Fans of my books rarely cosplay as characters from those books -- or if they do, they don't share any photos with me! -- but when they do it, they tend to do it WELL! A name to add to that short, honourable list is Vanessa Garges, who pulls off three very different looks here to step into the shoes of two of the main players from my Cirque Du Freak books, as well as one of the support characters who had a small but vital role in the latter stages of the storyline. This is what Vanessa said when she posted the following pictures to Facebook:

"So because I have absolutely zero self control, cosplayed 3 Cirque du Freak characters, so I present to you: The number #1 vampire dad, Larten Crepsley. Then Steve, with a necklace I made in about 10 minutes out of cardboard bc I could not find an actual one in my house lol. And a character who I really wish had more time be around, Darius."

Now -- who's going to be brave enough to step into the wellies of Mr Tiny?!? :-)

Speaking of Facebook... When I announced the winners of my July competition last week, a few fans commented to say that they'd never seen any of my Facebook posts in the run-up to the comp. This is a regular problem for Facebook users -- even if you Like a page, you only see a selection of posts from that page, chosen in some unfathomable way by Facebook's secretive system.

There are two ways around his problem, to ensure you never miss any of my posts again.

1) Subscribe to the Shanville Monthly over on http://www.darrenshan.com This is the surest way, as long as you enter your email address correctly and ener a new one any time you update it, as you'll get an email alert at the start of every month when a new issue goes live.

2) Turn on Notifications on Facebook. On the Darren Shan Verified home page, hover over the Following button once you've liked my page and started following it. Click on the Edit button next to Notifications, then tick the box for Standard, which means you'll get notified every time I post anything -- that can be a problem if people post loads of times a day, but I usually post only one per day, every occasionally might post twice, virtually never any more than that. That SHOULD ensure you don't miss any posts from me again, but hey, with Facebook, who the hell knows?!? :-)