Because the Archibald Lox books are print on demand, there's no way for me to release them cheaply. (Although you CAN sometimes get the omnibus editions at big discounts on Amazon or Book Depository, up to 50% off!) If you would prefer to buy Volume 1 in a physical format, I strongy recommend buying the omnibus The Missing Princess edition, as the paperback is substantially cheaper than buying the three books separately -- indeed, the hardback sometimes costs less than buying the three small paperbacks! You can buy The Missing Princess through a variety of stores worldwide (you won't find it on the shelves of stores like Waterstones or Barnes & Noble, but staff there should be able to order it for you, if you want to shop local) but you're probably going to get it at its best price through Amazon or Book Depository. More info and direct links below...

1) If you're looking to buy a hardback edition of The Missing Princess, the best deal can usually be found on Amazon, where it often sells at a very large discount: CLICK HERE. There are also usually good deals on Book Depository. CLICK HERE to be directed to your country's branch, where you'll be shown the cost in your local currency.

2) You can get the paperback of The Missing Princess on Amazon or Book Depository -- CLICK HERE to be sent to your local Amazon store, or CLICK HERE to be directed to your local Book Depository branch.

3) As I've said above, the cheapest way to buy Volume One in a physical edtion is to buy The Missing Princess, BUT if you would prefer to buy it as three individual books, I've produced paperback editions, but only through Amazon stores worldwide. CLICK HERE to buy Book 1... CLICK HERE to buy Book 2... and CLICK HERE to buy Book 3.

UNINTENTIONAL TITLE REVEAL!

Quite a few fans have asked if there will be a collected, omnibus edition of books 4, 5 and 6 of my Archibald Lox series, as there was with the three Volume One books. The answer is YES, there certainly will be, and it will be released either later this year or in the first half of 2022. I'd meant to keep the title of the Volume 2 omnibus a secret until much closer to its release date, but I let it slip when chatting with my American publicist, and she included it when setting up a blog tour that I went on last month. It's no biggie, and hardly anyone seemed to notice -- I only spotted it myself on the second day of the tour! -- but since the cat's out of the bag, I can now officially (albeit not exclusively) reveal that the title of the Volume 2 bind-up will be...

ARCHIBALD LOX AND THE KIDNAPPED PRINCE.

I'll be releasing it as a hardback and paperback, and you'll have the option of buying it through a variety of stores. The cheapest way of buying the Archibald Lox books is as eBooks, but if you would rather own physical copies, the paperbacks of the omnibus editions are substantially cheaper than buying the single-title paperbacks, and the hardbacks come in around the same kind of price. If you're happy waiting a while, my advice is to wait and read Volume 2 as one big whopper of a book, the way I originally wrote it and intended for it to be read. But, hey, I can certainly understand if you're too impatient to do that!!!:-)

I'm delighted to confirm that I'll be participating in Octocon 2021 at the start of October. Octocon is the National Irish Science Fiction Convention, a celebration of books, comics, TV, films and games, covering the genres of science fiction, fantasy, horror and beyond. It's usually held in the flesh, in Dublin in Ireland, meaning its limited to those who can attend in person. But last year, because of COVID, it moved online, and it's going to be an online event this year too.

I'm going to be doing a FREE solo event, open to people everywhere in the world (not just in Ireland), in which I'll do a short reading from one of my books, and then answer questions from the moderator and audience. From what I've been told, the event will take place in a private Zoom meeting, which will be streamed out to Twitch, with audience questions passed on from the convention's Twitch channel. (I know absolutely nothing about Twitch, so I hope that makes more sense to you guys than it does to me!)

The exact date and time has yet to be confirmed (it will be on Saturday 2nd or Sunday 3rd of October), but if you're interested in taking part, you can register on the Octocon site -- registration is FREE, but you HAVE to register to take part, so I'd recommend doing it sooner rather than later, so that you can be kept in the loop in the run-up to the event.

This is the link for the Octocon site: https://2021.octocon.com/

And this is the link for the registration page: https://registration.octocon.com/

This will probably be my only live online public event of 2021. See YOU there?!? :-)

The so-called (by me!) summer of Shan didn't just see the release of three new Archibald Lox books -- it also saw the release of Volume 3 of the Cirque Du Freak manga omnibus. This collects Books 5 and 6 of the series, in one huge, glorious package, which stunningly concludes the Vampire Mountain-set segment of the Saga. (You can read more about it in last month's issue of my newsletter.)

The third volume was reviewed recently on Catherine's Little Blog. She notes, during her review, that "the drawings are detailed and dynamic, making it a joy to look at," and I agree 100%. Takahiro Arai was a very young artist when he started to adapt the series into a manga, and although his story-telling style shone through from the very beginning (which was why I chose him over more established artists), I think he'd moved up several notches by the time he hit this part of the story, and the whole thing flows like an especially beautiful dream. For the full review, CLICK HERE

YOUTUBE REVIEWS

I always appreciate it when fans of my books take the time to post a review for them online, and I'm full of admiration for those who choose to do so in a video. If you write a review, you have time to look back over what you've written and edit it, but once that camera starts rolling, you're on a slippery slope and there's no turning back!! I featured reviews from two such fans last month, who chose to focus on older works of mine...

First up was a YouTuber with the user name of Sempai Amv, who's posted video reviews of the first three books in my Cirque Du Freak series. I think I linked to the first one a long time back, and here at last are the links for books 2 and 3. Given that the review for book 2, The Vampire's Assistant, came out last October, and the Tunnels of Blood review aired last December, I've no excuse really for not sharing these sooner. All I can say is that I was tied up with very important, Princely business in Vampire Mountain for the last several months. Ahem!!! :-) For the Book 2 review CLICK HERE, and for the Book 3 review CLICK HERE

Another YouTuber, called Kritigri, decided to review the first two books of my Cirque Du Freak series, as well as Volume 1 of the manga omnibus edition. He did so under a banner on his YouTube page called Blurbal Reasonings. They're quite lengthy -- the review for each book is half an hour, while the review for the manga is over 20 minutes -- so not for those of you who want a swift, to-the-point review. But if you're in the mood for a longer, more leisurely review -- something along the lines of a podcast -- then these should hit the spot sweetly. For his Book 1 review CLICK HERE, for his Book 2 review CLICK HERE, and for his Manga review CLICK HERE

WHICH CDF CHARACTER ARE YOU?!

A Cirque Du Freak fan decided to create an online quiz in which you can answer lots of questions to find out which character from my Cirque Du Freak books you most resemble. I've got to be honest -- I was initially intrigued, but found that there were far too many questions for my liking, and far too much text to wade through in question 3 if you were to do the quiz properly. So I bailed!!! But before I shared the link, I figured I'd better go back and see it through to the end, to check there was nothing overly naughty on there. And I did actually enjoy it more the second time round -- there are definitely some questions that just don't need to be there, but others made me smile. There are a few swear words, and some images that might make you cringe, but otherwise I give it a cautious thumbs up, Just don't spend too long on question 3!! :-) Oh, and for whatever it's worth, I ended up with... Mika Ver Leth?!?

To take the quiz CLICK HERE

Oh, and I found that incredibly cool drawing on Pinterest, by a fan called Tonne -- to see it in more detail CLICK HERE

ILLEGALLY IRANIAN

I was approached recently by a very polite podcaster in Iran, called Hamidreza Nikoofar, asking me to come on their podcast to talk about my books, which have been hugely popular there, dating back to the release of Cirque Du Freak many years ago. I was pleased to be asked, but had to decline, because, as I said in my reply, almost all of my books have been illegally released in Iran, without my permission, and I have never never paid anything for them. Only the first two Zom-B books were ever legally released there, with payments made to me by their publisher, but even with that series, the publisher has continued on past book 2, without paying me for books 3 onwards. (My agent is trying to get them to make good on the promise they made to pay me for the subsequent books in the series, so I'm hoping that situation can be resolved one day, but so far, no joy.)

So, although I know I have lots and lots of fans in Iran, I cannot do anything to publicise my books there, as I would only be making more money for thieves who have stolen my work and profited from it for the last 20 years -- liars who have told the public that they have tried to do a deal with me (in some cases they've even pretended to have agreed terms with me), but who in reality have never responded to any of my requests to them to agree to sign a deal with me and pay me for my work. I don't blame the fans for any of that, but the fact remains that the Darren Shan publishers in Iran -- of my vampire books, and demon books, and any others that have been released there (except, as I said, for the first two Zom-B books) -- are liars and thieves, and I will never do anything to help line their pockets. I don't blame the Iranian fans for any of that, and I would never discourage them to buy the illegal publications -- I love that my work is reaching readers in Iran, and I think it's important for our cultures to be interacting in this kind of way -- but I won't do anything that would help the publishers sell even more of their pirated copies of my books.

I don't think it's any great secret that Iranian publishers have illegally published loads of books, not just mine. There's not really anything we in other countries can do about it, so they just shrug and lie and carry on. I tried many time through my agents to get Iranian publishers to agree terms, partly of course to get paid, but also so that we could control the quality of the books, give the covers the OK, make sure they were carefully translated, etc. But apart from Vida (the company who agreed terms for the first two Zom-B books), the publishers have ignored our approaches and continued to publish my work illegally and make a lot of money from them, every last dinar of which they have kept for themselves.

It's a shame, because my books have been released in loads of countries around the world, and I love celebrating the different releases on my site and telling my fans all about them, and interacting with the fans in those countries -- I've even visited lots of them on tour over the years. But apart from the first two Zom-B books, I haven't been able to do that with the Iranian editions, and it's meant I haven't been able to respond to fans as personally as I have in other countries -- for example, I'm not able to contribute to podcasts like this one, or be interviewed by Iranian journalists or bloggers. That hasn't soured me on Iran in general -- I've seen lots of Iranian films over the years (I've watched almost everything that Abbas Kiarostami directed), and hope to visit the country one day, as it's a place I'd love to explore. It's only Iranian publishers who make me grind my teeth in anger!! :-)

Hamidreza was stunned to learn the truth about how I have been treated by the Iranian publishers, and spread the word on Twitter -- lots of fans replied to also express their outrage, and to apologise to me, though as I assured them, they had nothing to apologise for -- as I've already said, I bear my Iranian fans no ill feelings at all. The story was picked up and reported on the PS Arena site, and you can read that article (copy and paste the text into Google Translate for a pretty accurate translation) by CLICKING HERE

I was very touched by Hamidreza's efforts to bring this to light in Iran. I doubt it will have any kind of impact on the publishers -- they have made an awful lot of money out of my books over the last twenty years, and I doubt they're going to suddenly feel remorse and look to agrre terms and make back payments to me -- but it's good that these things are brought to the attention of readers, so that they can call out the publishers and shame them publicly. And who knows, maybe one day the situation will be resolved, and I'll be able to embrace my Iranian fans just as I've embraced fans from dozens of other countries around the world, and proudly acknowledge my Iranian books in public and promote them.

JUNIOR MESA

There are some "freaky" things afoot in the music world!! An artist called Junior Mesa released an EP last month, called...CIRQUE DU FREAK!!

Unlike some other songs of recent(ish) times which have been inspired by and named after my work, I get the feeling that this is unconnected to my books -- as I've documented over the years, the phrase "Cirque Du Freak" has entered the public consciousness since I dropped it on an unsuspecting world back in January 2000, and sometimes people use it who not only aren't readers of my novels, but might never even have heard of them. I suspect that's the case here, though I could of course be wrong, and maybe Junior Mesa is actually a fan of Mr Crepsley and co, and knowingly used it as a tribute. As I say, I doubt it, but hey, I'll be glad if proven wrong!

Anyway, whether the EP is connected to my books or not, I figured I'd flag it up for anyone who wants to have a listen. You can hear all five songs if you CLICK HERE

This reminded me of the Cirque Du Freak "album" playlist that I put together on YouTube a while back, linking to eight songs by artists who definitely WERE riffing on my stories. If you haven't checked that out yet, you can tune in by CLICKING HERE