Happy Birthday to me... Happy Birthday to me... Happy Birthday... Happy Birthday... Happy Birthday to me!!!! :-)

Yes folks, 49 years ago today, DesTiny delivered a dark-haired, hairy baby to the Shans. I'm a lot greyer now than I was on that day in Sr Thomas' Hospital in London (a hospital which featured in my Zom-B series, and which will feature again in Volume 3 of my Archibald Lox series next year) but at least I still DO have hair -- my children, Dante and Gaia, have torn at it so hard after the last several years, when rough playing or when I'm giving them piggy-backs, that I'm amazed they haven't ripped it all out at the roots!!! :-)

The lovely card in the photo was sent to me by a fan called Kathryn. She came to a lot of my signings when I was out on the road tour, and included photos showing us ageing together over the years -- I have to say, I think she's aged better than I have!! It's been a long time since my last tour, and I suspect it will be a while still before my next one, but hopefully I'll return to that part of my life one day in the not TOO distant future, and Kathryn and all the other Shansters who regularly turned out to support me can roll on by for a few updated snaps!

I'm at a stage of my life where I don't really look for (or get!) birthday presents, but if you DID want to treat me this year, my heart would sing if you ordered a copy of my latest book, Archibald Lox and the Forgotten Crypt, which went on sale yesterday. It's book 4 of the series, and the eBook will set you back nothing more than a very wallet-friendly $2.99 or your local equivalent. Indeed, if you haven't yet started the series, you can download the eBook of Book 1, Archibald Lox and the Bridge Between Worlds, for FREE, so it won't even cost you a penny!!! :-) You can find direct buying links to a variety of stores in the Shanville Monthly newsletter, which went live yesterday -- there's also a cool little birthday competition, if you want to win a uniquely signed book... https://darrenshan.com/news/shanville-monthly

If you've already bought Archie #4, then I hope you enjoy it as much as the early reviewers have enjoyed it -- it seems to have been ticking everyone's sweet box, so I hope it ticks yours too!! :-)

Right, I'm off. I took Gaia for a swimming lesson earlier, which made for a wonderful first half of the birthday day -- and Mrs Shan is taking me out for a burger and chips later. which should set me nicely for the second half too!! (Dante is off with his mates -- he's too cool to be spending time with his old man! BUT we took him to sign up a library for the first time yesterday, and he spotted some of my books on the shelves. When he was checking out his books, he said to the librarian. "Excuse me?" She said, "Yes?" He said, "My dad is Darren Shan." And although I was embarrassed, being an 'umble kind of guy, I was walking on cloud 9 afterwards too -- there's not much better a present for a dad than to realise their kid is proud of them...)