Last week I posted a few photos of letters that I'd sent to fans, and books of mine that I'd signed, which fans had shared with me. The post inspired lots more of you to share snaps of your own signed books with me, which has been a real treat -- I love looking at these mementos from past tours! So I thought why not share a few more, since the originals went down so nicely with my followers?!? :-)

The first two are messages that I wrote in the UK edition of Hell's Heroes, the final book of my Demonata series. My publishers created a special signing page in the book, and it's always a special joy to scribble a message in this particular printing! My tour to support it, in the UK and Ireland, was my busiest ever -- I signed for at least two hours at every appearance, and met thousands of fans over the course of the two weeks that I was out on the road.

Because I keep a record of all the events that I've done over the years - https://darrenshan.com/events/events-archive - I'm able to see that I signed for CHARLOTTE in Middlesborough on the 6th (unless she was at the school in Wetherby that I visited earlier in the day), and for JAKE in either Brighton or Chichester (or Worthing School) on the 2nd. Yep, it wasn't unusual for me to do three events on the same day if we could make our schedule work -- sometimes I even did more!!!

I can also see that three years earlier I signed for MELISSA in either Ilford or Newham on the 13th, and for STEPHANIE in Donegal or Derry on the 10th. You might note that the messages are very similar. While I love being able to come up with a truly unique, personal message when signing a book, normally it ends up being a variation of a standard line -- when you're signing for 50 or 100 or 200 people, there simply isn't time to be amazingly witty and original with every single message!! BUT I do always try to match the line to the contents of the book -- e.g. if I'm signing Hell's Heroes, my line is normally something like, "time to find out if YOU are made of the stuff of Heroes!" or if I'm signing Killers Of The Dawn it's most often a sombre "even in death may you be triumphant!" -- for rather obvious, sad reasons!!!

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I'm not touring much at the moment, but I always announce appearances well in advance in my monthly online newsletter, so it's worth subscribing to it, to find out if I'm ever popping up in a bookshop, library or crypt(!!) near YOU!!!! You can sign up with your email address by clicking here: https://darrenshan.com/news/subscribe And I promise never to bother you with TOO many emails in any given month!!! :-)