Trivia / The Saga of Darren Shan

• Creator's Favorite Episode: Tunnels of Blood is the author's favorite book in the series, describing it as the part where the plot really started falling into place for him.
• Disowned Adaptation: Played with. He felt the movie was fine on its own merits and admits he would have enjoyed it just seeing it "as a viewer", but would have preferred a more faithful adaptation.
• Trolling Creator: Darren loves trolling fans by maintaining that the Direct Line to the Author format from the end of the series was true. In a reddit AMA, he was asked if he regretted ending the series that way and responded, "well that WAS what happened..."
• What Could Have Been: The author had finished the first draft of book 12, The Cannibal King, when he realized that he could just as easily put the Sons of Destiny ending he had planned there, instead of somewhere 6-12 books later. The idea seemed like just an interesting observation to him until he realized something — the Darren of books 11 and 12 was an adult, too mature to be the hero of a middle-grade series. The next planned story arcs wouldn't have worked, and the right thing to do was to end the series there, with the books 11 and 12 that we got. He says that he doesn't want to reveal what would have happened in the planned second half, because he might still use it at some point.
• Word of Gay: Darren Shan later said he felt that Debbie Hemlock and Alice Burgess would have ended up in a relationship. He wanted to include a sequence where Darren discovers this and, although saddened at first, would give them his blessing.