I've continued compiling my tour dates online -- it's taking longer than I thought!! I managed to complete the lists for 2001 and 2002 today, and you can check them out by clicking on the following links:

http://www.darrenshan.com/monthly/archive/Tours2001/2001index.html

http://www.darrenshan.com/monthly/archive/Tours2002/2002index.html

I also added a comment to the 2000 list, so you might want to check that one out again. I've found this a fascinating exercise (even if it might look like navel-gazing to other people!!!). This is the first time I've ever been able to siut down and actually analyze my touring career. When you're out on the road, things blur over time, and you just have a vague sense of how you're doing. In my mind it feels like I've always been on the road, and the tours have blended into one another for the most part. I know they've got bigger and busier in recent years, but I didn't think there was any real shape to them overall.

Boy, was I wrong!!! By studying the dates for 2000, 2001 and 2002, there's a definite pattern. In the first couple of years I was accepting just about every offer to go and do my thing to an audience, a few days here, a single event there. Virtually no public events, and the few I dared attempt were catastrophes for the most part! A structure - where I did a few weeks of hardcore, intensive touring - began to emerge in the second year, and became more apparent in the third, but I was still out on the road in dribs and drabs for most months of the year. By the end of 2002, I could sense the tide turning - I'd built up a good-sized fan base - but I still didn't do many public events or signings. We concentrated on schools, taking the books into places where I was unknown, aiming to find new readers. I was still a long way from being able to do a "glamour" tour, where I'd go into schools where I was largely known and liked. It was a relentless, dogged campaign -- I marched tirelessly from one event to another, never complaining, never letting the dud events (where I got only a handful of people turning up) depress me, clinging to the belief that this would work in the long term, that I'd see the benefits of ceaseless touring one day...

What stunned me most, going through the lists, was just how bad my first tour of the States really was!!! Whenever I thought about it over the years, I always knew it was poor compared to my later tours, but it wasn't until I went back and looked through my diary entries that I realised it was an almost total wash-out!! Terrible attendances at the public events, small groups in most of the schools, not many books sold. Looking back, it's plain to see that it was too early for a tour. The books had been selling quite well, but I hadn't yet established a firm fan base, and it was hard to let fans know that I was there on tour. I guess it served some sort of purpose, in that it introduced me to the hardships of life on the road in the massive States -- when I returned much later for my second tour, I was prepared for just what I had to do. But it wasn't a fun time of my life!!!!

Then again, who said touring in the early days should be fun?!? Bands all had to go through this -- and worse! U2 had to play to tiny crowds in crap venues, as did The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, R.E.M., etc, etc, etc. That's the way I've always looked at it -- in my head, I'm a musician, and when I go on the road, it's like I'm touring with a band. It's hard for writers to develop an audience the way bands do, but not impossible -- as I've proved. If you work hard, stick with it, put every bad experience down to a lesson learnt, and keep believing that the hard work will pay off further down the line ... then yes, you CAN make a go of it!! You need good books to tour with, of course, the way bands need good songs, but touring does pay off eventually.

Of course, the interesting question is, do children's writers actually NEED to tour? If I'd never gone out on the road, would the books have done well anyway? Would sales have flourished regardless of whether I toured or not? It's impossible to say. Maybe they would have -- maybe they wouldn't. All I know is, touring has been an important part of my job, and I think it's definitely helped me get to where I am today, and ... well, to use an old cliche ... if it ain't broke, don't fix it!!! It would be easy to stop touring, to cut back and have more time for myself. But I've got a niggling suspicion at the back of my mind that sales might dip if I did -- and it's not a theory I wish to put to the test!!!!