Darren Shan
Darren Shan
Genres: Hoerbuch, vampyri
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About Darren Shan
Darren Shan's real name is Darren O'Shaughnessy. Although he is Irish, he was born on the 2nd July, 1972, in London. Darren was 17 when he finished his first novel, "Mute Pursuit" -- a futuristic cross between "The Terminator" and Stephen King's "The Dark Tower". Although it was never published, he relished the writing experience, and found himself focusing more and more on novels in the coming years, leaving behind the short story format. Over the next several years, sandwiched between college and work, he wrote an average of one book a year, experimenting with different ideas, genres, lengths and styles. When he started writing full-time, his output shot up to 5 or 6 books per year! (But that's dropped back to 2 or 3 recently, due to all the travelling around he's been doing to promote sales of his books.) All of these books were adult-oriented. Although Darren quite liked the idea of writing a children's book one day, he considered himself an adult writer first and foremost. In fact, Darren's initial breakthrough was with an adult book, under his real name of Darren O'Shaughnessy. The crazily titled "Ayuamarca" was bought by Orion and published in February 1999. A dark, mysterious, twisting cross between "The Godfather" and "Night of the Living Dead", "Ayuamarca" earned some very favourable reviews, but sadly didn't sell especially well. A sequel, "Hell’s Horizon", followed in February 2000, and although it was widely held to be a much better book, it sold even less copies than the first book! That might have been the end of Darren's writing career, except ... In January 2000 his first children’s book – "Cirque Du Freak", which he'd written as a fun side-project – was published in between his two adult books. The first book in a series entitled "The Saga Of Darren Shan", (or "Cirque Du Freak", as it's known in America) it attracted rave reviews and much media attention — especially when the movie rights to the first two books were optioned by Warner Bros in a seven figure deal prior to publication! All of a sudden, his career was on the up -- but as a children's writer! Over the next five years, Darren wrote a total of 12 books about vampires. He quickly followed his vampiric Saga up with "The Demonata", a series about demons, which will run to ten books in total. By the start of 2006, Darren's books were on sale in every continent ... in 30 countries ... over 20 languages ... had been children's bestsellers in America, Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway and other countries ... had topped the adult bestsellers charts in Hungary, Japan and Taiwan ... and had sold in excess of 10 million copies!!!! The Saga Of Darren Shan Darren Shan's an ordinary schoolboy, until he and his best friend Steve get tickets to the Cirque Du Freak, a bizarre freak show featuring such arcane performers as Hans Hands, Gertha Teeth, the Wolf Man and Rhamus Twobellies. In the midst of the ghoulish excitement, true terror raises its head when Steve recognises that one of the performers -- Mr Crepsley -- is in fact a vampire!
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