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[Thora Buckner]

DARREN Shan was born on 2 July 1972 in London. After starting school at the age of three, he moved to Limerick with his parents and younger brother. He went back to London to study Sociology/English at college.

Darren worked for a cable television company for 2 years before setting up as a full time writer. He had his first taste of literary success aged 15 when he was runner-up in a television script-writing competition with a comedy script titled, 'Day in the Morgue'. Darren completed his first book aged 17.

A big film buff, he also reads lots of books and comics. Other interests include travelling, art collecting, swimming, watching and discussing football and dreaming up new ways to terrify his readers!

CIRQUE DU FREAK ends with the chilling three words 'To Be Continued ' Its sequel, The Vampire's Assistant was published in June 2000 and was followed with Tunnels of Blood, Vampire Mountain, Trials of Death, The Vampire Prince, Hunters of the Dusk, Allies of the Night, Killers of the Dawn, The Lake of Souls and Lord of the Shadows. The Saga came to a climactic final book in SONS OF DESTINY which was published in October 2004.

The books are on sale in 30 countries, in 24 languages, and total worldwide sales across the series are well over nine million copies. They have made children's bestseller charts in America, the UK and several European countries, and have been #1 bestsellers on the adult book charts in Japan and Taiwan.

The movie rights to the series have been bought by Universal Studios, and Oscar-winning scriptwriter Brian Helgeland (L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, MYSTIC RIVER, A KNIGHT'S TALE, etc) has been lined up to write the screenplay.

Following on from his success with vampires, Darren has moved on to demons and other beastly creatures of the night. In June 2005 he released the first book in 'The Demonata' series, Lord Loss. The book has been sold to several countries and there has already been interest from a number of movie studios. There will be ten books in 'The Demonata' series, with a new book hitting stores every June and November up until the end of 2009.

'Well, it might all have been true...
Actually, my real name is Darren O'Shaughnessy but I think one of the fun things about horror is to pretend that it's true. I wanted to write this as if it was a real story, in the first person, so it made sense to use the same name for the author and the character - to blur the lines between reality and fiction.'

'I always loved horror but there wasn't much around at that stage for children apart from Edgar Allen Poe. I loved adventure and mystery books, and the Just William books. But my favourite book was The Secret Garden I saw it on tv and then read the book.'

'No, I've never had a supernatural experience but when I was in New Zealand last year I went white water rafting and I fell out of the raft just as we were going down a series of six rapids. That was scary.'

'I used to watch loads as a teenager. I think the first really scary one I saw was Salam's Lot by Stephen King, I saw a film version of it when I was a kid and it had a HUGE impact on me! It's all about vampires who take over a modern day town. VERY creepy!!! I was eight or nine, and that gave me nightmares. I've seen too many bad horror films since then though. They don't scare me anymore.'

'When I grew up I knew nothing about my favourite authors, like Clive Barker or Stephen King, and I would have loved to know things like, why they wrote those books or what do they do when they're not writing, and I think it's important to let your readers know who you are.'

'I'm focusing on my "Demonata" books right now. Sometime next year I hope to have a crack at the adult market again, or at least start moving back in that direction (not that I plan to stop writing for teens!!!). We'll have to wait and see what the future throws up ...'

Zom-B, published by Simon & Schuster, is the first book in a new series by horror master Darren Shan. Instead of vampires, this series will feature zombies, but fans can still look forward to Shan's trademark horror, plot twists and of course, plenty of gore.

Other than the zombie theme, a key difference between this series and Darren Shan's previous books is that Zom-B titles will be published every four months, so fans don't need to wait a whole year to find out what happens next. While each book is planned to be stand-alone, it will naturally fit into the Zom-B series that explores what becomes of the lead character, B.

In Zom-B, a media storm hits when small villages are invaded by zombies and its inhabitants either killed off, or become zombies themselves. But this was only the start and one morning, cities and towns around the country awake to their own zombie nightmare. The book focuses on B and B's family and friends and follows what happens to them as they head off on an apparently very normal school day.

The Zom-B series will also develop a number of key themes and issues. The first book is dominated by racism; B's father is an unashamed racist and the author explores what this means for B, especially in a household that is dominated by the bullying and abusive father.

Many will find the level of racism uncomfortable reading, but it also provides a starting point for debate. Shan says, "I have always dealt with various issues in my writing but not as explicitly as in Zom-B. I have done a lot of travelling around the world in the past few years and this has made me much more of world issues.

"I suppose this is an extension of my reaction to 9/11 and the bombings in London which have succeeded in developing this atmosphere of fear over the last decade where we are all being encouraged to be afraid and worried. A lot of this tension comes through the media but when you travel and find out more about the world, you get a very different perspective."

He adds, "I think my key message in the book is that you should always use your mind and come to your own conclusions. Question what you are being told, look for the truth behind the cloud of make-believe. We have to be responsible, to look at the facts and think about them and make the right decisions."

While the racism in the book is explicit and aggressive, Shan says that it was much more graphic in the first draft of his book and he struggled to make it readable, while still delivering uncomfortable truths. "It's very easy to go down the racist track and very easy to think about the world at that level, life becomes very simple when you define your 'enemy' as one group of people," he explains.

"I realised I couldn't be too realistic in this book because words have a different power. I am using words I have heard in real life but when I reread what I had written, I realised it was going too far in the book. I went back and rewrote it and developed B as a much more sympathetic character. In the first draft, B was horrible but I realised that readers wouldn't care what happened to the character. Even if you have an unsavoury character, you still need to make them interesting and appealing to the reader."

He also believes that it is important to tackle issues like racism in books for young people. "I think it's important to have books like this that get young people thinking, and if we can do it in an entertaining way so much the better."

While Zom-B readers can focus on these different ideas, the story itself is exciting and readers will see different layers and more questions evolve. At the end of book one, we are left to wonder who are the zombies and where have they come from?

Shan adds that, as the series progresses, the zombies may not turn out to be the main threat..... "Zombies are dangerous, they are an unstoppable menace, but at the same time people are far scarier; we have to be aware of thinking, scheming people. Racism is more dangerous than anything we can write in fiction. A father who can tell you to be afraid of other cultures is a menace."

An overriding theme as the series progresses is the abuse of power, says Shan. "B's relationship with the father is the starting point and the racist angle that propels the story forward. It's all about the abuse of power, whether that is racism or power mongering - how people twist power so that it works for them and how they get other people to do what they want them to do."

Zom-B is tied to one setting, a secondary school, an idea that Shan borrowed from movies like Dawn of the Dead where people are trapped in one building and threatened by these creatures. However, the rest of the series will open out although it will stay focused on London. "It was hard being restricted to one place in Zom-B", he admits. "I found it hard not to have the freedom to move on and to have to draw out the action in what must be one of the least interesting settings imaginable. It did present problems but I also enjoyed the challenge."

The violence and plotline, like his other books, allows Shan to 'sneak in other issues under the radar', he says. "You can do a lot more with a horror book than if you write the story in a realistic way. This is a book about zombies eating brains, that's fun, rather than it being about racism."

In the next book, Zom-B Underground (publishing in January 2013), Shan starts to answer the question of who are the zombies and where they are from, although it take until book 12 before we really find out. "There are a lot of different theories as we go through the series and I enjoy playing with readers' expectations."

He adds, "On one hand this is a traditional kid of tale about zombies, but the zombies in this world aren't there by accident, and the forces responsible for creating this zombie apocalypse have created different kinds of zombies. There'll be more to come on this."

Shan has already written the first draft of the entire series so that the books can be published every four months. The final Zom-B book will be published in July 2015. "When I started to write it I was thinking of Dickens who used to write and release a chunk of his novel every month. I also used to read a lot of comics and used to love having a wait to continue the story the next week or month. I liked the story being stretched out like that." He also wanted the books to be published quickly to create a sense of urgency for the readers.

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