The second is a public signing to tie in with my favourite season of the year -- Halloween! It's taking place in the Crescent Bookshop, in the Crescent Shopping Centre, Dooradoyle, Limerick, at 3pm on Saturday October 28th. Everyone is welcome -- no need for a ticket -- just come along and take your place in the line. You can bring books from home and/or buy books in the shop on the day -- there are no limits on how many books I will sign for each fan. (The new paperback of Zom-B Goddess will have gone on sale earlier in the month, so this will be the perfect time to get that signed!) The-Crescent-Bookshop/

These two events will almost certainly be your last chance to catch me in 2017, so if you can work one or both of them into your schedule, please come along and help me end the year on a high!!

I had a great time at my book events in Edinburgh last month. The photos above are from my public event on Sunday 27th. It was a lovely venue -- an old theatre tent -- and we had a full house, and the experiment -- I let members of the audience choose extracts for me to read out loud -- worked really well after an inital spot of confusion. The next day I did a schools event in the festival's biggest book tent for 500 students from different schools, and that went beautifully too, though I had to be quick on my toes to answer all the probing questions that were launched my way! This was my 18th year in a row at the festival, and it was nice to see a mix of old fans who have been to many of my events over the years, and new fans who were only just discovering me -- thank you all for coming along and making it such a great couple of days.

A fan called Laura asked me last month why, in Cirque Du Freak, did Mr Dalton go with the police to try and get the little person selling the Cirque tickets? The answer was that he was just concerned about a freak show performing in his town, but that reminded me of something else -- when I read the script for the movie of Cirque Du Freak, I saw that they'd left out the character of Reggie Veggie, and that they'd also made Mr Dalton a bit more of a prominent character, having him come with the police to stop a performance of the CDF. I suggested they expand on this a bit further and have the Wolf Man bite off Mr Dalton's hands, so that he could have served the RV role if they'd made later movies. But, of course, they ignored me.

I actually made a LOT of suggestions for changes when I read the script. As I've said many times, I do actually like the movie -- I think, on its own terms, it works quite neatly -- it maybe doesn't stand up that well compared with the books, but I think it compares favourably with other movies in the genre. But when I read the script, I was worried by how much of the storyline had been gutted, and how some key omissions were going to undermine the more dramatic moments. I accepted that they had to cut out characters and scenes to fit the running time -- it's no easy thing to squeeze three books into a single movie -- but I felt there were ways they could have done that and still stayed true to the darker spirit of the books. I sent the script back with a LOT of notes and ideas for how it could be tweaked to bring it more in line with the books. I knew I was probably wasting my time, but figured it was worth taking a few hours to show how they could keep the structure they'd come up with, but alter it slightly to also match the elements that made the books work.

DASHINGLY GOOD!

Harkat was originally called Harvey when I wrote the Vampire Mountain trilogy, and he was going to have been Evra. (Take the H and the Y away and spell the name backwards and see what you get.) But that was because I had thought Evra was going to be a major player in the series. I had planned to send him to Vampire Mountain with Darren, and have him play a key part in the main storyline. But when I came to write that trilogy, I realised it didn't make sense. Evra was a young man now, with a life of his own, and there was no logical reason for him to abandon the Cirque Du Freak and travel with Darren and Mr Crepsley. So I left him behind, but that meant, equally, that there was now no logical reason why he would have become a Little Person intent on working to safeguard the vampire clan. I left the name as it was, and mulled it over while I was writing those books, and in the end the perfect candidate presented him- or herself to me, and the rest is history!

I write author notes for all of my books, so if you enjoyed the above snippet, and would like to find out more of the background secrets behind my works, go have a look on the Books part of my web site, click on any of the thumbnail covers, and prepare to be instructed and informed! http://www.darrenshan.com/books

Here's another character aesthetic, courtesy of busy Twitter Shanster, Vampire Council. This one represents Wester Flack, Mr Crepsley's blood-brother, who played such an important part in his life, there for him in his bad times as well as the good. Wester, of course, was never mentioned in The Saga Of Darren Shan. To find out why Mr Crepsley never referred to him, you'll have to read The Saga Of Larten Crepsley, which covers the two hundred years of his life before he crossed paths with Darren and Steve at the Cirque Du Freak. There are four books, on sale as either paperbacks or ebooks, in the UK, USA and many other countries around the world. Have a look for them in your local book shop or on a site like Amazon. The first one is called Birth Of A KiIller, and it explains how Mr C and Wester were first thrown together, along with a whole lot more.

HANGING IN THERE

A lady called Carrie wrote to me recently with the following, deeply moving letter.

"Hello, today is a hard day for me and several of my friends. You see, 11 years ago today our friend Garrett took his own life, he was 15 at the time. But his favorite series was Cirque du Freak. In fact in what would become one of our last conversations he made me swear (for the hundredth time) I would read it. He had a lot of pain in his life but your books brought him joy. So... thank you. Thank you for being a bright spot in his world. I did read them eventually, and although I did have to shake myself from the thought that he made me read them so I would know that he wasn't dead, but instead was a vampire and he'd come back someday, I really enjoyed them. Thank you again."

COMPETITION

IT'S A WRAP!