I went on a blog tour with British bloggers last month (see below), and in June I'm due to do a similar tour with various American bloggers. I don't have any details to share just yet, except that it's due to start on Monday June 22nd. For more info, see my blog, Facebook and Twitter pages closer to that date.

BLOG TOUR -- PART 1 -- DONE AND DUSTED

As many of you probably already know, 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 and I'm going to be running a sale of the eBooks of two very different novels in June.

Firrst up is Midsummer's Bottom, a fantastical, Shakespearean farce about fairies -- yes, you read that right! From June 1st to 6th, the ebook will cost just $0.99 on Amazon.com and £0.99 on Amazon.co.uk (I can't run sales for the other Amazon stores -- sorry -- but it is available at its regular low price, the equivalent of $2.99, through Amazon stores worldwide). You can buy the American edition by CLICKING HERE. And the British edition by CLICKING HERE.

Then, late in the month, I'm putting The Evil and the Pure on sale. It was the first book that I published under the Darren Dash banner, and it's a very dark crime thriller set in London at the turn of the millennium. From June 29th to July 4th, the ebook will cost just $0.99 on Amazon.com and £0.99 on Amazon.co.uk You can buy the American edition by CLICKING HERE. And the British edition by CLICKING HERE.

NEW(ISH) REVIEWS

There have been several new reviews for various books of mine over the last few months which, for one reason or another, I haven't yet gotten around to sharing. Normally I'd do these one at a time, to highlight each individual review, but I felt that if I keep putting these on the long finger, it will be next year before I get around to posting them! So, in nor particular order, here we go...

Lauren, on the Angelic Impression blog, had never read any of my books to the finish until she sat down with Archibald Lox and the Bridge Between Worlds. To find out what she thought of it, CLICK HERE

Lauren over on Angelic Impression must have enjoyed book 1 of my new series, because she was soon back with a review of book 2, Archibald Lox and the Empress of Suanpan, and you can read her thoughts on that one by CLICKING HERE

They've been busy with the Shan reviews over on Angelic Impression, and here's another, this time for Lord Loss. It's credited to Lauren, but I assume that's an error, as she wrote this review before her Archie reviews. Unless, y'know, there's some time travel thing goging on with her that I'm unaware of... :-) You can check out the review by CLICKING HERE

Next up, there's a very fun video review for Cirque Du Freak on the Reading Rocks YouTube page, by lots of children from Danegrove School. It starts with a short introduction by Michael Rosen, who was in hospital for a long time recently with Coronavirus. I didn't want to post this until I'd seen how he fared -- now that's he's thankfully pulled through and is back on his feet, I'm delighted to be able to share it as a celebration of his triumph rather than a memorial to his passing -- hurrah!!! CLICK HERE

Over in Italy, Book Lover posted their review of Palace of the Damned, the third book in my Saga of Larten Crepsley series. Even though the reviewer is Italian, the review is in English. CLICK HERE

Finally, over in France, there was a review for the Cirque Du Freak manga on L'antre des Livres. It's in French, bu if you copy and paste the text into a site like Google Translate, you'll get a fairly accurate translation. CLICK HERE

FLAVOUR OF THE MONTH

It's always nice to be flavour of the month! Recently I've enjoyed that pleasure in two very different places... First up, I've been advertising my Archibald Lox books through a variety of book promotion sites since they went on sale at the start of April. One of those, Many Books, ended up choosing it as their Fantasy Book of the Month for April, which was a lovely surprise, as they promote a LOT of books over the space of any given month. You can see the full list by CLICKING HERE

Then, I was chosen as Author of the Month for May by the students and staff at Chalk Hills Academy, in Luton in the UK. They put together this nice little promotional banner for the first books from my four major series. I've got to say, even though my designer put the Archibald Lox cover together at extremely short notice, in order for me to be able to rush-release the book, I think it compares VERY favourably to all the others... :-)

DEMONIC LINKS?!?

A fan called Danny wrote to me recently with a theory that my Demonata and vampire books are linked, and also perhaps my Zom-B series. WARNING: the photo of Danny's theory, the following paragraph, contain SPOILERS for all three series!!! Don't read on, or look at the photo, unless you're up to speed with all things Shan!!!

Right, assuming you're still with me... A lot of fans have wondered this over the years -- well, at least if The Demonata and Cirque Du Freak are connected. (The possible Zom-B link doesn't get mentioned too often.) The answer is... NO. I did briefly consider, early on, linking my demon and vampire books, and having Desmond Tiny play a role in the developing tales about Lord Loss that I was stringing together. I felt he'd get on well with the eight-armed sentinal of sorrow! But the two stories are very different in tone and style, and I just felt it would be gimmicky. The monsters mentioned in Sons of Destiny are NOT the demons from The Demonata. So... sorry, Danny, it's a very good theory, and in an alternate universe, maybe another Darren Shan DID link the variouys universes together, Marvel and DC style, to create a.... shall we say... Shaniverse. But in our dimension I preferred to let the stories play out independently of one another -- except, of course, in the Christmas short story that I post on my site every year for about a week, when they DO all merge and collide -- but that's very much tongue in cheek, and never meant to be regarded as gosple. :-)

A lovely little short film called The Magic Word was uploaded to YouTube last month after years of hard work by its creator, Sarah Grant. It's a 5 minute love story to the wonders and powers of books, mixing live action with hand-drawn animation. Most of the backgrounds -- shops, libraries, bed, furniture, etc -- are made out of models which were covered with pages from some of Sarah's favourite books, and I don't think anyone will expect to be awarded a prize to learn that one of those authors was... Darren Shan. The pages from my books hit the scene just after the 3 minutes 10 seconds mark -- they were used for the library backing and shelves. You can't really make out the words -- that was deliberate -- but rest assured, they ARE Shan words! :-) Anyway, it's a charming piece, the perfect way to pass 5 minutes of the lockdown, so please give it a look, leave some nice feedback for Sarah if you enjoy it, and share the link with everyone you know who has ever read and loved a book. CLICK HERE TO WATCH

If you're looking for good children's books to read during lockdown, and don't want to break the bank when buying, there's a list of FREE and Great Value (i.e. cheap!) eBooks for children over on the School Reading List site. It's an intriguing mix of new and old books, and there are nonfiction titles mixed in with the fiction, so there really is something for just about everyone. Archibald Lox and the Bridge Between Worlds (book 1 of my latest series) got a mention, which was lovely, but there are lots of other great read too. Check it out -- then get reading!!! CLICK HERE

SHAN SHELVES

I posted loads of photos of various fans' bookshelves to my blog last month, and it was only fitting that I wrapped things up on that front with some photos of my own collection. I had lots of built-in shelves installed when I was building my house about a decade ago, and there are three different zones where the majority of my books reside. You'll have to scroll back through my posts if you want to see all three zones, but above is a snap of Zone 2, which houses my general book collection, hardbacks and paperbacks of different sizes. I've read a lot of them, though others are still on the TBR pile -- I suspect quite a few of them will remain on that pile to my dying days, as I bought some of these when I was a teenager at school, and in university. Indeed, there are a few dating back to my pre-teen years. I doubt if any of these books are of any monetary value, but to me they're priceless.

WILLI WUNDERWANST

A fan of my Cirque Du Freak books called Asteria Gaia (my daughter would no doubt approve of the name if she was old enough to understand!) drew some designs for some of the characters recently. They'll all be familiar to you, I'm sure -- Mr Tall, Truska, and Willi Wunderwanst.

What's that, you cry? Who on Earth is Willi Wunderwanst?!?

Heh heh. Some of the characters were given very different names when the books were translated into other languages -- in this case, German. You can probably work out Willi's original name from the drawing, but in case you can't, you can find out by CLICKING HERE to a page on my web site, which will also reveal the identities of DEN SCHLANGENJUNGEN, JOANA SHAN and (ol' orange-head still hasn't forgiven the French for this one!) LARTEN KRAPULA!!!!

IT'S A WRAP!