It's always sweet to hit a #1 spot on Amazon -- and doubly sweet if you do it twice on the same day! As you can see from the screen shots above, my sci-novel novel for adults, An Other Place, which I published under the name of Darren Dash, pulled off that remarkable feat last month on Amazon UK. Granted, the categories were fairly niche, but it still had to outsell from very big names, so I'll happily take and crow about the placings! :-) If you're interested in visiting An Other Place, CLICK HERE to be directed to your local Amazon store -- BUT be warned, this book is VERY weird, and definitely NOT for children!!!

MOLLS LIKE SALES!

As I said above, these day I write my books for adults under the name of Darren Dash. I've released five so far -- you can find out the titles and more about them by CLICKING HERE. I've covered all different sorts of genres with the Dash books -- I like to experiment and try new fields. The most recent is Molls Like It Hot, a fast-paced thriller that's quickly built up a devoted following -- it may well prove to be the most popular of my Darren Dash books, based on the feedback to date. I'm going to be running a sale of the eBook from May 25th to 28th, on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk (I can't run sales for the other Amazon stores -- sorry). The normal price of the book is $2.99 in the USA and £1.99 in the UK, but during the sale it will be just $0.99 and £0.99 respectively. This is the first time I've offered the book at a reduced price, so, if you're thinking of giving it a try, you might want to wait until the sale kicks in...

You can buy the American edition by CLICKING HERE. And the British edition by CLICKING HERE.

TEACHING SHAN

As I said back near the start of the lockdown, I'm perfectly happy for teachers to use my books for online lessons with their students. If that involves teachers or librarians recording themselves reading a book of mine aloud and posting it online, that's absolutely fine. The staff of Court Fields School have been doing this since the very early days of social distancing, and were about three-quarters of the way through Cirque Du Freak at the start of May -- you can check out their efforts by CLICKING HERE. Different staff members and some of their friends and family have been taking turns to read a chapter, and a little dickie bird tells me that they have a very special guest lined up to read the last couple of chapters, so make sure you check back closer to the end of the book...

When I was writing this post about the school, I popped onto their web site to grab an image to use. While I was there, I noticed that the school is split into four Houses, which are called... Emerald, Ruby, Sapphire and Topaz!!! If you don't know why that news excited me, then you haven't read my Archibald Lox books yet!! I'm wondering if there might be more to the staff and students of Court Fields School than at first meets the Born eye...

CBI RECOMMENDED READS

I was delighted to see Archibald Lox and the Bridge Between Worlds listed as one of Childrens Books Ireland's recommend reads on the Sean O'Rourke show on Radio 1 towards the end of April. When you don't have a major publisher whipping up interest in your latest book, it can be tremendously hard to get a mention like this, so many thanks to the gang at CBI for the shout-out -- as well as to my hard-working publicist Catherine who has been firing off word of Archie's debut to her long list of contacts! :-) You can see what else CBI recommended by CLICKING HERE.

HAIRY RECAPTAINS

I've been posting an awful lot about Archibald Lox in this newsletter -- hey, it's my first new Darren Shan book in four years, so of course I'm excited! -- but I haven't forgotten my other books, so let's temporarily break clear of those world-hopping stories for a couple of links to books from my Zom-B series.

First up, there's a YouTube review of the fourth book, Zom-B Angels, by AtheiSocial. This was recorded before the lockdown, when long hair and a beard were a matter of choice, but I think a lot of guys are going to end up looking like this after a few more months of not being able to go to our local barber, so it seems that AtheiSocial was one step ahead of the rest of us on that front!! :-) CLICK HERE

Next, here's a link to a potentially very useful site called Recaptains, which provides plot summaries for book series. The idea is to provide a recap of early books in lengthy series, so that readers of the later books can quickly remind themselves of what happened previously. They have an entry for the first book in my Zom-B series, so if you read that ages ago but got no further, and are thinking of picking up Zom-B Underground and the rest of the books to continue, and don't want to read book 1 again... then this is the site for you!!! I will just point out that by its very nature it contains HUGE spoilers, so, y'know, if you haven't read Zom-B, you probably shouldn't read this either... CLICK HERE

A question I got asked a lot in April was -- why no physical copies of the Archibald Lox books?!? Well, it's a bit of a long answer, but here goes...

Originally I wrote the Volume One story arc as one big book -- and it really WAS big -- the first draft was 80,000 words or so longer than the finished books! Even after I'd edited it down, it still came in at over 105,000 words, which is long for any book, but VERY long for a children's/YA book.

I decided fairly early on that I wanted to release it as three eBooks, but the problem with releasing paperbacks of those was that it would make it VERY expensive for fans to buy, and I didn't want to be accused to trying to cash in. So I figured I'd release it as three eBooks as planned, but do the physical edition (a paperback) as one big book.

But I knew that when I released the paperback, I would also need to make that edition available as an eBook, as some fans would want it in that format, as one big eBook with the same cover as the paperback. If I released that edition at the same time as the three shorter eBooks, the different editions would be in competition with one another, and I felt that might confuse things for everyone.

So I was juggling with all that, trying to work out which way to go with it, when the Coronavirus struck, and that made my decision an easy one.

As far as I'm aware, Amazon aren't producing or shipping self-published books at the moment, prioritising essential products and other products that don't need to be stored in their warehouses. There are other ways of getting a paperback made and distributed, of course, but Amazon is the main player, and the one I know about from my adult books. There was no way I could release a paperback of Archibald Lox in such a short time frame.

So I've put the paperback on hold for the time being. My plan, if I self-publish it, is to release it at some point in the summer or early autumn, depending on what happens with the virus and Amazon. But there's also a chance that it might be taken up by a traditional publisher -- they do a much better job with physical books than I could ever do, so if I can get it published that way, that would be my first preference. If that happens, it might mean a longer wait.

Either way, I'll keep you guys in the loop, and once I know more, YOU will know more. For the time being though, it's eBooks only. Sorry.

A CITY SALE

As many of you already know, I write for adults as well as children. These days I publish my books for older readers under the name of Darren Dash, but before that I released four under the name of Darren Shan. The first three of those were the City trilogy. They're books that I'm incredibly proud of, and they've built up a real cult following over the years. They're a strange, distinctive mix of genres -- crime, detective fiction, and urban fantasy. I don't think you'll have read anything quite like them anywhere else -- there's a John Connolly sort of vibe to them (even though I wrote them long before I read my first John Connolly novel) but the fantasy elements are far more pronounced here.

Since I know a lot of people are lying low in an effort to thwart the Coronavirus, and quite a few of those are reading more books than normal to help pass the time, I thought it would be a nice idea to lower the price of the City eBooks. I ran the idea by my agent, he agreed with me, so now each of the books can be bought through Amazon UK for just £1.99. Here are the links:

BOOK ONE.  BOOK TWO.  BOOK THREE.

We don't control the pricing in every territory, but I had a quick look online and the American and European Amazon stores don't seem to be selling them for too far off that mark -- I think $2.99 and €2.99 respectively.