A fan in the crowd recorded the whole of my Q&A at the event in Budapest. It runs 46 minutes in total, but that includes the translations to my answers -- if you fast forward through those (as I assume all non-Hungarian speakers will), you should shave a good 20 minutes or so off the running time. CLICK HERE

There was a scheduled interview to begin with, where I was asked questions by the interviewer on stage, then we threw it open to the crowd. We covered LOTS of ground and touched on all sorts of topics. It's been a long time since I did a public Q&A like this, and very few of those back in the day were ever fully recorded, so this is a rare chance to catch me in action and hear me speak on a wide variety of subjects. CLICK HERE

ARCHIE VOL 2 REVIEW

The first Hungarian review for the second Archibald Lox Volume hit the web recently. To read it, CLICK HERE

It's a solid 7/10 review. The reviewer felt there was a bit too much focus on Grop (a sport that is hugely popular in the worlds of The Megre in the series), but that the series was building nicely and that answers to certain key questions would probably come in the third Volume -- which they certainly do!

One line made me smile wryly: "the author could have worked out how Archie had credibly explained to his parents and guardianship his disappearance. We didn’t get any feedback on how much his absence had influenced his relationship with his foster parents, since they already have a dead child."

This was something that a number of people commented on when they were reading the first two Volumes. Archie spends a lot of time away from home over the course of his adventures, but doesn't talk much about how he's squaring that away with his foster parents. It seemed like a bit of lazy writing on my part -- though I don't think anyone quite put it THAT bluntly!

Heh heh!!! Those who know me well (which is hopefully most of you who are reading this) will know that there's very little laziness on my part when it comes to constructing my twisting, sneaky plots!! If it looks like there's a big hole in my narrative, or that I'm shying away from properly explaining something... well, that's when your Spidey senses should be tingling, because it's normally a subtle sign that I'm gearing up to pull the rug out from under your feet in a completely unexpected (and often quite shocking) way!!!

POTTER & YA IN NOUGHTIES

Vlogger BLURBAL REASONING recently reviewed the fifth volume of the Cirque Du Freak manga adaptation. It's a 16 minute review that goes into quite a lot of interesting detail, and is certainly worth checking out, which you can do by CLICKING HERE

If you've never read the CDF manga (or even heard about it!), all 12 books were adapted many years ago, first in Japan, then in translated editions in lots of other countries around the world, including the USA and UK. Those orignal editions are out of print and very hard to track down these days (very costly too, in some cases), but they were reprinted a few years ago in omnibus editions, two books per volume, and these should be a bit easier to find -- although, having said that, the reprints seem to have gone out of pring too, and a few of those can be tricky to find too!!

If you can't source copies through your local manga specialist, you might enjoy some luck on a site like Abebooks or Alibiris, both of which specialise in second-hand books and have huge numbers of titles up for grabs.

GREAT BOOKS - TERRIBLE MOVIES?!?

BELGARIAD INFLUENCE

A fan of mine called JAY emailed me recently to say: "I’ve just started reading The Belgariad series and saw your quote in the front of the book. I’ve been a massive fan of your books for some time and wondered if anything from this series has helped inspire your work. I saw some parallels in Belgarath and Beranabus and wanted to see if it was a little Easter egg!"

Jay was partly right about the Belgariad easter egg, but got the wrong book and characters! While Belgarath might have been a subconscious influence on Beranabus in my Demonata series, in my vampire books Vancha and Evanna both owed a very conscious debt to a character from the Belgariad called Beldin!!! :-)

I love The Belgariad and read the books several times in my teenage years. They definitely were a big influence on me, and I recomend them most wholeheartedly -- which is why I gave the publishers a quote which they used on some of the covers when the series was refreshed a few years back. (And the teenager in me still finds it rather surreal that a quote of MINE has been used to help plug one of my favourite series!!!)

SAVAGE TIKTOK!

NEVER MEDIOCRE!

A post was trending on Twitter last month: "Nobody understands the bond between a girl and the mediocre book she read when she was 13 years old."

Several people mentioned my books in reply to it (mainly my Cirque Du Freak and Demonata series), which was lovely, but I do bristle at that word MEDIOCRE.

I get what she means -- sometimes a book can play a huge part in your life when you're a teenager, and if you try to read it again as an adult it doesn't have the same impact on you, and can even seem a bit (maybe a LOT) lame in retrospect. But I think it's crucial to bear in mind that it's YOU that has changed, not the book.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with leaving the world of children's books and YA books behind and moving on to the world of books that are written for adults. Indeed, that's a path I'd encourage ANY and EVERY reader to take. I've always had a soft spot for children's literature, and still read several every year, and while I rarely enjoy them as much as I would have 40 years ago, they do still hit a sweet spot for me. They're not a major part of my reading habits, any more than horror or fantasy or sci-fi are major parts of my reading habits these days -- I read a very wide variety of books. But they do still work for me, and I continue to read them for pleasure.

I suspect I'm in a minority on that one, and most adults don't read an awful lots of kids' books, unless reading them to or with their own children. And that's perfectly fine and absolutely natural -- if I had to choose, and could only read books for adults or children, I'd pick books for adults.

But I think it's a pity if we lose sight of the fact that there are GOOD children's books and BAD (or MEDIOCRE) children's books. I've always been an avid reader, and I've forgotten most books I read as a child and teenager -- while I might have enjoyed them at the time, they haven't lived with me in my memories, so I suspect they weren't that strong. But other books HAVE remained with me -- The Secret Garden... Rebecca's World... The Machine Gunners... The Chocolate War... The Belgariad. These rocked my world back then, and I still remember them fondly all these years later. OK, they might not stoke my fires as strongly if I read them again now (although I'm sure at least some of them still would), but that in no way reduces them as brilliant books. I have changed. I've gotten older. I've branched out. I've explored more literary paths and niches. That in no way means that any of those books are lesser joys now than they were back then.

If you remember a childhood book fondly, please don't cheapen it by casting any MEDIOCRE light upon it. If it lives on within you, that's because it was a GOOD book. You don't have to blush with embarrassment if you're mentioning it to anyone, or laugh away your love for it by mocking it -- "Oh, yeah, Cirque Du Freak... it's awful, I know, but I loved it when I was a kid. Children, eh? What do they know?!?"

They know LOTS, is my short, concise answer. And no matter how wise and informed an adult you might have turned out, you shouldn't forget that those books you read and loved in your younger years helped shape you as a wise, informed adult... and if you mock them now and turn your back on them snobbishly, perhaps you're not as wise and informed as you might think you are...

IT'S A WRAP!

And that's it for September. The Shans headed to Malta on holiday in August, and spent a wonderful couple of weeks there. I've included a snap from the trip above, and you can find a lot more if you scroll back through my Facebook and Twitter posts from August 6th onwards. As I said at the start of this newsletter, I plan to get back behind my keyboard this month, starting with some editing and heavy rewriting of a book that I hope to release next year, and then I'll see where the road leads me from there. I'll hopefully see you back here at the start of October for the HALLOWEEN (yay!!) issue of my monthly newsletter. Until then, all my bloody best, Darren Shan. x x x

Follow Darren Shan on Facebook and Twitter. He also has a (very rarely updated!) YouTube page.

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