Wrote 10 pages of Book 8 today, which I was delighted with because I only worked on the book in the afternoon. I was having a barbeque tonight to celebrate the first birthday of one of my uncle's kids, so I had to get ready for that, which meant I couldn't squeeze in a full day's work. I thought I'd maybe get 5 or 6 pages written, but I stormed at it in the early afternoon, after lunch, and managed to whizz through a nice, sharp 10 pages -- excellent!!!!!

Was busy cooking for the BBQ. I had two sets going at once, and I was the only chef, so I was darting from one to the other, turning pieces of meat like mad, trying to stop everything from burning. Found it quite enjoyable actually. Although running 2 was definitely harder than 1, I was able to cook twice as much meat, so finished in half the time it would normally have taken. Even so, BBQs are certainly a lot more fun when somebody else is doing all the hard work!!!!

Had a small panic attack early in the day. I started on the Atkins Diet on Monday, just the 2 week induction course, to lose a few pounds -- I'm a bit chubbier than I'd like to be, and I'll probably gain some weight on my American tour next month (lots of travel and eating, very little exercise!), so I wanted to lose a bit beforehand, so I didn't spiral completely out of control!!! I've always been a bit (sometimes a lot!) on the chubby side. I don't worry about that these days, though I didn't like being considered fat when I was younger. But I do like to be reasonably healthy and able to climb a flight of stairs without having to stop to catch a breath -- hence the diet!!

Anyway, the panic attack was that I realised I couldn't drink beer because of the diet, and, quite frankly, I can't really enjoy a BBQ without a few beers, especially if I'm cooking! (I'm by no means a heavy drinker, but I do like a few bottles at social occasions.) Thankfully, Bas discovered low carb beer, which the diet allows me to drink, and suddenly all was well with my world again!!!!!   :-)   It didn't taste that bad either, which was a bonus!

Wrote 10 pages of Book 8, and plotted out the next few chapters. I find the plotting out crucial -- with a guide, the actual writing flows quite easily, but without one I struggle!!

Saw the original version of the movie "Scum" yesterday -- powerful stuff!! It's about a young offender's institution in the UK in the late 1970s. The BBC commissioned the piece, then banned it -- they thought it would prove too controversial. A movie version was made a couple of years later, featuring many of the same cast. When that was shown on TV in the early 80s it led to a change in the laws regarding juvenile offenders!

Saw a silent film called "Tartuffe" today, directed by the great F W Murnau, who made "Sunrise", one of my top 10 films. "Tartuffe" wasn't in the same league, but it was an entertaining little piece about hypocrisy. Lesser Murnau, but worth a look if you like silent cinema.

Received this amusing e-mail a couple of days ago, in response to my blog bit about some people thinking I'm really J K Rowling:

My daughter and I went to your recent "Lord Loss" event at the Edinburgh Book Festival which we both really enjoyed. It was a lot of fun (especially the sing along at the end!!) Great value for money and quite exciting to hear so many snippets from your forthcoming " Demonata" series. Anya, my daughter, was particularly chuffed and impressed at you recognising that you had met her at a similar event before - so very well remembered! As on the other occasions she met you at book signings, you were friendly and charming and frankly, not at all up yourself, in the way that some people are on attaining a degree of success!

Anyway enough of the arsey lickiness! The primary reason I am writing, is that I recently came across your blog, which I hadn't previously realised existed and was particulary amused at the idea that some people believed that your books were really written by JK Rowling! Inspired by this and the fact that, I understand, you live in Co. Limerick, the following limerick came into my mind and struck me as so mindlessly stupid, that I thought I would share it with you, whether you wanted me to or not!! Here goes...

There was a young writer called Shan
Who some people thought was Joanne
"It's Rowling..." they said
"Just a bit more undead"
So he now wears high heels for his fans.

With many apologies, both for the appalling poetry and in case I have inadvertently outed the fact that you are really a secret cross dresser!!!

Best Regards,
Marion Stevenson (age 41 1/2!)

Heh heh -- I think that's brilliant!!! Thanks for the cool limerick, Marion -- though I'm not sure what Bas will think of the implication that I like to wear women's clothes!!!!!   :)

Well, I'm back in the world of the web after a few days off! Had a good time in the UK. Went to stay in a convent to begin with -- Bas's aunt is a Carmelite nun, and lives in an enclosed order. She's in her 70s, and despite living within a convent for the last 50 years, is as wild as they come! She dated Richard Burton's brother in her earlier years ... she loves to smoke and drink ... and is the biggest Terry Pratchett fan I've ever met!!!! We try to get to see her at least a couple of times a year. I enjoy chatting with her -- she has a different take on life to most people.

Mary (the nun) was quite busy on the Friday, so we didn't see as much of her as we expected. We spent quite a lot of time driving around the East Anglia countryside. Popped in to visit a place called Grimes Graves. I was expecting some sort of graveyard, but it's actually the site of ancient flint mines. It was interesting, learning about the mining, though the mine itself wasn't much to view.

On Saturday we drove up to the coast for the wedding. It was one of Bas's friends getting married. We knew absolutely nobody there apart from the bride and groom. I was a bit edgy to begin with -- I'm not a great socializer, and find it very hard to get a conversation going with complete strangers. For the first few hours we didn't talk to anybody and I was feeling quite glum. But when we sat down for dinner, we soon got talking to the other guests at our table and they were an enjoyable bunch, easy to get on with. We spent the rest of the night chatting with them, and it was fun. Didn't have a crazy one -- drank sensibly and had an earlyish night -- but it passed nicely.

Got back home on Sunday. Went through my post and caught up with my e-mails. Found out that I'm back in the New York Times Top 10 Children's Bestsellers (hurrah!!) at #7!! I'm delighted when my books chart in any country, but because of the size of the place, America is obviously a vital and enticing nut to crack!!! Most authors from this side of the Atlantic don't make it in the States. I'm one of the few who've managed to take off there, and while I'm nowhere near as popular as Eoin Colfer (who's huge in America) I've made the NYT Top 10 with 3 of my last 4 books, which is an amazing achievement. It'll be interesting to see how "Lord Loss" fares there, especially coming so soon after the release of "The Lake of Souls" ...

Returned to book 8 of "The Demonata" today. Wrote 11 pages, which I was very satisfied with. Not the most exciting part of the book -- it's the build-up to the action scenes, the calm before the storm. I'll be glad to get down to the chaos and mayhem over the course of the next few days!!!!

I'm heading off today in the early afternoon for the weekend -- I'm going to a wedding in England, one of Bas's friends. So there'll be no Blog updates until Sunday or Monday!

I meant to do half a day's writing, but I was out late last night, so that plan fell by the wayside!! I went in to Limerick to watch Ireland play France in a crucial World Cup qualifier. We lost 1-0. I was gutted!! Germany is looking very far away right now, although if we win our last 2 games we should make the play-offs. But that's quite a big IF, methinks!!!!! Couldn't even take much enjoyment out of England losing 1-0 to Northern Ireland (one of their worst defeats ever!!) -- although even in the midst of my despair I managed a small chuckle at their expense!!!!!!!!    :-)

Went to see a band called The Editors afterwards. They're a newish band, doing very well at the moment -- they've even had a Top 20 hit in the UK!!! It's rare that big (or even on-the-way-to-being-big) bands come to Limerick, so it was great to see The Editors bucking the trend! They played a fast, exciting set -- very enjoyable. I would have liked to heard some of their songs before - gigs are always more fun if you know the songs - but I'll definitely pick up their album. You can check our their web site at http://www.editorsofficial.com/

A Limerick band, Vesta Varro, played support. I'd heard about them before this, but hadn't seen them. I thought they were pretty good -- the lead singer certainly throws himself body and soul into his performance!!! You can check out their web site here: http://www.vestavarro.com/

Meant to go home after the Editors, but I was with my friend Pablo and he wanted to have a few more drinks in a nightclub. We meant an old friend of ours who we hadn't seen in years in there, and by the time we finished catching up and I caught a taxi home, it was 3 in the morning!!!! I didn't have a hangover when I woke up (I don't really get hangovers, because I drink in moderation and don't get roaring drunk!!), but my head was a bit sore and buzzy, and I wasn't in any fit frame of mind to sit down and write. Oh well -- I'll make it up next week!!

Wrote 12 pages of Book 8 today, which I was very pleased with! Although, actually, not all of them were entirely original -- books 7, 8 and 9 overlap in certain sections, and the scene I was working on today was one that also takes place in book 7, so I had to take specific bits of that - such as dialogue - and work them into the body of the new text. It was trickier than it sounds, since I didn't want the "new" scene to read exactly like the original, as that would be boring for readers, so I had to alter things while keeping the core from the Book 7 scene intact. Where it will really get fiddly is when I edit book 7 further down the line -- any changes I make to dialogue in that scene, I'll have to replicate when I come to book 8!!! I'll have to careful, because I know that if I make any mistakes, eagle-eyes Shansters will be baying for my head -- especially now that I've tipped them off about it in advance, so they know what to look for!!!!!!

Away from my PC I'm about halfway through series 3 of "Six Feet Under". I don't watch a lot of TV "live", but prefer to wait for a series to end. Then, when it comes out on DVD, I buy it and watch it at my own pace, normally getting through an episode a day. I liked "Six Feet Under" from the start, but didn't think the first series was as amazing as some of my friends did. One guy I know (Liam) said he thought it was the best TV show EVER!!! Conversely, I've come to enjoy it more as it progresses, while my friends who raved about the first series haven't enjoyed the later episodes to much -- Liam didn't even watch the third series!!

I've had a good listen to each of the 6 CDs on my jukebox by now (see earlier entries for a full list). I like them all, though I wouldn't say any were great. The Eels is a bit disappointing -- I thought all of his earlier albums were brilliant, or at least in patches, and while this one ("Shootenanny") is good, it doesn't measure up to his previous work -- or so says I!! The highlight of the bunch for me is the first song on the Magic Numbers album. The album itself is very good, but a bit too long, especially for a debut album. But the first song, "Mornings Eleven", truly is magic!!! It's the coolest song I've heard in a long time -- I break out into a big goofy smile every time it kicks in!!!!!

Wrote 11 pages of Book 8 today. I've moved away from the recaps and on to the story proper, which is more enjoyable. I'm also able to do more dialogue scenes now, which is probably my favourite part of the writing process -- I'm not that keen on long descriptive scenes, but I love putting characters together and letting them talk to each other!!

Saw a 1914 silent Italian film called "Cabiria" a few days ago. This was a hugely influential movie at the time -- an epic set in Ancient Rome, it featured some elaborate, gigantic sets, a convoluted storyline and an enormous cast. Given how young cinema still was, and the limits they had to work under back then, it's a technical marvel. Not as enjoyable now as it would have been then -- some old films just don't weather well, whereas others, like Chaplin's better films and Buster Keaton's, are just as much fun now as they were originally. The best scene was where 100 children were sacrificed in a statue of fire to the god Moloch -- coolio!!!!

Watched a documentary about Federico Fellini this evening, called "Fellini: I'm a born liar". Some interesting insights from Fellini himself (filmed before his death, obviously!) and some of the people who worked with him. Fellini's one of my favourite directors. Not all of his films worked for me -- some I absolutely hated! -- but his best works are cinematic classics, like "La Strada", "8 1/2", "La Dolce Vita" and "Amarcord". It's been a long time since I sat down and watched any of those -- seeing the documentary put me in the mood to reacquaint myself with them again, and soon!!!

Started work on Book 8 of "The Demonata" today! I hadn't finished writing up my plot notes, but I can do that as I go along. I wanted to get stuck in as soon as possible -- I hope to finish it before heading for the States in October, but it's going to be tight!! Every day counts!!!

I have a nice catchy title for the book, but I won't be revealing it until much closer to the publication date -- don't want to give the game away too early!!

Wrote 10 pages, which is my target every working day of the week (usually Monday to Friday, though I occasionally work at weekends too). It's always nice to hit the 10 mark at the end of the day -- that's when I know I've put in a good day's work and can down tools! A lot of those 10 pages were recapping events from earlier books. I'll probably trim them down later, or move them to later in the book if possible, but I find it's helpful to lay the recap out at the start -- it refreshes things inside my own mind.

Spent the last few hours updating the Shop and Covers sections of my web site. Doesn't sound like a lot of work, but appearances can be deceptive!! I had to check on Amazon and Barnes & Noble to see what books were and were not available now. Then I found out that the Audio CD apaptations of the first 3 books in my vampire series are now listed on Amazon UK, so I had to add links for those. And then ... in the end, a job I thought would take maybe half an hour ended up taking at least two hours!!! This is why I don't update my site as often as I'd like to -- the simplest of tasks usually runs over by a lot more than I expected! Still, I don't feel too guilty -- I provide updates a lot more than most writers!! You can find links to the new stuff by clicking here, if interested: http://p090.ezboard.com/fdarrenshanmessageboardfrm9

Had a night out with Pablo (my board moderator) in Limerick last night. Just sat in a pub (the Trinity Rooms) having a few drinks and chatting. The pub used to called Doc's, and I used to go there a lot when I was a student and in my early 20s. Hadn't been there in years, so it was nice to check it out -- hasn't changed that much. Popped in to a night club briefly afterwards (it was attached to the pub, and entrance was free, so why not?!?), but neither of us has ever had much time for discos (except for indie discos when we were younger, where we happily thrashes around to music we actually liked!), so we left after a short sojourn.

I commenced my preparatory work on Book 8 of "The Demonata" today. I started, as I always do when plotting a book, by jotting down a rough outline of the book on a couple of sheets of A4 paper. I always write directly to a PC, except when I'm planning a book -- at this early stage, I prefer to write by hand. I'm not sure why -- it's just a habit.

I came up with some nice twists and ideas while working on the plot. Would-be writers often ask me about how to develop ideas, and I think the key is to actually write. Thinking's all well and good, but when I actually sit down with a pen in my hand and start to scribble, I find ideas pouring out -- the writing down of one idea usually leads to others. I had a vague idea of what I wanted the book to be like yesterday -- today I have a fairly full structure which, while it still needs a lot of work, should see me safely to the finish.

Once I finished the rough plot outline, I began work on the chapter breakdown. I don't always do this (with "Cirque Du Freak" and "Lord Loss" I worked from the rough plot only), but usually I do. I write a short description of what will be in each chapter. I find that this helps me flesh out the plot -- I usually have some more ideas at this stage -- and, when complete, it makes the writing process a lot easier. As I go along, I tick off each chapter on the pages, and that gives me a real sense of progress. Of course, I can veer away from the chapter descriptions along the way -- I often find that I'll split a longer chapter up into a couple of shorter chapters, or run a few together -- but I usually stick quite close to them.