GREETINGS!

Hi everyone, and welcome to the November issue of the Shanville Monthly. I hope you all had a Shantastic Halloween and aren't TOO unhappy now that you have to wait a whole year for it to come around again! I had a busy October, with a mix of touring and writing, and November is going to be equally frenetic. Roll on December and a nice, lazy wind-down to the year! But before that, let me fill you in on all the latest news, including sales on my adult books... tour updates... interviews... karaoke... and a whole lot more!

ADULT SALES

October, of course, meant HALLOWEEN, my favourite holiday!!! To celebrate this year, I offered the Kindle editions of my two adult Darren Dash books at a special Halloween sale price for a very limited time -- and the offer is still live at the start of November, until 08.00 on November 3rd. Each ebook costs just £0.99 in the UK and $0.99 in the USA. You can find out more about my Darren Dash books by CLICKING HERE, while this is the UK LINK and the USA LINK for The Evil And The Pure ebook, and this is the UK LINK and the USA LINK for the Sunburn ebook. If you don't have a Kindle reader, don't despair -- you can download a FREE Kindle App to your computer, Mac, smart phone, etc, and buy, download and read ebooks using that.

As well as the Darren Dash sales, you also still have a chance to pick up a couple of my Darren Shan ebooks for adults at an 89% discount of their cover price!!! The good people at Amazon UK have included Procession Of The Dead and Hell's Horizon (books 1 and 2 of my City Trilogy) in their autumn Kindle sale, which runs until November 9th. Each eBook costs just £0.99 to download -- yep, less that a pound!! Both books can be read independently of the others in the series, as a standalone story. While not as well known as my YA books, The City novels have picked up a strong, cult following over the years, and continue to weave their spell over new readers, nearly 17 years after the publication of book 1. If you're the right sort of age (and as I said above, these are books for adults), maybe it's time you visited the City to find out what the dark and twisting fuss is all about... You can buy Procession Of The Dead by CLICKING HERE and you can buy Hell's Horizon by CLICKING HERE

TOUR DATES

I'm on tour in Sharjah this month. I'm doing a number of school events for invited school groups, plus a public event which is open to anyone who wants to come. Please note that I never impose any limits on the number of my books that I will sign, so feel free to bring your whole collection from home or buy loads of them on the day!

Monday 9th November 2015

10.00am -- school event, Our Own English High School, SHARJAH.

Monday 9th November 2015

12.00pm -- school event, Australian International School, SHARJAH.

Tuesday 10th November 2015

10.00am -- school event, GEMS Millennium School, SHARJAH.

Tuesday 10th November 2015

12.30Pm -- school event, Latifa School, DUBAI.

10.00am -- school event, Sharjah English School, SHARJAH.

Wednesday 11th November 2015

12.30pm -- school event, American University Of Sharjah, SHARJAH.

Thursday 12th November 2015

10.00am -- school event, The Millennium School, DUBAI.

Thursday 12th November 2015

7.00pm -- PUBLIC event, "Dare To Be Scared," at the Intellectual Hall, The Expo Centre, SHARJAH. CLICK HERE

March 2016

I'm going to be appearing at the DUBAI Literary Festival. More details TBC closer the time. CLICK HERE

28th April to May 1st 2016

I'm going to be a guest of honor at the World Horror Convention, PROVO, UTAH, USA. More details TBC closer the time. http://www.whc2016.org/home.html

SHARJAH ARTICLE

As I said in the Tour section above, I'm doing events in Sharjah this month. You can read an interesting article about my forthcoming visit, in which I also talk about the new series that I'm currently working on, by CLICKING HERE.

GOODREADS... GOOD QUESTIONS!

To link in with Halloween, I took part in Horror Week over on Goodreads, and spent a week answering questions that readers submitted. There were lots of interesting questions about my books and the writing process, and I hope my answer proved a match for them. While Horror Week has now ended, you can check out the questions and answers by CLICKING HERE

THE GUARDIAN

 Again, to tie in with Halloween, I wrote an article for The Guardian in the UK, about my love of cliffhangers and why I use so many in the Zom-B books. It's proving popular with readers on the site, and if you want to check it out, you can access it by CLICKING HERE.

BOOK COVER WARS

The always enjoyable Mr Ripley's Enchanted Books Site is running a Book Cover Wars for scary covers. Zom-B Fugitive was one of five books nominated in the first round of voting, and while it trailed for a long time, the book roared to a resounding win in the end, earning 53% of the votes!! There are a few more rounds of voting to go, then the final -- I'll be calling on your support again when that happens, so be prepared! If you want to check out the results of the first round, CLICK HERE

THEY SAID WHAT?!?

I always like it when fans tweet a favourite line from one of my books, as it's nice to be reminded of some of my finer writing moments! But here's a different twist on that -- a page where a fan has written new lines and attributed them to various characters from my novels. It's a lot of fun, and sometimes the lines so accurately reflect a character's personality that you'll be wondering if maybe I DID write them after all!!!! http://incorrectcdfquotes.tumblr.com/

HUNGARIAN FAN SITE

My dedicated fans in Hungary established a Darren Shan fan page three years ago. It recently celebrated its third birthday, and they asked me if I would send them a short video which they could feature on the page. I was more than happy to oblige, and if you want to see what I had to say, you can find out by CLICKING HERE If you have any problems accessing the video from that page, it's also up on YouTube OVER HERE Looking back at it, in retrospect I probably say "hopefully" a few times too many... :-)

HALLOWEEN READS

I know we're past it now, but every day can be Halloween for those who love horror!! So, if you're looking for a great teen-appropriate Halloween read, you can find a dozen grisly recommendations over on the Scottish Book Trust site. They all look like chilling, shiver-inducing little gems, but number one on the list looks especially intriguing... :-) CLICK HERE

Meanwhile, there are still more great titles to wrap your brain around on this list of recommend books by an on-the-ball librarian in Abington in the USA. Zom-B Bride is one of the featured titles, but there are lots more. CLICK HERE

OCTOBER EVENTS

I had a fun time on tour in the UK and Ireland in September and October, and was delighted to stumble across a couple of reports by students at two of the schools which were involved in the tour. The first was written by Ardscoil Na Mara (good luck trying to pronounce that if you're not from Ireland!) students who came to my final event of the tour, in Waterford: CLICK HERE And the second was written by Thornden School students (or one of their librarians) who saw me earlier on the tour in Hounsdown School: CLICK HERE And the professionals got in on the act as well -- CLICK HERE for an article that appeared in The Irish Times, regarding DeptCon1 in Dublin, which I was part of. And here's a short, succinct review of my event with Charlie Higson at the Bath Kids Lit Festival. We rambled on for an hour about all things shuffling and undead, so it wasn't possible to fit in much of what we discussed, but this gives you a little flavour of what it was like. CLICK HERE

ZOM-B QUIZ

Time to get your quiz hat on!!! (Is that a thing or have I just made it up?!?) The cool library folk at Kincorth Academy in Scotland organised a Zom-B quiz after some of the students came to see one of my events at the Edinburgh Book Festival. They're all related to the first book in the series. Some of the questions were set by my good self, but whether they were posed by me or the staff, they're all fiendishly difficult!! Are you ready to test yourself to find out how much YOU remember about Zom-B?!? If so, CLICK HERE I'm afraid answers aren't included, so you'll have to check in the book to find out if you're right or wrong.

FAN-MADE POSTER

I like the Cirque Du Freak poster above, designed by a fan called Julia in Hungary. That would definitely have enticed ME to go!!! CLICK HERE to view it on its original Facebook page. For lots more fan art, check out my web site: http://www.darrenshan.com/fanart/ I keep meaning to update it, and one of these days I WILL get round to making good on that promise!!!

BRIDE IN DONCASTER

I'm very pleased to have made the Doncaster Book Award long list for 2015-16 with Zom-B Bride. There are lots of cool books in among the mix, so I don't know if the book will get any further, but it's sweet to have made it even to this stage. To see what the competition is like, click here: CLICK HERE And if you live in the Doncaster region and are taking part in the voting, a vote for Zom-B Bride would be the perfect wedding present... :-)

KARAOKE

Who loves Karaoke? Who loves Darren Shan? Who would love some Darren Shan Karaoke?!?!? Well, if the answer is YOU, then you need dream no longer, as your wish has been granted... kind of! A while back, a musician called Rose Weekes wrote a song inspired by Lord Loss. I've linked to it several times, as it's a beautiful, haunting tune, which is effective even if you haven't read the book. Now Rose has produced a Karaoke version, which you can access online here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RFsjVQseOI Make sure you give it a big thumbs up if you like it!! There's a link to the original from the Karaoke page, if you want to hear how Rose sings it. Now, take a deep breath, purse those lips, hit play, and sing, baby, sing!!!!! 

IT'S A WRAP

And that's it for November. The delicious looking peanut butter spider cookies in the photo above were made by a lady called Candace LaPorte and her husband, and she said she was thinking about Madam Octa the whole time while making them! They made them for Halloween, but these look cool enough to be eaten at ANY time of the year! I had hoped to run a competition this month, but I'm away from home a lot in November, so I decided to postpone it until next month -- fingers crossed!! I'll be back here at the start of December for the Christmas edition of the Shanville Monthly. Until then, all my bloody best, Darren Shan. x x x

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