On Saturday I went to watch Spurs lose 1-0 at home to Wigan. A dreadful result and an even worse perfromance! Sometimes you can just be unlucky in football, but we never looked like we were going to break them down. A shame, as it spoilt what would otherwise have been the perfect footballing week. Oh well, you have to take the bad along with the good in football, as in all areas of life...

Flew back home after the match and spent Sunday finishing off the Writing Tips section of my web site. Several years in the planning and execution, this is now finally complete. Those of you with a sharp eye might have noticed over the last few years that I posted quite a few lengthy blogs about the writing process. Partly of course that was to answer questions or discuss issues which presented themselves at the time. But I also had an eye on the bigger picture -- I wanted to put together a book about writing, full of tips, advice and comments. I couldn't find the time to do it all in one go, and didn't really fancy doing it that way. But doing it in chunks, spread out over a 3 or 4 year period was a very distinct possibility -- and that's what I've done! While it's not as neatly presented and structured a book on writing as the sort of how-to books you can find in the shops, it covers a lot of ground and contains much of what I have to say on the subject. It's also absolutely FREE!!!! I probably won't be posting too many lengthy writing-related posts here in future -- indeed, I haven't been for a few months now, which is a reason why my blog entries have decreased a bit. I was finding myself repeating old blogs. Now that they're all collected in one easily accessible place, I won't need to do that now -- unless, of course, someone comes up with a question which isn't currently answered in the Writing Tips section. So if you have any queries about writing, whether they're related to the harvesting of ideas, planning of a book, or coping with life on the road, click on the following link: http://www.darrenshan.com/writing-tips/

Today I plotted and started work on the seventh book of what will hopefully be my next published series after The Saga Of Larten Crepsley. I still can't say anything about the series, except that it's a fast-paced, full-on horror story. I wrote ten pages of the new book today, to get off to a nice, healthy start. I'll be keeping you guys up to date with progress on it over the new couple of weeks, even though I can't discuss any of the subject matter with you! Your patience is kindly appreciated...