Darren Shan and Steve Leopard... once the best of friends... later the fiercest of enemies. I always thought of Darren and Steve as two sides of the same coin. A lot of people assume that Darren is based on myself, as we share the same name, but in truth he's no more autobiographical than any of my leading characters, and Steve was as equally drawn from my own mindset.

Basically, with the two characters, I wanted to explore two different paths that I might have journeyed on in life, if faced with the choices that Darren and Steve are faced with. I think few people in life are truly bad or evil. Seeds can certainly lie dormant in us from the start, but events and the choices we make also define the people that we ultimately become. Darren is me in knight-in-shining-armour mode, and I like to think I've got a bit of a would-be hero inside me. But I also have a temper, and I was a greedy, jealous child, and I think I could have been Steve just as easily as I could have been Darren, which is why I always tried to write about him as sympathetically as I could -- not that it was easy or always possible, given the extremes to which the storyline forced me to push him...

Anyway, here are three fantastic drawings of Darren and Steve, drawn by three fantastic fans. The first, with the lovely purple and red bacgrounds, was drawn by Nibi. The black and white drawing, set during the Allies of the Night storyline, was by Nomiliy. And the third, in which the pair are joined by their childhood friends Tommy and Alan, is by Rororou.

I love all three drawings, but the third one in particular makes me smile wistfully. Simpler, happy times. Don't we all wish, at various point in our life, that we could go back to those...?

The Cirque Du Freak movie is now showing on IMDB TV in the USA for FREE. Find out more here: https://darrenshan.com/news/shanville-monthly