My blog tour started for real yesterday, over on Rajiv's Reviews, where Rajiv reviewed the first three Archibald Lox books. Rajiv was very taken with Volume 1 of my new series, awarding it a lovely 5 star review, and noting about Book 1: "I loved everything about the story, and can’t wait to see how it continues!" For Rajiv's full reviews of the books, click here: https://www.rajivsreviews.com/2020/07/06/the-archibald-lox-series-by-darren-shan/

Meanwhile, on the mask front, here are three more drawings of characters keeping freakily safe in these trouble Covid-19 times. All three were drawn by a fan called Kendra, and they're all fabulous -- I love the personalized masks that Darren and Evra are wearing! -- but I especially love the Madam Octa drawing. It wasn't just that it tickled my pink that someone would think of putting a mask on the venomous arachnid, but that it reminded me of one of my major writing boo-boos! In Cirque Du Freak, I described Madam Octa as having a throbbing body when she was doing her act with Mr Crepsley, i.e. breathing in and out very heavily, so she looked like a balloon being inflated and then deflating. When the book was released, spider lovers weren't long in telling me that spiders don't actually breathe that way. Normally, when I make a mistake, I'm more than happy to correct it (as when I referred to rabbits in my book Bec, unaware that rabbits hadn't been introduced to the British Isles until hundreds of years after the time that story was set -- I removed those reference in later printings) but in this case I didn't care -- it was such a cool image that I left it as it was. Sometimes you've got to go with the vibe, not the facts... ;-)