We are delighted to welcome Darren Shan to the YLG blog to discuss his new series featuring Archibold Lox.  It is fascinating to hear about the influences Darren has had.  Big thanks to Catherine Ward for making this possible.

Where did the story idea for this new series come from?

I was walking across a bridge in London when I saw a young woman walking towards me, twitching her nose and pulling strange faces. I couldn’t understand why she was doing that, and it set my brain whirring. I thought, “What if she’s from another universe, and those grimaces are a key to open the door between our universe and hers?” The idea intrigued me, and I decided to follow her through that doorway to explore whatever lay on the far side.

Did the plot and characters come to you fully formed or take some time to develop?

Some of the main ideas came to me quickly — the story would be told from the point of view of a boy who sees the girl pulling faces, he finds out he’s a locksmith with special powers, and crosses after her. And some of the central concepts of that other universe fell into place neatly and swiftly. But I spent a lot of time asking questions and scribbling down ideas before I felt ready to write, and even when I did sit down to begin, there was a lot I didn’t know — the answers came as I teased them out through the writing process.

Would you consider this series your biggest feat of worldbuilding so far?

Well, it’s certainly been the hardest! My other long series were all primarily set on Earth, but the vast majority of the action in the Archibald Lox series takes place in the Merge. With my other series, I could introduce a little bit of strangeness to our world, then get the action going almost immediately, without having to worry about the background setting from that point on. In this one, the Merge is almost another character, and I had to explain lots of different things about it, so that readers could understand what it is and how it functions. The trick was in finding the right balance between the explanations and the action. Worldbuilding by itself can be quite boring — if you explain too much about a world, your reader’s eyes will quickly start to glaze over. I ended up writing far more than I needed in my first draft, then spent about a dozen edits whittling it down, getting rid of tens of thousands of words, so that the story could flow, while hopefully still making sense!

Was the writing of this series a conscious effort to step away from the horror stories for which you, the Master of Horror, are well known?

I didn’t decide to deliberately not write about horror. I just knew from early on that the story didn’t want to be as dark as most of my other work. I’ve gone a long way down the horror path, especially with The Demonata and Zom-B, so it’s been nice to pull back from that for a while and work on something different, but I’d have no qualms about returning to the genre tomorrow if the right idea came along and grabbed me. When it comes to writing, I never impose myself on my stories. I just follow where they lead.

Can you share with us some of the other writers who have influenced your writing journey and/or this new series?

Lots of different authors and books influenced this series. One of the big ones was The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I’m actually not a huge fan of the Narnia books, but the beginning of Lion is truly magical, and is mirrored in the first chapter of Archibald Lox and the Bridge Between Worlds. I haven’t read a lot of Diana Wynne Jones’ books – I’m slowly working my way through them – but the few I’ve read so far have had a big impact me on, and I knew I wanted this, like hers, to be a book of gentle, subtle surprises, rather than sharp, sudden shocks. I loved Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea Trilogy, and the scale of those books spurred me on to make the universe of the Merge as expansive as possible. There are shades of Neil Gaiman’s work in there… sprinklings of Harry Potter… elements gleaned from Stephen King’s Dark Tower series… Those are some of the conscious influences — there are probably loads more that I’m not even aware of!

Do you feel more at home writing longer series than standalone novels, or does it just depend how the story unfolds in your head?

It’s all down to the story. I never put a limit on the stories that I tell, or tailor them to fit the demands of the market or the expectations of my fans. If I can tell a story in a single book, well and good. If it demands three or four books, I go with it. If it requires ten or twelve, then I take a deep breath, knuckle down and push it on in the direction it wishes to go.

Why did you decide to release the first volume of Archibald Lox earlier than planned?

I was working on my final edit of the first three books, and was planning to release them later in the year, but when the lockdown started, I felt like it was the right time to put them out there, at least in ebook form, as it would give people something that might distract them from the scariness of the world for a while. I think it’s a good time for positive distractions.

Did you write the books in sequence from draft to final manuscript each time, or do you juggle working on several books in the series at once?

I usually work on several books in a series over the space of any given year. Each will be at a different stage of its evolution and I like to jump around between them. So, for instance, I might finish a first draft of book five, then edit books one through four again, before doing my first edit of book five, then moving on to a first draft of book six.

That said, I wrote the first three Archibald Lox books as a single volume, and only divided that big book into three when it came time to release it. There were several reasons why I did that — one of the major ones was that it allowed me to put the first book out as a freebie, and since this is very different to my other long series, I felt that would give fans a chance to try the first book without having to pay for it, and then, if they decided it wasn’t for them, they could stop there, and wouldn’t have spent any money on it, or devoted too much of their time to it. Thankfully the response has been incredibly positive, so most of my fans who’ve read book one have got on board with the other two books — phew!

When can we expect the next volume in the series?

Hopefully in the first half of 2021. I’ve written the second volume and am now editing it into shape. That’s a lengthy process, and I think need to go through the book at least another four or five times before it’s ready to see print — and it’s a big book, so there’s no quick way to do that! But, if all goes well, I think the first half of 2021 is achievable. If that optimism proves ill-founded and I have to push the release date back, well, the waiting will just make its eventual release all the sweeter!

Do you know the series ending, and how many books there will be in total, or is that still to be determined?!

I’m not certain. I have three volumes planned, and there’s a very good chance that I’ll stop at the end of volume three, as that concludes the main story arc that kicks off in chapter one of book one. But there’s a possibility that I could continue on for another volume or two, with one of the secondary story lines that develops over the course of the first three volumes. We’ll see how the next volume goes, and I’ll take (or leave) things from there…

The three books comprising Volume One in the Archibald Lox series are now available from all good ebook retailers.