Darren Shan's Blog, page 9

The Demonata - plan 1

I just this minute finished typing up one of my plans for how a TV adaptation of The Demonata might be structured. "One of?!?" Yep. When I started working things out, I saw that there were two different ways to do it - well, there are LOADS of ways to do it, of course, but there are two ways of special interest to ME - and I need to type up the second plan next, before submitting it to the Dreamology Pictures team. They may well not want to go in one of my suggested directions, which wil...

Evelyn’s Casket - Cirque Du Freak video

A band called EVELYN'S CASKET recorded a song with the very cool name of Cirque Du Freak a while back, in honour of my books which they enjoy. It's a great, catchy little number, and I've shared it here before, but now they've added a VIDEO which is a lot of fun, featuring snippets of them performing it live. But damn, I wish I could make it to one of their gigs to take my place in the mosh pit and sing along!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NivER... 

Just Kids Books and Lowplex

For quite a while now, readers in the UK (and, to an extent, Europe) have been able to order complete sets of most of my series through Lowplex at extraordinarily low prices. The sets have occasionally popped up on Amazon in the USA, at prices that don't match Lowplex but come in at pretty good value -- but today I saw a link for a site called JUST KIDS BOOKS, with VERY low prices for two of my series. You can get all 12 Cirque Du Freak books (in a very nice slipcase) for just $38.99, and all 12...

Lucca the troll

One of the perks I offered in my Terrified Troll fundraiser was a handwritten copy of the poem that inspired the picture book. A grandfather called Stewart, who came to see me regularly with his son Matthew when I used to do the Ediburgh Book Festival every year, bought one of the poems for his grandson LUCCA. He asked if I could possibly personalise it with a short message to Lucca, but I told him there wasn't really space on the page to do that. However, I suggested that I could rename the poe...

Bec - reviewed by Phoenix Project

An interesting review of BEC by The Phoenix Project. The reviewer is as eloquent as ever, and praises the novel highly, but DOES call its placement in the series into question, arguing that it should be the third book, not the fourth. To which I reply... Nonsense!!! :-) Seriously, while I do see his point, I think it's placement is perfect, and I don't say that lightly. It certainly didn't need to be #4 in the series -- it was actually the second Demonata book that I wrote. After Lord Lo...

US Review Of Books - Father of the Future

When Father Of The Future - my latest novel for adult readers, released under the pseudonym of Darren Dash - was released late last year, it picked up lots of extremely positive reviews, including one from US Review Of Books, which noted in its closing line: "this is a fascinating and imaginative science fiction tale that blends fact and fiction to weave an entertaining read." The review also neatly summarised the book's main plot, something I often struggle with -- I'm not very good at givi...

Stone the crows!!!!

When I announced late last year that I was working on my first ever picture book, The Terrified Troll, I said it had been inspired by my children and their love of chewing on stones when they were little! I'm sure lots of people thought that I was making that up, but Mrs Shan recently unearthed some old photos which verify what might have seemed like a wild, fanciful claim!!! Dante was especially fond of stones, and chewed on them for quite a long time. That was when I originally came up wit...

Demon Thief readthrough

I'm almost finished my read-through of Demon Thief, which I'm doing ahead of working on a structural plan for the potential Demonata TV adaptation. There's no guarantee that the adaptors -- Dreamology Pictures -- will want to go down the route I'm suggesting, or even if *I* will want to go down that route! I have an idea for how the books might be adapted, but I'm not at all certain that it will work out. Right now I'm just refreshing myself with the books. Then I'm going to work on piecing the ...

Morgan reviews Brothers To The Death

A year ago, a vlogger called MORGAN reviewed all four books in my Saga Of Larten Crepsley series. I provided a link to his review of the first book at the time, but never got round to sharing links for the others. Whoops!!! Well, better late than never!! So here's the link for book 4, Brothers To The Death, with the other two just beneath it, along with the link for Book 1 in case you missed it first time round. Book 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO11j... Book 3: https://www.yout...

St Vincents event

Now that the kids are back at school after the Easter holidays (hurrah!!!) I thought I'd mention again that I'm available to do online events with schools/libraries around the world, as I did with the students of ST VINCENTS PRIMARY SCHOOL a while back -- I've attached a couple of photos that the staff took during the event. Teachers and librarians set up these events in different ways. Sometimes they gather all the students in a large room or hall with a big screen projection, but in this c...