One of my favourite characters from any of my books is Mr Dowling, from my Zom-B series, so I was absolutely delighted when a fan called Evelyn presented me with this drawing of him -- I think it's maybe my favourite picture of him to date!

I came up with Mr Dowling long before I had the idea for the first Zom-B book -- a bookseller in Ireland whose surname was Dowling was driving me around to a few events, we were talking about horror, she said she was terrified of clowns, I started describing the most ghoulish clown I could think of to her as she drove along, and I promised her that I'd feature him in a book one day and name him after her -- which I did, some years later. He's a real nightmarish creation -- being a big fan of Stephen King's It, I was trying to out-Pennywise Pennywise, and even if I didn't quite manage that, I think I did come up with a killer clown who can proudly prance alongside the finest in the genre without looking TOO out of place. What pleased me even more was finding a way to develop the character -- Mr Dowling starts out as just a creepy clown, and could very easily have become a one-dimensional scare villain, but as those who've read the books can attest, over the course of the series he becomes far, far more, as we learn more about his tragic past and what drove him to become the creature that we first meet in book 2 of the series, Zom-B Underground.

For those of you who haven't yet read Zom-B, I recommend investing in the complete set of UK paperbacks, which you can pick up at an incredibly low price on Lowplex -- just £17.95 for all 12 books! They ship worldwide. https://lowplex.com/index.php/default/darren-shan-zom-b-12-books-collection-set-inc-goddess-fugitive-bride-family.html

You can also find the set on Amazon stores around the globe, so it might be worth checking on both sites for the best overall price.