I'm running a COMPETITION in the September issue of the Shanville Monthly, to tie in with the news about the forthcoming release of the Cirque Du Freak manga omnibus. I'm offering up SEVEN complete signed sets of the manga from various countries -- four sets from Finland, two sets from South Korea, and one set from Taiwan. Even if you don't speak any of those languages, you'll be able to admire the pictures, and if you're familiar with the storyline, you'll actually probably be able to follow most of the story, as I did when the series was originally coming out in Japan -- even though I couldn't read any of the text, I could make sense of the drawings and piece together the narrative in pretty much every chapter.

I took some random photos of a few pages from the manga this morning, to give you a small taste of what they're like if you've never read them. The fourth shot actually features my favourite panel from the entire twelve volumes -- working from a photo of my old bedroom in my parents' house, where I wrote the vast majority of the Cirque Du Freak books, the artist (Takahiro Arai) recreated it. I spent ages staring at this, spotting bits and pieces which were an everyday part of claustrophobic little working world a quarter of a century ago -- the box of floppy discs on which I saved the computer files of each book... some of the videos from my extensive video collection built up in the days before DVDs and online streaming... mementos from my early travels, like the tiny Sphinx head from Egypt, and the mini Mariachi band from South America... Whenever I stare at that photo, it's like stepping back in time, and it reminds me of how far I've come, and how lucky I've been.

Anyway, if you want to be in with a chance of owning signed copies of all twelve volumes of the manga -- albeit in a language you most likely can't read! -- all you have to do is answer a VERY simple question. Click here to find out more and how to enter:

https://www.darrenshan.com/news/shanville-monthly