Awwwww -- you guys!!!! I've been literally overwhelmed by the number of birthday wishes I've received this year!! Thanks to everyone who took the time to email me or post a comment. I've replied to as many of you as I can, but I'm sure I've missed out on some of you by accident, so my apologies if you don't hear back from me!!!

I've had a fab day. Bas took me on a RIB boat cruise in the morning -- it's a speed boat that tears up and down the Thames. Lots of fun!!! After that we went to Gordon Ramsay's restaurant on Royal Hospital Road for lunch. It's pricey, as you would expect, but the food really IS absolutely delicious!!! I don't think Ramsay has much to do with the restaurant any more (which is probably why he has run into such financial difficulties recently -- forgive the pun, but by opening so many restaurants and distancing himself from the actual cooking, he bit off more than he could chew!!!!), but it still has its three Michelin stars, and deservedly so -- this is haute cuisine at its finest!!!!

Now we're off to see Blur in Hude Park (hence the title of this blog). All together now -- WOO-HOO!!!!!! (If you don't know what the hell I'm talking about, check out "Song 2" by Blur on YouTube or Spotify or whatever.) I might be one year older, but I'm about to prove that I can mosh it with kids 20 years younger!!! Albeit from the viewpoint of the sedate and distinctly middle-ageish Grandstand....

Flew over to London yesterday and went to see The Cherry Orchard at the Old Vic. The actors were excellent, but the play just didn't grab us. I know it's meant to be one of the seminal plays of the last century, but at the interval we just looked at each other and said, "Nah!!!" and left!!! I used to feel guilty about walking out of a play, but these days I figure life's too short. If you're not enjoying something, you have every right to go about your merry way, even if it DOES have a sky-high reputation!! Having said that, if we'd seen it at another time, maybe we'd have been more open to it. But the sun was shining, we'd had a big meal and a couple of cocktails, and the thought of having a beer at a nearby pub and sipping it out in the open was just too tempting to resist!!!! The moral of the story being -- serious theatre is more suited to cold, dark, winter nights!!! We have another highbrow show tonight, Phedre, and it's even hotter than yesterday -- uh-oh!!!!

Had a nice time today. Wrote up the Shanville Monthly this morning, had a refreshing shower, then went for lunch with Bas and her mum to a lovely Italian restaurant called Locanda Locatelli. After that we did some shopping and, for my birthday, I treated myself to a new watch -- well, I say "new", but it was actually made back in 1972, the year that I was born!!! Then we went to the Apple Store on Regent Street and got a new speaker dock for our iPods (our old one no longer charges our new iPods, and we forgot to bring over a charger with us, so it was a good time to upgrade). Now we're back relaxing ahead of heading out to tackle Phedre. Wish us luck!!!!!

Finally got to the bottom of the pile of fan mail which was towering to the left of my desk last night! I do love hearing from fans, and indeed replying, but when the letters start to mount up, as they do every so often when I'm away on tour or travelling, it can be a daunting process!!! And Pablo has told me that he has LOTS more waiting for me when I get back from London, so I ain't out of the woods by a long shot!! Still, I'd much rather have too many letters to deal with than not enough!!!!! If any of you are writing to me in the near future, PLEASE be patient -- I do reply to every letter, but a 2 or 3 months wait is not uncommon. Also, make sure you send it to the address listed in the Contact part of my web site, www.darrenshan.com -- if you send a letter to my publishers, it will take much longer to be processed -- last night, some of the letters which had been sent to my American publishers dated back to last December and November!!!!!

Watched The Hudsucker Proxy again last night, a Coen Brothers film from the mid 1990s. I enjoyed it much more this time round than when I first saw it at the cinema on its initial release. I went with my brother Declan back then. We both loved all of the film they had made up to that point, and went in with sky-high expectations. We came away liking it, but disappointed as it wasn't as mind-blowing as their other films. In retrospect, 15 years later, it's still not one of their best films, but it IS incredibly inventive, beautifully staged and filmed, with some truly magical moments. With the weight of expectations removed, I was able to thoroughly enjoy it for what it was, as opposed to what I once wished it might be. The moral, of course, being never be TOO swift to judge in this life, whether that be a film, album, person -- whatever. Everything changes with time.

Except for Dirty Dancing -- that will always be the biggest pile of rubbish I've ever seen, no matter how long I live!!!!



Right -- I'm off to catch my flight into the cauldron of London, currently stuck in the middle of a heatwave. Assuming I don't melt away into a puddle of gooey slime, I'll chat with you all again a day or two down the line!!

Finished my most recent edit of book 2 of my 4-book series today. I'm taking a break from the editing for the next couple of weeks. I'll be popping over to London during the week to celebrate my birthday with all sorts of treats, and then I have an event in Bantry in Cork which I'm looking forward to -- I did a school event in Bantry back in March 2000, during my very first month of touring to promote Cirque Du Freak. It went very well from what I remember -- if I recall correctly, I spoke to a group of girls, who were highly enthusiastic. I haven't been back since then, so it will be nice to return to a very old stomping ground!!

I watched The Wild Bunch again last night. What a stunner of a movie!! Some films don't age well as you get older -- I've seen lots of films in recent years which I was wild about as a teen or in my early 20s, but which left me decidedly unimpressed when seen again as a man in his mid 30s. It's the same with books and music -- some things are tied to a specific point of your life and best left moored there and never revisited. The Wild Bunch, however, thrilled me as much as ever. It's a magnificent film in every respect, especially the editing -- Peckinpah would later fall back on his quick-cut editing style a bit too heavily, to the extent that sometimes it seemed like he was making a parody of his own films, but in this one it feels fresh and innovative. The Wild Bunch didn't actually impress me that much the first time I saw it, which was in The Everyman Cinema in London (I think). I saw it as a part of a double-bill with Once Upon A Time in the West. It was the second film in the bill, and while they're both absolute classics, they're best viewed independently of each other -- I was mentally exhausted by the time West had finished, not in the state of mind to appreciate anything straight after it. I saw WB again not too long after, and second time round it blew me away -- as it was been doing ever since. It's violent and bloody, to be sure, but never in a cheap, nasty way -- this is a film about bad men with nowhere else to go, and what they do when they reach the end of the line, and every bullet fired and spray of blood is there for a purpose.

I saw a far less well known film this afternoon, called The Sadist. It was made in 1963, a B movie about a psychopathic serial killer who sets his sights on a trio of teachers. Virtually everyone involved with it was a talentless nobody (with the exception of the cameraman, Vilmos Zsigmond, who would go on to work with Spielberg and a whole host of other greats), yet somehow things clicked in this picture and, while no classic by any means, it ticks along nicely and features some true surprises and memorable scenes. It just goes to show -- if the spirit is willing, sometimes you can overcome any sort of odds, even your own limitations!!

I was re-watching a film late last night, Big, which always makes me smile. While watching it, for some strange reason I found myself thinking briefly of Michael Jackson and betting that this was one of his favourite films, given his oft-professed wish to hold onto his childhood. Near the end, Bas rang to tell me she'd heard a rumour that Michael Jackson had died. I checked on Sky news and found out it was so. Now, I'm not making any freakish, supernatural claims here -- it was just one of those strange coincidences, the sort of thing I write about so often in my books, for the simple reason that weird connections like that happen all the time in day to day life. But it did give me a little shiver down my spine all the same.

I was never a huge Michael Jackson fan, but I admired a lot of what he did, the way he changed the face of music and what was acceptable for a black performer. I grew up with his songs and videos as a backdrop in the 1980s. I can remember when Thriller was released, and the furore in Ireland over whether or not it should be shown at a time when children might be watching -- those were simpler times!! In the end it WAS shown, and luckily a cousin of mind taped it for me, so I was able to check it out and dig those funky zombies strutting their macabre stuff. Needless to say, given the dark subject matter, it was always one of my favourite Jackson songs and videos!! (Although, in truth, my VERY favourite works of his were the spoofs that Weird Al Yankovic did -- Eat It and Fat -- I can never listen to Beat It or Bad without thinking of those!!) I felt he went a bit OTT towards the end of his recording career, pumping out songs which were pompous or rehashes of better works, but his best tracks were milestones, and even though they didn't grab me by the throat, I did always bear a grudging respect for the man, even as a moody, indie-obssessed teen who covered his walls with posters of The Smiths.

I was curious to see what would happen with his comeback gigs at the O2. Like many people, I wasn't convinced that he could pull them off, and expected it all to end in tears. But I hoped that I was wrong, that he'd come back with a bang and stuff it to all his critics. I was vaguely planning to catch him in action somewhere along the line -- though only once he'd shown that he still had what it took. Now, of course, nobody will ever know, and I think that's a real shame. For all his success, I don't think he was the happiest of people. He made headlines all the time through the 1980s and early 1990s, but I always got the sense that he was a man in control, playing with the media, having fun at its expense and enjoying the wild stories they concocted. I think that started to change with the allegations that he had behaved improperly with children. Those sorts of claims would hit anyone hard, I think, and even though he was never convicted of any crimes, seeds of doubt had been sown, and that can't have been easy to deal with. Maybe the O2 concerts would have restored the spark that seemed to go missing in the mid 90s. Maybe he would have stormed back and started to get a kick out of life again. Maybe not. But it's a shame he won't now have that chance.

I'm surprised, actually, by how saddened I felt when I heard the news. Normally I don't worry much about it when celebrities die, even those whose work had a major impact on me, e.g. Kurt Cobain. In my list of musicians I love, Jackson would be WAY down there, probably not even in the top 100 or more. Yet his work obviously cast more of a spell over my life than I realised. He was a superstar, the sort that seems to be going out of fashion these days, given the exploding nature of the media world -- it's hard for anyone in this modern, access-all-areas world to swamp the music channels and newspaper headlines as Jackson did in his prime. He was a giant at a time when it was possible for giants to be all-domineering, and everything he did was news. Whether I wanted to or not, as a child of the 1980s I was aware of all that he did, and all the rumours about him, and even though I didn't know it at the time, he was a part of my life in a way that stars I cared more about were not. So for that reason, and to my surprise (it's not something I would have thought I would be admitting if you'd asked me this 24 hours ago), I have to say with all honesty -- I'll miss him. I can't say in all truthfulness that I think the world is a lesser place without him -- but I do think it's now a good deal less interesting and colourful. We HAVE lost a star -- in the truest, most precise possible meaning of the word.

Finished my latest edit of the first book of the four-book series. This is the fifth draft of the book, as I mentioned yesterday. I didn't change very much in this draft, or indeed the draft before -- but they're still crucial to the overall impact of the piece. As I've often said here, a first draft is just a starting point for a story or novel. Pretty much every writer I know or ever read about goes through at least 5 or 6 drafts before they're happy with a book. (Yes, there are exceptions, such as Mickey Spillane, but they're few and far between.) The little changes I was making this time round didn't make much difference if you were to look at them one at a time -- a word added or taken away in a line here, a couple of words shifted around in another line over there. But when you add up all the little alterations, they make a huge difference. A book should be smooth. When you're reading, you should be able to lose yourself in the story, to get sucked in by it and ride along as if on a roller coaster ride. If lines are jagged or slightly out of kilter, you WILL notice them, even if only subconsciously. The occasionally dud or two won't disturb you too much, but if you start noticing a lot of loose ends, that will distract you, and you'll start looking out for them, and the story will lose its grip on you. I'm not talking about out-and-out mistakes -- more things like using a certain word or phrase too often, or awkwardly structuring a sentence, or making a sentence longer than it needs to be, and throwing in more words than you need, thus slowing things down a bit, and making things a bit more complicated than they need be, and thus losing your reader -- much like this very sentence, in fact!!!

Did you notice the length of that last sentence? The repetitions? The awkwardness? THAT is what I am talking about!! First drafts are full of lousy lines like that -- when you're first dealing with a story, you should be focused on the big picture, on taking it all the way to the end, not on the neat and even lie of every line. But as you go through later drafts, you begin narrowing your field of vision, judging the merits of each and every line, looking for small ways to improve. And those small tweaks are just as important as the big plot twists and character arcs. A huge step forward for me as a writer was when, having written a handful of first draft books, I sat down and re-wrote and then edited one of those books for the first time. I think it's the same for writers everywhere. Whether you enjoy editing (as I do) or not, it's essential, and the sooner you realise and accept that, and start doing it, the sooner you can move forward and begin to learn and advance.

Right -- enough sage-like advice for one night -- I'm off out for a walk, and then I'll maybe answer some fan mail when I get back. There's no editing when it comes to my letters -- if I don't get a letter right first time round, it's doomed to stay that way forever -- there's not enough time in life to make EVERYTHING perfect!!!!!

It was Bas' birthday today, so we had a lazy lie-in, then lunch outside in our back garden a bit later. I normally eat lunch (usually a bowl of cereal) watching a TV show. I'm a creature of habit!!! But I'm always prepared to break that habit for a special occasion, and I must admit the novelty was lovely, even though it was a bit windy and we had to keep grabbing items as they were blown from our picnic table!!!

I edited more of the first book of the four-book series. As I was opening the Word file, I noticed that I had also been doing an edit of the book in June 2008. I smiled and thought back a year -- if I'd closed my eyes, it was like the 12 months hadn't passed at all. This is my fifth draft. I wrote the first back in January 2007, and I have probably another couple of edits to go before the book is truly finished next April or May. That means, by the end, I'll have been working on it for more than 3 years, which is by no means unusual for me -- the average for most of my books is 2 to 3 years. I've said it often here before, but it's worth saying again for any young would-be writers out there -- in this game, you have to be PATIENT. Things rarely happen swiftly in the world of books. I know it can be hard when you're starting out, and you're not moving forward as quickly or as smoothly as you like, and you can sometimes think that you're wasting you time, getting nowhere, you might as well quit. Well, you just have to press on determinedly and get used to the slow pace of progress!! Even when you hit your stride, as I have done, you're still going to be in a situation where you're often starting a book far ahead of its publication schedule, living in the world of the story for months or years on end. That's the nature of the beast, and while it can seem daunting from the point of view of a beginner, you'll learn to relish it further down the line if you stick with what you're doing and succeed -- one of the nice things about being a writer is having the time to pause and enjoy the work and the build-up. Success in life (in anything you set out to do) isn't just measured by what you achieve -- it's measured by how much time you have to appreciate your achievement. If you're a writer, life is a marathon, not a sprint, so don't go getting depressed just because you can't see the finishing line after 5 or 6 miles!!!

Finished my latest edit on Monday of what will hopefully be my next D B Shan book after my City trilogy (click here for more info on all things D B Shan). I didn't need to make an awful lot of changes this time -- my previous draft seems to have taken care of all the major issue, thank heavens! It's always a nice feeling when you sit down with a story that you've been away from for a while, to discover you did a pretty damn good job of it last time!!!

But there's no room in the ever-busy universe of the Shan Man for resting on my laurels or clapping my own back!! No sooner had I finished off a draft of one book, than I slipped quickly into my latest edit of another this morning -- this time it's a Darren Shan book, the first of the four-book series which starts coming out in the UK in October 2010. I think that a lot of you already know by now what the series is going to be about, but I haven't announced it officially yet -- I'll be doing that at the Edinburgh Festival in August -- so for those of you who are in the dark, I'm afraid that's where you'll have to remain for the next couple of months!!! Suffice it to say, I think these four books are going to make a lot of Shansters very, VERY happy when they start to come out... especially if your favourite colour is orange.......

Went out with my friend Kenny on Friday night. Visited a couple of pubs, then went to a club called Costello's, which we used to frequent a lot back in the 1990s. We hadn't been there in ten years or more, so it was fun to swing back by and re-live the old days. Didn't get to bed until quite late -- 03.45! -- so I slept in late in Saturday, then didn't do a whole lot for the rest of the day, just read a couple of comics and saw and couple of films, including the classic Eastwood Western Unforgiven again, which is always a treat. Today I edited some more of my next D B Shan book. Went to visit my parents and give my Dad his Father's Day card. Also watched the David Lynch film, Inland Empire, which was a HUGE disappointment. I've been a big Lynch fan for 20 years or so. I've loved his best films, and always strongly liked his lesser efforts -- they've always been nothing less than original and fascinating. But this just felt like a load of pretentious hooey!!! He didn't shoot from a completed script, and I think that showed. His other films, while wacky and surreal, always had a proper structure, even if it was sometimes hard to figure out. This one didn't, and I felt the film floundered without one. It was, ultimately, just one off-kilter, hysterical scene after another. Lots of critics have acclaimed it, but I think it's a case of the Emperor's New Clothes -- they don't want to seem dense by stating the very obvious truth that it's a load of gobbledy-gook stuck randomly together by a great director who this time round unfortunately laid a foul-smelling egg!!! And it was bloody three hours long as well, adding injury (to my numb bum) to insult!!!!! Oh, how the mighty have fallen...

Edited some more of my D B Shan book. It's a twisty little beast, even by my standards, a ghost story unlike any other! I know that's a large claim to make, but I certainly haven't ever read anything quite like this one!! Elements of it come in from all over the place, from movies and books and comics, but the way they all click together is quite unique, to the best of my knowledge. Here's hoping my publishers are tickled by its twists as much as I am when I send it to them!!!

I was delighted to recently be granted permission by the band, Maximo Park, to use some lyrics from one of their songs at the start of Hell's Heroes. I've often seen other writers use song lyrics at the beginning of a book (Stephen King, in particular, does it almost all the time), and it was something I was curious to do one day. But I didn't want to do it just for the sake of doing it -- I would only do so if there was a veyr strong reason for including them. A couple of years ago, when I was first working on Hell's Heroes, I was listening to Maximo Park's first album, A Certain Trigger. It's a great album, but one song in particular got me buzzing -- Apply Some Pressure. I used to listen to it all the time, especially on planes -- I had a habit for a while of listening to the song shortly after take-off every time I took a flight, cranked up to full volume! It's a brilliant song (I'll try and set it as my MySpace home page song after I'm finishing writing this, so that you can have a listen if you aren't familiar with it), but I had an extra special reason for loving it so much -- some of the lyrics tied in very neatly with one of the themes of Hell's Heroes. I thought it would be great if I could use those lyrics at the start of the book, so I asked my agent to seek the band's permission. For a long time we weren't able to make contact, and I thought the opportunity might pass me by, but at the last minute (literally!!), we were given the green light -- I was DEEEEE-lighted!!!!! I'm not going to say what the lyrics are, or how they tie in with the book. You'll have to wait until October to find out!! But have a listen in the meantime and see if you can guess (a) which lyrics I've chosen, and (b) what plot clues you can glean from them -- no prizes for anyone who guess right, except for the prize of knowing you were a bit smarter than, and one step ahead of, most other fans!!!!