A fan on Facebook called Thomas recently posted the following message: "Anyone else feel like des tiny could have had some secret connection to the Demonata that was never written about? Like he's cracking open a cold one with lord loss or something?"

Every so often, a fan of both my vampire and demon series will ask if there is any connection between them. They'll usually point to Mr Tiny and mention the otherworldly monsters that we glimpse towards the end of that series -- might those monsters have been the Demonata, and could I one day merge the two universes?

The simple answer is -- no.

I did very briefly consider crossing over, as I started work on Lord Loss before I finished work on my vampire books. Mr Tiny would have slotted quite nicely into the universe of the demons, and might have had an interesting role to play -- perhaps he would have sided with humanity against the Demonata? But I cast the thought aside after no more than the briefest of flickers.

Firstly, it felt too gimmicky. I think The Saga of Darren Shan, The Demonata and Zom-B (oipefully Archibald Lox too, once it's completed) all work so well in large part because they're set in self-contained universes with very strict rules. Once you start mixing things up, throwing vampires in to help out when Grubbs is battling demons, or having Lord Loss pop up while B Smith is kicking some undead ass... those rules break down and it all becomes very silly very quickly. That's not to say it can't be done -- Marvel have fared quite nicely with some of their mash-ups, not least on the movie front -- but as a general rule I think it's a bad idea.

The other reason I dismissed the idea almost immediately is that there was absolutely no mention of the Demonata in the vampire books. I was still working on The Saga, so it would have been possible to slip in a mention of them -- it could have been as basic as Mr Tiny referring to the monsters as the Demonata, and hinting that he'd soon have to turn his attention away from vampires to tackle a possible threat from the demons. But that would have begged the question -- why hadn't the vampires been fighting the demons all these years? As a Vampire Prince, Darren surely would have been told that part of his duties would have involved protecting Earth from invading demons! No, if it was to have worked, it would have had to been embedded early in the vampire series, and possibly played an important part in those stories.

So, to wrap up, once again, the simple answer is -- no. No connections at all between Cirque Du Freak and Lord Loss. I bring them together, along with all my other work, in my annual Shanta Claus story (which will be going live again on my site close to Christmas Day, so not too much longer to wait), but although I love that story, it's very tongue in cheek, never to be confused for canon.

Clear?!? :-)