Interview with Darren Shan

by Cosmo Godfree

November 2005

CG I’m a great fan of yours. At my school all my class said I was the greatest fan, so that’s why I was chosen to do this.

DS Excellent!

CG Was there a particular event that triggered your interest in the supernatural, or have you always been interested in it?

DS No, I’ve just always loved it. I loved being scared as a kid. Even when I lived in London, because I was born in London. I moved to Ireland when I was six years old, but even when I was in London when I was five or six I loved watching horror movies, and hearing horror stories. So I’ve just always loved being scared and loved a really good horror tale.

CG Is there any particular element you most like about the supernatural?

DS I’m always especially fond of vampires. When I was about six I used to have a big poster of Dracula on my bedroom wall and I used to go to bed every night, staring up at the Lord of the Undead. Yeah, vampires were probably my favourite monsters out of all the different ones. I loved the thrill of it; it’s like a really good rollercoaster ride, so I’m being scared, but its fun at the same time.

CG Do other members of your family share your interest?

DS Not too many, no. I’ve got a younger brother who’s read lots of my books, so he’s sort of into horror as well, but for the most part, not really.

CG I hear that Universal Studios has bought the film rights to the Darren Shan series. Is there going to be a film soon?

DS Hopefully. They are working on a script. They’ve taken the first three books and combined them to take bits out of each one and mix them up, so if it is made it will be very different from the books. Hopefully it will be very exciting because they will have lots of great scenes to choose from. I won’t have any control over that though; it’s something they’ll do themselves. At the moment they are working on a script and the scriptwriter’s done a first draft, and he’s going through a second draft. They’re going to go looking for a director in the New Year. Making movies is a long process, so I’d imagine it would be at least 2007 before we see a movie. There’s no guarantee they will make it, it might all fall through, but it’s looking very positive, so hopefully within the next couple of years there will be a Darren Shan film.

CG Which actor do you see playing Mr Crepsley?

DS Any really good actor could make the role his own, because Mr Crepsley isn’t described in great detail in the books. It doesn’t say what age he is, or what his background is, but I’ve got to admit, if I could choose it myself, which I can’t, I’d probably go for Johnny Depp. I think he’d be really good. Also I think Christopher Walken could be really good for it as well. He was in “The Headless Horseman”. He’s a slightly older actor with a very sinister sort of face. But it’s all down to Universal.

CG Your new series “The Demonata” is a lot darker than the Darren Shan series. Are you working your way back towards more adult-oriented writing?

DS It’s not really that much darker. If you compare “Lord Loss” to “Cirque du Freak”, then it is much, much darker, but “Lord of the Shadows” or “Sons of Destiny” were extremely dark books as well: “Lord of the Shadows” ended with a child being killed. I think as Darren got older in the series, darker things happened. In this series the characters are slightly older than Darren was at the start of “Cirque du Freak” which is why “Lord Loss” begins with a very dark scene. The series overall is a mix of fantasy and science fiction and adventure. Just like the Saga of Darren Shan, it mixes genres up. “Lord Loss” was definitely one of my strongest horror books, but it’s not necessarily indicative of the entire Demonata Series. The series as a whole has a lot to do with magic.

CG Your first two adult books were “Ayuamarca” and “Hell’s Horizon”. Were you disappointed they didn’t sell so well?

DS Oh, of course, I think any writer would be disappointed. Luckily, “The Saga of Darren Shan” came along and really took off, so it didn’t really matter that they didn’t sell and I was so excited about these books. These books are published in over thirty countries, and sold over nine million copies, so that’s brilliant! No, I was disappointed because I put a lot of work into them. I think that they were good books, they got really good reviews. I still get fan mail about them occasionally. Hopefully they’ll be reprinted, and come out in new editions. There’s a third book as well, because it was supposed to be a trilogy, so hopefully they’ll see the light again one day. It was disappointing, but it’s one of those things you’ve got to deal with as a writer. Sometimes good books come out and just don’t sell. You’ve just got to put your head down and keep on writing, and hope that your next book does better.

CG Why do you think “Cirque Du Freak” sold so well compared to your adult books?

DS I think it’s a mix of the fact that it’s really good ideas; there’s a lot going on in “The Saga of Darren Shan”. There are all sorts of levels, all sorts of plots and it works on different emotional levels. For instance, the books are sold as horror books, but those who’ve read the books know they’ve got a real mix. They have their horrific moments, but they’ve got much softer moments as well. I often get letters from fans saying they’ve cried when they’ve read the books. I think that the fact that they're multi-layered and they work on all these different levels, but at the same time they’re very simple to read. It all goes back to something I learnt at school. One of my geography teachers, when he was preparing us for an exam, he said you should always write as though the person reading your essay knows nothing about the subject. So as the person reading your essay knows nothing about the subject, don’t assume that your readers know about things, just to make it clear. So I’ve brought that forward into my writing and I’ve always gone for clarity. I sometimes write confusing plots, but I would write them as simply as I can, so that anyone with a good grasp of English can read my books, and follow them and enjoy them, but at the same time there’s a lot going on, so that people who read a lot will feel challenged. I think that’s the reason why they’ve proved as popular as they have.

CG Do the Darren Shan books attract adult readers as well as children?

DS They do. I get lots of adults coming up to me at book signings with their children. The children have read them first, then the parents have read them afterwards and really enjoyed them. In some countries they’re actually aimed at adults. In Japan and Taiwan, they’re read primarily by older teenagers and sixteen to thirty year olds, and in Japan, most of my readers are women in their early twenties. So it’s very different from when I do signings over here, when I get a lot of teenage boys and young girls.

CG Was it hard to find a publisher for “Cirque Du Freak”?

DS Yes, it was. My agent sent the book out to twenty different publishers all at the same time, because he saw that it could be a really popular and successful book. And all twenty publishers turned it down. But luckily, Harper Collins decided to take a chance. The thing was, there was nothing like “Cirque Du Freak” when I wrote it; it was a new type of series. Publishers didn’t know if children’s books about vampires and circus freaks were going to sell, or if bookshops would stock them, or if readers would want to read them. But it’s gone on, as I said, to sell in thirty different countries, and become hugely popular. But one of the things you’ve got to learn as a writer is that your books will get rejected. Some publishers turned down Harry Potter, and “Lord of the Rings” got turned down by fifteen publishers. So I reckon, since I was turned down by more publishers, my book’s better!

CG When you’re writing your drafts, do you use a computer or do you write by hand?

DS I always write directly on the PC. When I’m doing my plot notes at the beginning, I write those by hand, but as soon as I sit down to write the book I do it directly on the PC for two reasons. I have terrible handwriting so I probably wouldn’t be able to read the book if I wrote it by hand, but also I can write quicker on the computer. I got my first typewriter when I was about fourteen years of age, and I discovered I could actually write quicker that way.

CG When your short story “A Day in the Morgue” won the runner-up prize in a Comedy competition, how did you feel?

DS That was great! I was fifteen when that happened. There was a TV show in Ireland called “Nothing To It”, and it was for teenagers. It was set in a Job Centre, and each week the character would get a different job, and there would be a comedy sketch about whatever the job was, working in a butcher’s or a supermarket or whatever. There was a competition where fans of the show could write their own script and get it turned into an episode. I was actually the youngest runner-up, all the others were a year or two older than me. It was really exciting. I got to go up and visit the set, and I won fifty pounds as a prize, so I was very excited about that. Since I’d written it in about a couple of hours, I thought: ‘If I can make fifty pounds every couple of hours I’m going to make a fortune in this game’, and then of course it was about eight or nine years before I made any more money!

CG Last time I met you was at the Edinburgh Book Festival last year, when you tried to strangle me…

DS (laughing) Rather than smile for photos, I prefer to pull a scowly face or pretend to strangle someone. Every photo you see of an author, they’re always smiling. I think it’s more fun to do something different. It’s more memorable for the person who keeps the photo.

CG What is the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to you?

DS One of the most embarrassing things was at the Edinburgh Book Festival where I last met you. I was on a panel event with Humphrey Carpenter, who died this year, and Vivienne French, and I forgot their names while I was up on stage and in the middle of talking about their books!

CG Do you get scared easily?

DS Not really. I love horror and I love the feeling of being scared. I’ve actually found that as I get older I get a little bit more scared than I would have as a teenager. I think as you get older you tend to get a little bit more boring and a bit more scared of things, but I don’t scare easily.

CG Finally, if you were trapped on a desert island, which three things would you like to have with you?

DS A complete set of Stephen King, an all-in-one TV and DVD player with a stack of DVD’s, and a helicopter, so I could fly to freedom!

CG Thank you so much, it’s been great interviewing you.

DS Thanks a lot. It was a good fun interview.