The “Master of Horror”, Darren Shan, read chilling lines from his book and interacted with fans yesterday (Thursday), at the Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF), happening at the Expo Centre until November 14. More than 20 million copies of his books have been sold worldwide in 31 languages and he has topped the bestseller lists in the UAE, America, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway and other countries.Shan said he likes to add pertinent issues in his works, “I do not only want to tell the story on a zombie apocalypse but also bring social issues like racism, street life and abuse of power to discussion. All the books in the series are thrilling for the most part, but they also probably make for some serious discussions.”Shan’s session started with a reading from his first book in the “Zom-B” series, set on London streets, it revolves around the lead character Brian, whose father is a vocal racist and looks down at his mother. “It was the darkest and most wretched night, when the dead came back to live…” and the story gets more gruesome with each line.
Shan added that only book five in the Zom-B series has the traditional zombie structure, other stories are written differently, to surprise the reader. It goes in to different directions with a lot of twist and turns. It is designed around the twists and ends with a cliffhanger. So that if you read all books in the series you will find something to wonder about,” he said.“I don’t plan how many chapters a story has or where to end a chapter I leave it to my gut feelings, and it works”. Shan said that his stories are mixed genres and that he likes writing fantasies, detective stories and murder mysteries. Speaking about being creative he said that stories just come out naturally, he never thinks them up.“I have written stories that are fantasies, science fiction and vampire stories. I write horror, because I love horrors, as a teenager fast moving horrific stories interested me. Most of my books tell such stories. I also try different plots and genres, currently I am adapting one of my stories to a musical for stage.”
The master of horror, who has created all kinds of monsters for his young readers, said demons scare him the most, as they are so heartless and devious. They come from a parallel universe and exist just to slaughter, he said. His favourite character among his own creations is Mr Crepsley, a vampire from the "Cirque Du Freak series."Unsurprisingly, Stephen King is Darren's favourite author, he said, “There were not many horror books which teenagers can read at that point of time so you turn to adult horror books, I read “Salem's Lot” when I was too young to read it. Descriptions of a zombie or monsters can be different in each culture but the feeling of fear and curiosity to know what happens is the same.”Asked why the mystery loving writer’s books end with cliffhangers and if his last book in the series will have one, and a cheerful Darren said, “You have to read it find it out. Yes it has a cliffhanger, but it does end the story for the main characters, and has some others for you to imagine. Most of my stories end with a cliffhanger, because books are like real life, one story ends and another one starts. Like a roller coaster ride there is always the swoop and rush of the descent to look forward to.”Darren is one of the best-selling authors of young horror books and widely read works include “Cirque Du Freak” series, “The Demonata” series, “The Thin Executioner”, and he will be publishing his latest book in the “Zom-B series” in April 2016.