories, so it's just £0.99 in the UK, €0.99 in European countries, and a similar low price everywhere else. Midsummer's Bottom is utterly different to all my other books. A broad, farcical ...

Cirque Du Freak’s 27th birthday

Twenty-seven years ago today, on May 8th 1997, I was sitting in a car, babysitting a young cousin who was asleep in the back, when I had an idea for a book about a young boy who runs into a vampire at a circus and ends up reluctantly becoming his assistant as a creature of the night. A few days later I began writing the first draft of the book that I had decided to call... Cirque Du Freak!! I had no idea at the time that this would change my life forever. I'd been writing full-time for a cou...

Beyond the Spines review of Father

There was a lovely review for Father Of The Future, my latest Darren Dash novel for adult readers, on BEYOND THE SPINES REVIEWS. It was the first of my books for older readers that the reviewer had read, and while at first uncertain of what to expect, she enjoyed it immensely in the end, as best illustrated by this little snippet: "For me, this book felt like 1984 meets Netflix’s Loki meets 2001 meets I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, except that I enjoyed this novel more than any of those ...

Cirque Du Freak on Audible

I've had a few people asking me recently if the Cirque Du Freak audiobooks are being removed from Audible. As far as I'm aware, no they're not -- but, based on this screenshot that one fan sent me, it looks to me as if they ARE being withdrawn from the FREE downloads list. I've got to be honest -- I know next to nothing about audiobooks! (Which might be why I'm not overly bothered by AI audio narrators, even though I know lots of people who listen to audiobooks are horrified and outraged by ...