Went into Limerick (I go to Figaro's -- ask for Brian and tell him Darren sent you!) for my haircut. I was in dire need of a trim -- I should have had it cut a few weeks ago but Bas was away and it was too awkward for me to get in (I don't drive). You could have knitted a jumper out of what came off my head!!!!

I was meant to do a piece on the Ryan Tubridy radio show in Ireland this Friday, but it's been put back to next week (probably Thursday -- I'll send out an e-mail when it's confirmed). It's an odd one. It's been set up by the MS society here. I gave them a quote for their MS Readathon week earlier in the year (http://www.ms-society.ie/msreadathon) and they got in touch with me later to ask me to do a reading for them on the Tubridy show. Originally I only supposed to be chipping in with a short reading, while someone from MS Ireland explained about the reading -- but now it looks like it's only going to be me and some guy from UL (University Limerick) talking about horror and sci-fi!!!! I wasn't sure about doing it, since I'd only got involved because of the MS angle, but they've agreed to let me mention the readathon, and the good folks at MS told me any mention is better than no mention at all ...

One of my Shansters (hi, Charlie!) saw that the final cover of "Koyasan" has been released and is on Amazon UK. That was the first I'd heard of it!!! As an author you're supposed to get to approve a book cover before it goes public, but that doesn't always happen. I wasn't too miffed -- it's very close to the original cover, and I'd given that the thumbs-up already. Besides, you get used to things like this after a while. It sometimes seems to me like authors are the last people to find out anything about their books!!!! You can check out the new cover (along with the old one) by clicking here: http://www.darrenshan.com/extras/covers.html