An avid reader called Samantha has been doing a very amusing Vlogtober Spooky Readathon over on YouTube, chatting about some scary books in the run-up to Halloween. Two of my Demonata books have featured: Demon Apocalypse, and Death's Shadow. Direct links to the paid of videos below, which are a lot of fun and certainly worth a look:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R5F8pLVl6U&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFNyMBqJJQI&feature=youtu.be

One thing the reviews reminded me of is just how (pardon my French) batshit crazy The Demonata is!!! It's been a long time since I wrote these books, and I've forgotten a lot about them, especially as I haven't been touring in recent years and discussing them with fans. My eyes bulged as I listened to Samantha recapping some of the wilder moments from the books, and I was like, "No! That can't be right! Surely I didn't do THAT!"

Heh heh!! I've always said I don't have a favourite series as a writer, but I've also often admitted that The Demonata is the one I'm proudest of. I pushed myself so far with these books, throwing in so much gore and preposterous plot twists that it should all have collapsed under its own weight after two or three novels. Yet somehow it all works and comes together, and although it all seems like a ludicrous dream when you think about the story afterwards, in the middle of reading, it all makes sense, and everything is there for a reasons, and everything clicks. Just don't ask me how I did it -- I look back at The Demonata now and it's almost as much of a mystery to me as it was to my readers. Maybe Lord Loss was pulling my strings... :-)

I'm going to be recording a short Halloween VIDEO to release on the 31st. I'm going to answer a variety of questions submitted by fans, and maybe do a short reading or two. If YOU want to ask me a question, you can do so in the comments box in reply to this post or use the Contact Form on www.darrenshan.com I'll gather together a selection of my favourite questions and answer them as best I can in the video.
 

--------------------

My new series, Archibald Lox, is nowhere near as gory as The Demonata, and it's much more leisurely paced, but in its own way it's a bonkers prospect too, and I'm slyly setting up lots of twists and turns that you're only going to see once you finish the third Volume. If you want to catch up with the first Volume, the paperback edition went on sale a few days ago (there's an eBook edition too, which is incredibly good value), and you can find out more about it here: https://www.darrenshan.com/news/article/archibald-lox-paperbacks1