I did an interview with IndieReader several months back, when I released my most recent Darren Dash book for adults, Molls Like It Hot. They didn't publish it for a few months, and when it did hit the net, I was in the middle of my promoting my new Archibald Lox series, and never quite found the right time to slot it in. But now that I've slowed down on the Archie promotional front (at least until I release the paperback edition of Volume 1, which will hopefully be later this year), I'm finally finding time to get round to sharing the many articles and pieces of fan art which have been accumulating since early spring time.

It's a nice, sharp, short little interview, mostly focusing on Molls Like It Hot, but covering some other areas too. If you'd like to check it out, click here: CLICK HERE

And if you're unfamiliar with my Darren Dash work, you can find out more about those books on the official Darren Dash web site: http://www.darrendashbooks.com/

WHY DO WE READ THIS?

There was a fascinating episode of the Why do we read this? podcast a couple of months ago, where the co-hosts look at the similarities between the original Pinocchio story and The Simpsons and... Cirque Du Freak! One of the hosts has read the CDF books, and is describing them to the other host, who is unfamiliar with the novels, which makes for an interesting format. They start talking about Cirque Du Freak around the 40 minutes mark, although you might want to listen to the entire thing from the start to tie it all together... CLICK HERE

At one point they question whether I carried the story on past the first trilogy in the series only because sales were positive. i.e. did I sign a contract for the first three books with my publishers, wait to see how they went, and then sign another contract to write more. It's a perfectly legitimate question, because there are lots of writers who do work that way, but it's not MY way.

I always write want I want to write, then worry about the publishing side of things further down the line. With Cirque Du Freak, I'd written the first draft of Book 2 even before we sold the first book -- in fact, I wrote it even when it looked like Cirque Du Freak WASN'T going to be published, as no publishers were interested in it. And I was working on the first draft of Book 9 (Killers of the Dawn) when Book 1 was released in January 2000. So, if the books hadn't sold well (and while they ticked along nicely in the UK over the first couple of years, they certainly weren't instant bestsellers by any stretch of the imagination) and my publishers had decided to bow out early, I'd have "wasted" three years of my life, working on books that would never see the light of day. But, y'know, I wouldn't have looked on it as a waste, because I loved the story that I was creating, and I was determined to tell it all the way to its conclusion.

As my self-published newest Archibald Lox series proves, I'm all about the story, not the sales. It's lovely when books of mine get publishers excited and get released by traditional publishing houses and reach a much wider audience and sell like hot cakes. But if publishers don't see what I see in a story, I push on regardless. For me, the story is king, and I'm just a loyal servant.

LORD LOSS FAN TRAILER

A fan of my Lord Loss novel called Jessica decided to film a trailer for it as part of her graduate class. It's a dark, creepy little video, well worth the couple of minutes or so of your time that it will take to watch. You can check it out by CLICKING HERE

As I've said previously on this page, one of my favourite reviewers is George Bastow over on the Books, Films & Random Lunacy site. It's not just that George usually gives my books a glowing review -- always a good starting point! -- but he writes in a very smooth, clever, amusing way, fashioning reviews that are genuinely entertaining to read, as opposed to a review that simply says, "Yeah, read it, liked it." I'm not saying there's anything wrong with a short, blunt review -- like any author, I'll take any bit of praise that's going a-begging! -- but I appreciate the time and effort that a more dedicated reviewer like George puts in. Which is why you should take a few minutes to check out his review for my first three Archibald Lox books -- not for my sake, not even for the books' sake, but for George's sake!! :-) CLICK HERE

While we're on the subject of Archibald Lox, the lovely drawing above is by Amity Lee, depicting a scene from the first few chapters of Book 1, when my locksmith crosses universes and runs into a very strange girl in the shadows of an abandoned aqueduct. She tells him her name is Inez. He tells her his name is Archie. It's the beginning of a beautiful friendship, but from that point on, nothing for Archie will ever again be the same... It's interesting that Amity Lee chose this scene to illustrate, as I wouldn't be at all surprised if we return to this aqueduct in Volume 3, which will hopefully see the light of day a couple of years or less from now. There's a little secret lurking in the shadows that I think we missed the first time round...

I'm hard at work on the first draft of the third volume of my new Archibald Lox series -- 250 A4 pages in, but still a long way to go! While I was beavering away on it one day late in July, I had to nip back to check out some sections from the first two volumes, which reminded me of how much I've done with the story already, and all the different places I've wandered with it, which for some reason reminded me of... Hyperion.

I've spoken of my influences in quite a lot of interviews over the last few months, citing some of the books and authors that were very consciously on my mind when I was putting together the framework of the new series. (I'm sure there were plenty of unconsious influences too.) I've mentioned the likes of Diana Wynne Jones, Urszula Le Guin, Neil Gaiman and J K Rowling, but one author and series of books that I forgot to tip my hat to are Dan Simmons and his incredible Hyperion Cantos books.

The four-book sci-fi series was spread out over the course of the 1990s, beginning with Hyperion, continuing with The Fall of Hyperion, then - after a sizeable break, which also reflected a sizeable break in the storyline - conluding with Endymion and The Rise of Endymion. It's a mammoth, twisting, mind-bending story, covering centuries and involving a huge myriad of characters, plot-lines and settings. It's science-fiction at its most ambitious and finest, incredibly dense and otherworldly in many ways, but also very human and moving. It took me on a ride like no other, and was definitely in my thoughts when I began piecing together the universe of the Merge.

My Archibald Lox series is fantasy, not sci-fi, and I'm sure it won't ever hit quite the manic heights that the Hyperion books did -- I like to consider myself a nicely skilled teller of tales, but Simmons in full flow and on form is a beast of a whole different kind, and his best books (Carrion Comfort, the Hyperion Cantos, The Terror) are among the very best that the genres he works in have ever seen -- but I hope some of the scale and wonder of that series is mirrored to some degree in my own. I've aimed BIG with the Archie books, telling one boy's coming of age story on a grand scale, involving lots of locations and a cunningly structured narrative that doesn't really all come together until the last few chapters of the final Volume, and Simmons' Hyperion Cantos played a very important role in pointing me down that path and challenging me to stretch myself to my very limits as a writer... and then stretch some more.

If you haven't read the Hyperion books yet, I highly recommend you go hunt them down as soon as you can. They're winners! And hey, when you're finished with those, if you liked them, come give Archibald Lox a try -- like sprinters chasing Usain Bolt in his prime, he won't win in a race with the Hyperion books, but I like to think he'll run them a moderately close second or third... :-)

IT'S A WRAP!