ZOM-B Gladiator

About Darren Shan

Darren Shan's real name is Darren O'Shaughnessy. Although he is Irish he was actually born at St. Thomas’ Hospital, London -- directly across the river from the Houses of Parliament in Westminster (which may explain his fascination with evil bloodsuckers ...).

He lived in SouthEast London until the age of six, when he moved to Limerick in Ireland, with his parents and younger brother, and has lived there ever since (but he never lost his London accent!).

He later returned to London to study Sociology and English at Roehampton University. He then worked for a cable television company in Limerick for a couple of years, before setting up as a full-time writer at the age of 23.

Although Shan always wanted to be a writer, it was only in his teenage years that he began writing in his spare time for fun (before that, he only wrote stories if they were for homework). He bought his first typewriter when he was 14, and never looked back, knocking out loads of short stories and comic scripts, and making false starts on several books, which he never completed. He enjoyed his first taste of literary success at age 15, 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 (he was morbid even then!).

All of these early books were adult-oriented. Although Shan quite liked the idea of writing a children’s book one day, he considered himself an adult writer first and foremost. In fact, Shan’s initial breakthrough was with an adult book, in 1999.

In January 2000, his first children’s book, Cirque du Freak, which he’d written as a fun side-project, was published. The first book in a series titled The Saga of Darren Shan (or Cirque du Freak, as it’s known in America), it attracted rave reviews and an ever-growing army of fans hungry to learn more about vampires which were quite unlike any that anyone had ever seen before!

Shan loved writing for children so much, that for the next several years he focused almost exclusively on his books for younger readers. First, he wrote a total of 12 books about vampires. He quickly followed up his vampiric saga with The Demonata, a series about demons. Running to ten books in total, The Demonata cemented Shan’s place in the UK as the Master Of Children’s Horror, and saw him score his first UK #1 bestseller. He also wrote a one-off short book, called Koyasan, for World Book Day in the UK.