Flew over to London last night with my cousins, Lorcan and Kealan. (Lorcan, by the way, was partly responsible for Evra Von -- he can stick his tongue up his nose, which is where I got that part of Evra from!!!) Went to Thorpe Park with them and my brother, Declan, today. I hadn't been there in, I dunno, 18 years or more. It's changed enormously since then, and even more so since the first time I went, which was the year it opened -- back then, they had NO rides, just recreations of things like castles and roman buildings!!! I enjoyed it, especially the Collossus roller coaster, but it's certainly no match for Islands of Adventure or Busch Gardens in Florida!!!! But not bad for a UK park, and it was quite small and easy to walk around. Only downside was that I made the mistake of going on a spinning ride, and felt a bit sick afterwards, so I had to go easy in the latter half of the day!!! Oh -- they also have the best water slide I've ever been on -- it creates a HUGE wall of water, much of which falls back down on thos beneath -- we were SOAKED!!!!

After that, back in London, we went to see a play called "Thick" at the Warehouse Theatre in East Croydon. I'd seen the play a couple of years ago, in Edinburgh, and loved it. It's been expanded slightly since then, though it plays more or less the same as originally. Very funny and very moving. You can read more about it at www.thicktheplay.co.uk If you ever get the chance, GO SEE IT!!!!!!

Well, we're out of it!!!! We fought hard, but just weren't good enough on the night. The game ended 0-0, meaning Switzerland are through to the play-offs, while Ireland's World Cup campaign is OVER!!! I'm not too depressed -- I didn't believe we would win last night, and guessed that the game would end in a draw. In fact, in the end, we were lucky not to lose, as the Swiss had the best chances!!! We blew our hopes in the two draws with Israel -- we should have won both of those games, but didn't. C'est la vie!!!!

Apart from the result, it was a nice little trip to Dublin. The train went smoothly, the weather was perfect, I had a few drinks with one of my cousins (Little John) and a friend of his, the hotel I stayed at was nice (Bewleys) and I got back home on time this morning.

Started to read "Angels and Demons" by Dan Brown. It's not quite as catchy as "The Da Vinci Code", but I'm enjoying it so far. His style is similar to mine in many ways -- we both like to make a story move forward as fast as possible, and to end chapters on catchy little (and sometimes big) cliffhangers!!! I know critics often turn up their noses as writers who focus on "insubstantial" matters like pace and plot devices, but I'll take a hot-as-hell story-line over a beutifully-written-but-dry-as-dust character study any day!!!! The best writers, of course, merge the two -- Shakespeare and Dickens spring to mind -- and it's good, as a reader, to vary the type of books you read. But if I could only choose one type, page-turner or "classic", to read for the rest of my life, I'd definitely go for the former!!! For me, above all else, reading should be FUN!!!!!!!

Spent the morning adding more photos to my site! I'm certainly making up for lost time!!! Added two more galleries, one from 2002 (which includes a snap of me on my 30th birthday, as well as one of my in a rather fetching wig!), the other from my trip to Napa Valley in 2004 during my USA book tour.

Right -- I'm off to have a spot of lunch, then I'm catching the train east to Dublin and Ireland's World Cup destiny ...

I managed to add some new photos to my site at last, after a year and a half or so since my last update!!! I can't believe it's been so long!! While I say they're "new" photos, they're actually all fairly old. One folder contains photos of me when I was a very young child. The other contains photos from the summer of 2003!! You can check them out here: http://www.darrenshan.com/photos/index.html

I hope to add a few more folders, of more slightly up to date snapshots, before I leave for the States, and bring the photos page completely up to date by late this year. But we'll see ... And no, I haven't forgotten the new fan art I promised, but the photos are quicker to process, so I'm focusing on them first.

Answered lots more questions from Megumi about book 3 of "The Demonata" today. I also told her a HUGE plot twist from the later book, because I thought it might affect the way she translated this one. But I swore her to secrecy first!!! :)

I'm off to Dublin tomorrow to see Ireland play Switzerland in a make-or-break world cup qualifier. Wish us luck, Shansters!!!!!

Tidying up bits and pieces before I head off for the States. Backed up my computer files, started preparing scenes and plays to take with me on tour (I like to do a variety of readings over the course of a 2 or 3 week tour, to make it more interesting for myself!). Also started answering my Japanese translators questions about book 3 of "The Demonata" -- Megumi is the most thorough of all my translators and likes to pin down the exact meaning of anything she's even slightly unsure of. I suspect the Japanese versions of my books are as close in content to the English originals as it's possible to get!!!! I meant to add some more fan art to my site before I left, and maybe some photos, but that's not looking very likely at the moment ...

Went to see the new version of "Oliver Twist" at the cinema, the one directed by Roman Polanski. Quite good, but a strange choice for Polanski. There have been so many films of the book that I find it hard to get especially excited about new versions of it -- there's only so many times you can sit through the same story without losing a bit of interest!!! This was a good, workmanlike adaptation, but I found it hard to see the point for it. If you've never seen the 1940s David Lean version, with Alec Guinness as Fagin, you should track it down immediately -- that's easily the best film of the book ever! And Lean's other Dickens adaptation, "Great Expectations", is even better -- two classic movies that make all other versions seem more than a little redundant.

A signed set of the UK first editions of all 12 of my "Saga of Darren Shan" books sold for £320 in a recent ebay auction!! That's the highest price I've seen any of my books generate yet! Although no individual UK edition of any of my books is probably ever going to be hugely valuable (because they all had relatively large first print runs, even "Cirque Du Freak", unlike, say, the first "Harry Potter" or "His Dark Materials" books), a full set of first editions will, I think, be pretty hard (and expensive!) to track down in years to come. And a set of signed first editions will be even rarer!!! I've seen the number of first editions on sale on ebay drop considerably over the last couple of years, meaning they're harder to find and usually more costly when one comes along. Hold onto those first editions, little Shansters -- they could be worth money one day soon!!!!

Spent Friday morning going over the schedule for my upcoming tour of the USA, checking all the details, making sure everything's OK. My publicist managed to squeeze in a few more events since I last heard from her, so I also had to update the details on my site. You can find the finalised schedule in the current issue of the Shanville Monthly.

Edited more of Book 3 of "The Demonata" in the afternoon, then went for a meal with Bas and her friend, Rachel, in Limerick. I meant to work on the book again on Saturday morning, but there was a power cut!! It lasted about an hour. I was heading off for a walk with the girls, having decided I wouldn't get anything written, when the power returned. So while they went a-wandering, I got back to the editing -- and finished!!!! It's the second-last draft. My editor will come back with some more notes and corrections and suggestions a bit later in the year, I'll do my final bit of work on the book, then it will be all over, except for checking the proofs! Nearly there!!!!!!

Watched the England v Austria match in the afternoon, then the Ireland versus Cyprus game. It was a VERY nervous affair -- Ireland scored a goal early on, but apart from that they had a terrible first half, playing as badly as I've ever seen them play! They should have been a couple of goals down by half time, but luckily our keeper, Shay Given, was in great form, and kept the Cypriots out. We took control in the second half and the game ended 1-0. But it was certainly a far from convincing performance! It's all down to our HUGE game with Switzerland on Wednesday now. If we win, we're in the play-offs. Anything else and we're out of the World Cup. I've managed to get a ticket for the match, so I'll be going up to Dublin to watch it live. I suspect I might return with a few more grey hairs than I had setting out ...

Went to see a band called "Toasted Heretic" after the match. They were a college band that I liked when I was a teenager, though I only ever heard their first album. They went their separate ways for many years, but reformed recently to re-release their first two albums on a single, beautifully packaged CD, and to do a short tour. They were great live -- very funny, but very professional too, with a hugely energetic front man. You can visit their cool, crazy web site at http://www.toastedheretic.com/ where you can download some songs, read all about the band, and find links to buy the "new"CD at https://www.cs.tcd.ie/~nfarrel/toasted/nostalgia.htm I HIGHLY recommend it! Although the sound quality is very rough, the songs are top-notch. Indeed, two are, in my opinion, classics -- "The Best Things In Life Are Mine" and "Galway Bay". In fact, "Galway Bay" would probably feature in my top 10 favourite songs EVER!!!! What makes it even more memorable for me, apart from its just being a great song, is that for years, in my innocence, I didn't realise that it was actually all about oral sex!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If that doesn't make you curious to give it a listen, I guess nothing will!!!!

Edited some more of Book 3 of "The Demonata". It's going well -- making plenty of little adjustments, none essential or overly noitceable, but taken together they should make the book read a little bit smoother. I always try to fine-tune my books, paying attention to the smallest of details. The little things which readers might not even notice consciously are what sometimes make or break a book. To give one VERY small example from book 3 -- there's a scene quite late in a book which mentions a hat shop, but I'd never bothered to highlight the shop earlier in the book, since it wasn't especially important and I didn't want to shoe-horn it into the book and interrupt the action; but this time, with that very minor point in mind, I spotted the perfect place to refer to it, so that when it's mentioned later, readers will recall it. As I said, it's a very little thing, but, as the old saying goes, the devil's in the detail -- and I do like my devils!!!!

Went for a walk with Bas this afternoon. I try to fit in a walk every day when I'm at home, though I don't always manage. Usually I go on a 45 minutes or 60 minutes circuit. It's my only real exercise, and my only chance most days to clear my head after hours at the PC and watching TV and movies. Today we picked some blackberries while we were walking. One of Bas's friends is coming to stay with us for a few days, and Bas wanted to have blackberries for dessert. She's going to make a blackberry-and-apple pie later in the year -- YUM!!!!! I really enjoyed picking the berries. Autumn's probably my favourite season, full of colour, fallen leaves, conkers (horse chestnuts) and berries galore!!! It's a great time of the year to go walking, especially if you get a nice clearish day, which we did today. Picking berries is a little thing, too -- but sometimes the little things are what put the biggest smile on your face and make life memorable.

Right -- enough mushy guff!!!!! I'm going to scan in some reader's art before Bas and her friend get back from the airport. I don't know how long it's been since I uploaded any new fan art -- maybe a year? Possibly a bit less or more? Whatever, it's long overdue!!!!!

Edited the pages of Book 8 of "The Demonata" that I wrote yesterday, so the first draft is now officially COMPLETE!!!! I'll be editing it for the next 2 and a half years or thereabouts (it's due to be published in the UK in December 2008), but the hardest part of the process is now behind me, which is a relief. First drafts are the most interesting part of the writing experience, since that's when everything comes together for the first time -- but they're hard bloody work!!!! I much prefer the editing part!

Speaking of which, I returned to editing duties on Book 3. Made quite a few little tweaks, mostly making the rules of magic a bit clearer, and also giving a certain Bill-E Spleen a few more lines!!! Bill-E has a prominent role in the book, but as in "Lord Loss", we don't see a huge amount of him in the first third. One of my editor's comments was that she'd like to have a bit more of him, and as I'm a Bill-E fan too, I'm only too happy to oblige!!!!!!

Got a new "toy" today which I'm absolutely delighted with -- a combined DVD/VCR recorder, which makes the copying of a video tape to DVD as simple as the press of a button. I LOVE it!!!! I've given quite a lot of TV interviews over the last 5+ years, and have most of them taped. But this is the first chance I've had to transfer them to DVD, to preserve the quality and properly collect and catalogue them. My ultimate aim is to make them all available for download via my site, but that could be quite a while off (there's no sign of broadband coming to my part of the world, and it's not a task I'd like to undertake at ordinary dial-up speeds!!!). Before that, I might make them available for sale on a limited edition DVD, with notes about the programmes and my experiences, but that's something I'll have to think about a bit more ...

Wrote 11 pages of Book 8 of "The Demonata", which took me all the way up to the end! But I'm not QUITE finished with the first draft yet -- I have to edit the last 8 or so pages tomorrow. Once I've done that, the first draft will be officially in the bag, and I can move on to the editing of Book 3, and the planning of books 9 and 10. (At the moment, I don't really know what's going to happen in those books! I know how #10 finishes - even the last line - and I have snippets in my mind which I want to include in book 9, little scenes and bit of action and info. But I don't know what the actual story-lines are going to be, how I'm going to flesh them out and make them fast-paced and interesting. But I'm sure they'll fall into place over the next few months ... I hope!!!!!)

I was especially pleased to write 11 pages today because it would have been very easy to get distracted. A piece of art which I bought some months back, but had to have cleaned and re-framed, arrived yesterday, and I had people in hanging it and hooking it up to my alarm system today. I had to help them out on some of it, and could have used the break-up of my normal writing pattern as an excuse to flack off. But I forced myself to sit and write, and I got the book "finished", so I'm delighted with myself!!!!

I'm about halfway through the first series of "Angel", and I have to say it's definitely picked up after a weak start. I'm still not enjoying it as much as "Buffy", but I like how it's growing, and if the improvement continues I'll certainly take a chance on the second series.