Many readers of my books logically assume that of all my narrators and main characters, Darren Shan is the one most closely modeled on myself, since we share the same name. But as the old saying goes, to assume makes an ass of u and me! :-)

Darren Shan, as I'm sure pretty much all of you are aware, is not actually my real name, which is Darren O'Shaughnessy, so the character of Darren Shan isn't in fact named after me. I certainly have much in common with Master Shan, as I do with virtually all of my main characters -- they're all, to some extent, projections of myself, regardless of gender or age or skin colour or any other factors. None is a direct projection, and they all have many differences to me too, but when I'm writing a story, I tend to place myself within it, usually from the perspective of the main character (which is probably why I write in the first person more often than not), and we usually are more alike than different, for better or worse.

Having said all of that, some characters do obviously reflect more of the author Darren Shan (i.e. Darren O'Shaughnessy) than others, albeit not in a straightforward or immediately obvious fashion. Newman Riplan, for instance, in my weird Darren Dash sci-novel An Other Place, is in some ways one of my more autobiographical creations -- that book in many ways was one of self-analysis and inner questioning.

But the character who is the most like me -- albeit not in physical looks -- is probably Kernel Fleck from my Demonata series. It wasn't intentional, but whenever I look back at him, I see a lot of myself in his makeup.

Which is a VERY long-winded way of saying that I really like it when fans decide to draw pictures of Kernel. These two were drawn by a fan called Emma. The first is an adpatation of a line from Spiderman: Into The Spiderverse. (That probably makes it a meme, so maybe I should have done it on a meme day, but too late now!) The second imagines an alternate timeline where a happy Kernel is out taking a stroll with his sister Annabella, who is mentioned VERY briefly in the original series -- I'd be very surprised if many of you remember here -- I have to admit, I'd forgotten about her too, and had to go double-check that she had actually been name-checked in them! :-)

Speaking of my Darren Dash books for adults -- a new one has just been released (the eBook is on sale now, with a paperback edition soon to follow), with the eyebrow-raising title of Molls Like It Hot. You can find out more about it in the December issue of the Shanville Monthly: https://www.darrenshan.com/news/shanville-monthly/