1. Darren O'Shaughnessy is an Irish writer and novelist.
16 Facts About Darren O'Shaughnessy
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Darren O'Shaughnessy is best known for his young adult fiction series The Saga of Darren Shan, The Demonata, and Zom-B, published under the pseudonym Darren Shan.
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O'Shaughnessy has published other children's books as Darren Shan, including Koyasan, and The Thin Executioner.
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Darren O'Shaughnessy received his primary education in Askeaton, and attended secondary school at Copsewood College, Pallaskenry, graduating in 1989.
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Darren O'Shaughnessy returned to London in 1990 to pursue a degree in Sociology and English from Roehampton Institute of Higher Education.
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Darren O'Shaughnessy bought his first typewriter when he was fourteen and wrote many short stories, comic scripts, and books that he never finished, many of which are unpublished.
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Darren O'Shaughnessy's first success came to him at age fifteen, when he was a runner-up in a TV script-writing competition for RTE in Ireland, with a dark comedy story entitled A Day in the Morgue.
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Darren O'Shaughnessy's breakthrough came with Ayuamarca, published in February 1999 by Orion Publishing Group under his full name.
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Darren O'Shaughnessy signed up with the Christopher Little Literary Agency in 1996 and they continued to represent him until Christopher Little's death in 2021.
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Darren O'Shaughnessy is represented by the Curtis Brown Agency.
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Darren O'Shaughnessy continues to live in Pallaskenry in Limerick, Ireland with his wife Helen Basini, a freelance university lecturer and global aid specialist.
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On 1 April 2020, Darren O'Shaughnessy announced that he had silently released three books digitally due to the COVID-19 pandemic, making up the first volume of the Archibald Lox series.
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Darren O'Shaughnessy has stated that this is his favourite out of all of the books he has written.
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Darren O'Shaughnessy tweaked and slightly expanded it ten years later, and it was released as a book by the publishing group Barrington Stoke with illustrations by Zack McLaughlin.
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In July 2009, Darren O'Shaughnessy revealed that he had written first drafts of 53 books in total.
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On 15th January 2024, Darren O'Shaughnessy Shan announced on his website that the project would not be moving forwards and that the option rights had reverted to him.