In the world of movie/TV adaptations, things usually move at a snail's pace. But sometimes something happens that allows a project to explode -- and that's happened in the last few weeks with Cirque Du Freak!!!

As I've said before, Cirque Du Freak has been under option for quite a while now, the plan being to turn it into a TV show. A team in America has been working on the scripts and getting it to a point where they could pitch it to the major players. I've been very hands-off throughout that process, happy to leave them to it. But now I suddenly find myself slap bang in the middle of things, and it's all down to... geography!!!

Who remembers the Ed Sheeran video for his song Bad Habits? It was released almost 3 years ago, and fans of Cirque Du Freak were in touch with me almost immediately, saying he looked very much like Mr Crepsley in the video. They wondered if he too might be a fan of my books?!? I chuckled and said I doubted it, although one fan did get in touch saying he'd gone to the same school as Ed, and that they'd had lots of my books in the library there, so maybe...

Anyway, fast forward nearly three years, to a couple of weeks ago, when I was in Great Yarmouth for SFW XV (a sci-fi/fantasy/horror convention). It turns out that Ed Sheeran has a holiday home nearby, and had spotted that I was going to be at the convention -- and he WAS a fan from his childhood!! Using his contacts, he reached out to me to ask if he could swing by and hang out for a few hours. Well, I was hardly going to say no to one of the world's biggest pop stars, was I?!?

So, Ed came over on the Saturday morning and snuck into my caravan. He's a lovely chap and we chatted about my books and his music and all sorts of other stuff. Then the topic of the possible TV adaptation came up, and Ed went into overdrive! He said it had always been his dream to play Mr Crepsley, and he'd taken a few small acting parts (including in Game Of Thrones, which I recalled) primarily in the hope of working his way up to one day being able to tackle the role. He asked if I thought the team in the States might be interested in chatting with him about it. Well, there was only one way to find out!!

So, on the Monday morning I let them know, and once they'd got over their astonishment, they got in touch with Ed immediately. Their conversation went exceedingly well, and a couple of days later they'd signed him up, and on the back of that signing, they also scored a deal with Netflix before the end of the week!! Yep -- the Cirque Du Freak series IS going ahead, and Ed Sheeran is going to be playing Mr Crepsley!!!!

But that's not all!!!!

While they were chatting with Ed, they asked him if he'd consider writing some songs for the show. They were hoping for two or three, but Ed had a better idea. He's a big fan of musicals, and his favourite is Les Miserables, where all the dialogue is sung. He asked them if he could work with them to turn their scripts into songs, and have the show be a fulyl sung musical from start to finish, with Ed writing all the tunes. They were a bit uncertain at first, but then he composed a few sample songs and sung them to the team, and they were blown away.

So... Cirque Du Freak is going to be a musical, where every line of dialogue is sung, in every episode!!! Well, except for Mr Tiny's lines. Ed said he didn't dare compose anything for Mr Tiny, as he believes the little meddler is real and he didn't want to do anything that might annoy him. So Mr Tiny is going to be played by a mime artist, who will mime all his lines any time he appears.

They're going into production very shortly, and the plan is to release the first episode on this day next year, which is, of course...

APRIL FOOL'S DAY!!!!!!

Sorry, folks!!! I've been pulling your leg from the start!! I mean, yes,. there IS a team in the States working on adapting Cirque Du Freak for TV, but everything else in this story is A-grade bull fertiliser!!!! But go on, be honest -- did I have you believing it, even for a few seconds there?!? I bet I did!!!!!! :-)