GREETINGS!

Hi everyone, and welcome to the first Shanville Monthly newsletter of 2025! If you’re wondering why this looks a bit different to normal, it’s because I’m having my web site redesigned, and we’re having to squeeze in the newsletter a different way while work is still ongoing. The new site should be up and running well before the next newsletter hits the world – touch wood! In all honesty, it’s been due an upgrade for a few years now, to bring it into line with the changing online world, so hopefully it will work more smoothly – and look much better – for you guys from this point onwards.

As for the new this month… there’s an update on when the world can expect to be introduced to a Terrified Troll… I fill in the blanks on how long it took me to create Father of the Future… I talk about my hopes for the year 2025… I join the ranks of Bluesky… and, of course, I lead with news of the 25th anniversary reissue of probably my most beloved book, Cirque Du Freak – now THAT’s the way to start a year with a bang!!!

25 YEARS OF FREAKERY!

January 2025 sees the 25th anniversary of the first ever release of Cirque Du Freak in the UK. To mark the magnificent occasion, my British publishers, HarperCollins, have reissued the book with a brand new cover. It should be in all good book stores in the UK and Ireland now – if you don’t see it on the shelves, ask a member of staff to order in a copy for you. Or, if you’d rather order it from Amazon UK, you can CLICK HERE.

The new cover art is by a very talented artist called Artem Chebokha. And I've written a new introduction which will appear at the start of the book, talking about how the idea for the book first came to me and discussing some of my memories from the early years after its release.

I think they've done a fabulous job with the cover, and I hope you all love it as much as I do!! If you do, please share it as widely as you can, with anyone you think might be interested in it. This is the second coming of Cirque Du Freak, so let's try and help it make as big a splash as possible!!!!!

TERRIFIED TROLL UPDATE

As many of you hopefully already know, I'm releasing my first ever picture book this year, with the artist Eva Byrne, called The Terrified Troll. It's initially coming out as a signed, limited edition, the print run being based on the orders we got to it when we ran a fundraiser in late 2023. We're planning to release it in a more widely available edition after that, ideally with the help of a traditional publisher.

I had a meeting with Eva last month to look at where we're at and to set ourselves up for the final push. We're VERY close to the finishing post -- just several pages of interior art to go! It would have been even less, but I added in another couple of pages -- I'm loving Eva's art so much, I wanted more of it!!

I'm sharing one of Eva's latest finished pages, which comes near the end of our little Troll's long, troubling night. I absolutely adore the colour scheme of this one -- so subtle, so simple, yet so effective.

We're hoping to get the book all done and dusted by March or April, though there's a good chance it might stretch on a month or two longer than that, depending on how the editing and proofing processes go -- Eva wants to go through the entire book again when she's done, to make some tweaks and adjustments, and then we'll have to get proof copies made up, to check that the colours all come out the way Eva wants, and that everything aligns correctly. But the end IS in sight -- hurrah!!!

I'm honestly a bit blown away by how this is shaping up. It's far more evolved than I had anticipated back at the start, and I think you guys who pre-ordered are going to get an awful lot for your money!!

ARRA SAILS ESSAY

Arra Sails remains one of the most popular characters from my Cirque Du Freak books, even though she didn't have a lot of page time in the series. She actually was never planned to be as important a character as she turned out to be -- she just took on a life of her own as I was writing the Vampire Mountain books, and ended up forcing herself into the story. It's always a pleasure when that happens with a character, and I loved getting to bring her back the Larten Crepsley books, so that we could see more of her in action and development.

An Arra fan, called JULIANA, wrote a highly interesting essay about her last year, talking about what makes the character so interesting, and why Juliana enjoyed reading about her so much. It's definitely worth a read, and you can find it by CLICKING HERE

The artwork, which matches the essay perfectly (almost as if it was the work of DesTiny!!) is by another fan, called LIV.

GENIUS OR CHANCER?!?

A Tweeter called FESTIE recently marvelled at what looks like a very subtle Easter Egg in Birth Of A Killer, the first book of my Saga Of Larten Crepsley series.

Mention of a bedpan in the first chapter sent Festive scurrying back to the first chapter of Cirque Du Freak, which mentioned... a toilet! Was this intentional on my part, a little mirrored-scene reward for the most eagle-eyed of my readers?!?

Festie certainly thought it was intentional -- but I'm not so sure!!! I do certainly drop in little callbacks like this, far more regularly than many of my readers might realise, but I don't recall doing it on purpose in this instance. That doesn't definitely mean I didn't -- I may well have done it and then forgot about it later!!! But even if I forget when I do something like this, I usually recall it if someone brings it to my attention years later, but this time there isn't even a small bell of recognition dinging inside my brain.

But ssshhhhh!!! Don't tell Festie! Let them go on thinking I'm a devious little genius!!!!!

FATHER OF CORRECTIONS

A fan recently alerted me to a typo in Father Of The Future, the sci-fi novel for adults that I released under my Darren Dash moniker last year. In one spot I’d mistakenly referred to a character, called Beta D, as Beta B — whoops!! In fact, when I went back and checked my manuscript, I found that I’d actually done it four times — quadruple whoops!!!

I’ve gone back in and corrected that on my various files for the book, and reuploaded it to all the stores where it’s on sale, i.e. Amazon as a hardback and paperback, and Amazon, Apple, Google Play, Kobo, etc, where the eBook is sold at a wallet-friendly price of just $2.99 or your local equivalent

While I was tweaking the manuscript, I also adjusted the page at the end, where I state when I started and finished work on the book. When I released it last year, I didn’t have access to my diaries, which were in storage, so although I could share the date when I did my final edit, I could only say that I started the book at some point in the 1990s. Now that my diaries have been returned to me, I was able to quickly check, and have replaced the first line with the following three lines:

I had the idea for Father of the Future on the 11th of January 1996.

I started writing the book on the 16th of January 1996.

I finished the first draft on the 14th of February 1996.

Yep, it took me just under a month to write the first draft!! Granted, it was a short book, but even so, I was rather impressed with myself when I read that! I take my sweet time on the editing process (almost 27 and a half years for Father Of The Future!), but I fire away like a demon on the first drafts!!!

A SCULPTOR’S EVOLUTION

A fan called ALEX did a small sculpture of Mr Crepsley a couple of years ago, then another the following year, and a third late in 2024. As you can see, Alex has come a long way over the course of the three works. I love seeing an artist’s evolution captured so strikingly. I hope Alex continues to work on Mr Crepsley over the years to come, and that we get to see even more polished sculptures than these in the future…

BLUESKY

A fan called CYRUS posted this photo on Bluesky last month. They're tearing through the last books of mine that they have to read -- halfway through one of my massive Archibald Lox volumes, with seven of my books for adults up next, inlcuding The City Trilogy which I released under the name of Darren Shan, and four of my Darren Dash books.

I don't see a pile like this too often, with nary a copy of Cirque Du Freak or The Demonata in site! How many of these lesser-spotted Shan novels have YOU read?!? If the answer is "not many" then you’ll need to up your game in 2025! *wink*

p.s. if you'd like to follow me on Bluesky, which I only joined within the last couple of months, my handle is: @darrenshan.bsky.social I tried verifying it recently, but ran into a few technical difficulties. I'll try again soon, when my new site is launched -- although I never verified my Twitter account over the years, and that never seemed to bother any of my followers, so maybe I won't bother...

MORE SCULPTURES!

Back to the topic of sculptures…

A fan called SAMANTHA introduced her partner to The Demonata recently, and he was so impressed that he made Vein and Artery sculptures for Christmas for her! I think he did a brilliant job, and on these basis of these work alone, I’d have to say “Samantha… he’s a keeper!!!”

LIMERICK LEADER

Want to know what I’m wishing for in 2025??? Find out in a short article that I wrote for the Limerick Leader by CLICKING HERE.

IT'S A WRAP!

And that's it for January. I hope you all enjoyed a positive start to the New Year, and that you had fun over the festive period. We had a quiet one in Shanville. It was lovely to be back in our own home, having been out for two years after a house fire, and we just chilled with some family members. A few days before that, we went on a short trip to Dublin, and had a wonderful couple of days up there -- we went to see Mary Poppins, which was amazingly staged... we enjoyed the Christmas lights on Grafton Street... we visited Santa at Elf Town (it was wonderful, and I highly recommend it next year for any of you with young uns)... and we topped it all off with a visit to Wild Lights in Dublin Zoo, where they've put together another incredible selection of Chinese Lanterns that will take your breath away. I'll hopefully see you back here at the start of February to celebrate the launch of the brand new website. Until then, all my bloody best, Darren Shan. x x x

Follow Darren Shan on Facebook and Twitter and Bluesky. He also has a (very rarely updated!) YouTube page.

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