We recently asked Darren Shan (author of over 50 books to date, including the world-famous Cirque Du Freak and Zom-B series) to tell us about his new trilogy of books. He very kindly sent us this, explaining his reason for telling a story of alternate universes, and also gave us some answers for that question evidently all authors hate – “Where do you get your influences from?”
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I’ve always loved stories that take us out of our world and into universes of the unknown. It’s a difficult trick to pull off – worldbuilding is a wonder when it works, but a bore when it fails – which is why I think most escapist tales bring the fantastical to our doorstep. Dracula comes to England to wreak havoc. The Martians wage war with us on our planet. The demons in Buffy were forever making a beeline for Sunnydale, but the fearless vampire killer rarely crossed universes to hunt them on their own turf.
The familiar is comfortable. It’s also powerful. When you’re telling a story, you want your audience to be able to quickly connect with the main characters, to side with them and cheer them on. If they’re asking too many questions about the scenery and rules of another world or alternate dimension, you risk losing them before you properly get going.
Yet when you pull it off, it can be truly magical. Would Alice still be remembered if the characters from Wonderland had crawled up through the rabbit hole and interacted with her in the English countryside? It was wonderful when Peter Pan flew across the London skyline to visit the Darlings, but not half as wonderful as it was to frolic in Neverland with the lost boys. Wardrobes that admit lions and witches to bedrooms on Earth are all well and good, but far more intriguing if they serve as an entry point to Narnia. The Wild Things thrill us more where they are, than if they were here.
I tried setting a few books in worlds other than our own when I was starting out as a writer, but found it hard work, so I mostly settled for bringing the freaky and demonic to our realm. There were times when I cut loose, whether it was cuddling up with a tribe of vampires in the heart of a mountain in my Cirque Du Freak series, or exploring a world in the Demonata universe made out of guts. But most of the time I’ve been happy to bring the unfamiliar home.
I’ve changed course with my new Archibald Lox series, in which the vast majority of the storyline is set an another universe called the Merge, a place where powerful beings known as devisers shape the landscape and build self-contained countries that can be the size of a room or a planet, where the starless, sunless sky comes in any colour you want, and no animals or insects roam.
The first book starts on a very real bridge in London, and was inspired by something that happened to me on it. I was walking across it one day when I saw a young woman pulling strange faces. I had a Lion, Witch, Wardrobe moment, where I thought, “What if she’s doing that to open a doorway to a different universe?” And from that moment I knew I was lost to this world, at least as far as the novels of this series stretch.
A writer is always ultimately the sum of the stories they’ve experienced, and there are all sorts of threads running through Archibald Lox from books that I read in both the far distant and more recent past. I like to wear my influences openly, and always happily acknowledge a source of inspiration, although there are often times when it’s subconscious, when I’ll only see a link if a reader points it out.
A couple of books (in addition to those already mentioned) which were on my mind when I was building up the worlds of the Merge included…
Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones. I loved the strangeness of the book, its odd structure, the subtle reveals. I’ve written many books where the fates of the heroes are decided in a big battle with the forces of evil, but I decided early on that I didn’t want
these new books to go that way. I wanted to surprise readers with my finales, not just trot out another hammer-the-baddies-into-oblivion ending. (There’s nothing wrong with those endings. Just not this time.)
And The Earthsea Trilogy by Ursula K Le Guin. The scope of the stories excited me, the way they swept across the different islands of Earthsea. I wanted Archibald Lox to serve almost as a travelogue to the Merge. These would be books in which the main character wanders. A lot.
There were scores of other books that consciously fed into the construction process, some incredibly well known, like the Harry Potter series and the works of Neil Gaiman, others less so, like Rebecca’s World (a children’s fantasy book by Terry Nation) or The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier. You’ll find the fingerprints of Philip Pullman and Patrick Ness without having to look too hard, Jonathan Carroll and Ray Bradbury. So many, many more.
Don’t deliberately look out for those influences if you decide to go on Archie’s journey with him. (Part of it includes a river journey, probably courtesy of Huck Finn.) I’d like you to experience it on its own terms, without the distractions of wondering where this part came from or where that idea originated, especially as, as I’ve already said, much of it is subconscious. But if you feel the ripples of other stories flowing beneath the pages of this one, don’t be alarmed. Indeed, you might even take some comfort from them, as they’re proof that no matter what strange, alien part of the universe a story might lead us to, others from our world have been there before us, and even in the most unfamiliar of settings, familiar patterns will emerge.
I guess I was wrong at the start of this article when I said I love stories that take us into universes of the unknown, as upon reflection, there aren’t really any unknowable universes. There are simply places we need to get to know a little better.
The Merge is one of those places.
It will be your first time going there if you read Archibald Lox and the Bridge Between Worlds.
Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy your return.
Many thanks to Darren and his publishers for this.
Although all of the first three books will be available in paperback soon, Darren has kindly released all three books already for the Kindle and they are available now. Book 1, as I type this, is currently available for free!
Volume Two, another trilogy, should be available in 2021.
