Since we're not that long after Valentine's Day, I thought it would be fun, this Fan Art Saturday, to share some drawings of couples that have come my way in recent times. Three of them are romantic pairings, but I didn't have a fourth in my stockpile, so I've added in a brother/sister couple too!! :-) They all hail from my Cirque Du Freak books.

First up we have Alice Burgess and Debbie Hemlock, drawn by Tweeter MORNINGSTAR9992. As long-time followers of mine will be all too aware, I'd planned to have Alice and Debbie link up as a couple in the last few books -- it just seemed like a natural development to me, given how close they became. But my agent felt it distracted from the storyline, and said we'd have trouble getting it past my publishers, so in the end I rewrote the scene where their relationship was mentioned -- but to me they will always be a couple, just the same way that Larten and Arra were.

Next, we have Mika Ver Leth and Arra Sails, drawn by EMILY. As we saw in my Saga Of Larten Crepsley prequel series, Arra and Mika were a couple back in the day, when Larten was dragging his heels and not committing. Emily captures a fraught momenn in their relationship -- perhaps Arra is telling Mika that she still has feelings for a certain orange-haired fool...

That fool sees sense in the third drawing, by DINA, who presents us with pretty much a perfect visual definition of a power couple!! Arra's telling the rest of the world, "He's mine!!!" and Larten seems more than happy with that arrangement!! Though of course he went and spoiled it all again shortly thereafter, didn't he?!?

Finally, away from the romantic couplings, we have the young, innocent Darren and Annie Shan, in the days before freak shows, vampires and poisonous spiders. Drawn by LIV, this is one of those pictures that's both joyour and saddening to me -- joyous because they're clearly so happy, saddening because I'm left thinking, "If only they could have frozen that moment in time..."