Darren
Shan
websites
http://www.darrenshan.com/index.html
http://www.triv.net/html/Users9/u23220.shtml
Darren Shan's real name is Darren
O'Shaughnessy. Although he is Irish, he was born on the 2nd July, 1972, in
Darren went to primary school in Askeaton, where his
mother was a teacher, then to secondary school in
Although Darren 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 aged 15, as a runner-up in a TV
script-writing competition for RTE in
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 (officially -- there are also illegal
copies flying around in at least one country that we know of!) ... 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!!!!
Warner Bros never actually made a film, so the movie rights to The Saga
returned to Darren for a while. Then, in January 2005, following interest from
a number of studios, he sold them to Universal Studios. Oscar-winning
screenwriter Brian Helgeland ("L.A.
Confidential") wrote a script (combining the first 3 books), which
director Paul Weitz ("American Pie"
and "About A Boy") re-wrote. The movie will
be produced by the Lauren Shuler Donner (responsible
for the X-Men movies and a host of other blockbusters since the 1980s).
Filming is set to begin in
A big film buff, with a collection of thousands of movies at home, Darren also
reads lots of comics and books, and likes to study and collect original
artwork, especially comic art and impressionist and pst-impressionist
art. Other interests include long walks, watching football (he's a Tottenham Hotspur and
Books that we
have
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My report is about the Cirque Freak series. These books put chills down your
back when you read them. I love reading the series because they always leave
off at a part when it gets good then it makes you wonder what’s going to happen
next and it keeps you wanting to read the book. Trust me I’m not a big fan of
reading and when I started reading the series my head was always in the book
people couldn’t get me to stop reading. I think you should try reading these book’s because there’s a pretty good chance you’re
going to like these books a lot.