Next he wrote The Saga Of Larten Crepsley, a four book prequel series to his original vampire saga. Then came The Thin Executioner, a one-off fantasy novel, which Darren has cited as his favourite out of all his books. Running to ten books in total, The Demonata cemented Shan's place as the Master Of Children's Horror. He followed up his vampire saga with The Demonata, a series about demons. First, he wrote a total of twelve books about vampires. The first book in a series titled the Cirque du Freak series (The Saga of Darren Shan in the UK), it attracted rave reviews and an ever-growing army of fans known as the Shansters! For the next several years Darren focused exclusively on his books for younger readers.

In January 2000, Darren's first children's book, Cirque du Freak, was published. Although Darren liked the idea of writing a children's book one day, he considered himself an adult writer first and foremost, and his initial breakthrough was with an adult book, in 1999, titled Ayuamarca (since re-released as Procession Of The Dead). All of his early books were adult-oriented. He enjoyed his first taste of literary success at fifteen, as a runner-up in a television script-writing competition for RTE in Ireland, with a dark comedy script titled A Day in the Morgue.ĭarren was seventeen when he finished his first (unpublished) novel, and wrote lots more unpublished novels over the next several years. He bought his first typewriter when he was fourteen and never looked back.

He moved to Limerick in Ireland with his parents and younger brother when he was six, and has lived there ever since.ĭarren always wanted to be a writer. Although he is Irish, he was born in 1972 in London. Darren Shan's real name is Darren O'Shaughnessy (pronounced O-Shock-Nessy, though it can also be pronounced O-Shawn-Essy or O-Shan-essy).

Demonata book 1