Darren Shan: saying goodbye to my zombies
The end is nigh… and it’s been a long time coming. I started writing the first Zom-B book back in April 2008. Now, eight years later, here I am with the final book, Zom-B Goddess, due to see print. Eight years of my life… twelve books plus a short additional e-book (Zom-B Circus)… somewhere in excess of four hundred thousand words… How do I feel after such a monumental undertaking?
Well, firstly I must say, as I have at the end of any of my long series, I’m relieved to have made it to the end still alive! That’s always the first thought on my mind when I begin a series like Zom-B. I know in advance that it’s going to require a huge chunk of my life, and there’s no guarantee that I’ll be around to finish what I started. Many authors have died mid-book (Charles Dickens is among the most famous), and if you’re working on a series that will take several years to write, the chances of you biting the bullet shy of the final full stop increase sharply.
Charles Dickens died mid-series. But luckily Darren Shan survived to finish the Zom-B books! Photograph: Getty Images
But, thankfully, my brain hasn’t been ripped out by a zombie, and I haven’t fallen prey to any less exciting illnesses or accidents, so here I am in relatively good health and cheer.
I also have to say that I feel relieved to be leaving the work behind after so many years devoted to it. I love looking back on completed works when the dust has settled. It’s been more than a decade since I finished The Saga Of Darren Shan, and more than five years since The Demonata, and I look back on them now with huge fondness. I’m sure I’ll be the same with Zom-B, but the writing of it (as with the other series) has been a nightmarish process, and I was thrilled when I could draw a line in the sand beneath it.
Writing a long series is hard. Of course all writing is hard, but a series draws more out of you and drains you more than a single book normally can. There are so many ideas, storylines and characters in play, and the time involved is so ridiculously lengthy, that it’s almost impossible to stay buoyant and excited. Most novels run to no more than a hundred thousand words. With Zom-B, I wasn’t even a quarter of the way through when I hit that magical hundred K mark, and that can be dispiriting, having come so far but knowing you have so much further still to go.
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So, yeah, at the moment I’m glad to see the back of Zom-B. I’m looking forward to moving on, to putting some space between myself and the books and forgetting the pains of their conception. It’s probably similar to childbirth. Mothers can go through all sorts of trials and tribulations when delivering their baby to the world. That pain will be quickly forgotten as the child grows and their love for it expands, but in the immediate aftermath of birth they most likely feel exhausted, bewildered and empty, and that’s what I feel right now.
That’s not to say I’m not already missing the books, because I am. Especially the characters. Zom-B contains some of my favourite cast members from any of my books. B Smith, Rage, Dr Oystein, Dan-Dan, Mr Dowling… They were fascinating to work on. I never know much about my characters when I start a story. They develop in a way I don’t fully understand, and I end up not being able to control them.
I was intrigued by the mindset of these guys. Sometimes I’d be writing dialogue for them and my jaw would drop at the things they had to say. I’m sorry we can’t have those conversations any more, that the villains can’t justify their actions, that the heroes can’t explain the reasons why they fight. Of course I’ll go on to write other books (fingers crossed) with characters hopefully as complex and interesting as these, but they won’t be the same. B, Rage, Dan-Dan and co are gone, never to return, and that makes me sad.
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Having said all of the above, what I’m secretly really thinking about most at this stage is the reaction my readers will have to the big finale. It’s difficult, with a long series, to tie everything up in a way that will please the long-haul fans. When you invest so much of your time in a series as a reader, you end up wanting more than you do from a one-off novel. That’s why you so often hear people complaining about the ending of Harry Potter or The Dark Tower or (it must be said) The Saga Of Darren Shan. It’s not that the endings of those series are weak. It’s just that many readers have convinced themselves that the ending is going to be the greatest ending ever imagined, and they come away a trifle downhearted when it’s not.
Now, personally, with Zom-B I believe I have come up with the greatest ending ever imagined by a writer, but then again, I believe that every time I finish a long series! I’m prepared for the worst thing a writer can possibly encounter – not outright negativity, but mere indifference – but I’m hoping that readers will be excited by the book’s ending, that it takes them by surprise by not being what they were expecting, yet at the same time ends up being more than they dreamed possible. And if it’s not, and I let some of them down, the way lots of us writers of long series tend to do in the opinion of many of our readers?
Well, there’s always next time…
Zom-B Goddess published 7 April 2016, and is available from the Guardian bookshop, as are all Darren Shan’s amazing Zom-B books!