Plot Outline:

Book 7 of The Saga Of Darren Shan. After 6 years living inside Vampire Mountain, Darren has come to terms with himself and his new life as a leader of the clan. Outside, a war is raging, but Darren is not a part of this war, and it seems like he never will be.

Until Mr Tiny comes calling! After hundreds of years, the mysterious meddler returns to Vampire Mountain to warn the Princes and Generals of their impending doom. The Lord of the Vampaneze is destined to lead his forces to victory, wiping out the vampires in the process. But he CAN be stopped. Three hunters have the power to track him down and kill him. Guess who one of the hunters must be?!?

Hunters of the Dusk is the start of an action-packed 3-part Darren Shan adventure, a tale of quests, friendship, treachery, despair and bloodshed. The "Hunters trilogy" continues in Book 8 : Allies Of The Night.

Author Notes:

Book 7 of The Saga Of Darren Shan went on sale on July 1st 2002, the day before my 30th birthday, which was a nice treat for me! But although that was the official release date, it was actually on sale in many book shops from early June -- back in those days, since my books weren't impacting on the British bestseller charts, there was no attempt to officiate an embargo. If a book shipped from the warehouse early, booksellers were free to put it on the shelves as soon as it reached them. Simpler times! While it made no impression on the UK bestsellers chart, it did get to #1 in Ireland, the second of my books to achieve that feat. While I was very fortunate to build up strong fan bases in lots of other countries over the years to come, I'll never forget that my Irish fans were the ones to first take me to their hearts.

The Saga falls into two neat halves – the first 6 books explore Darren’s life before becoming a Vampire Prince, the next six his life as a Prince and the hunt for the Vampaneze Lord.It's a structure that I subconsciously mirrored in my Zom-B series many years later, where the first 6 books follow B Smith's formative experiences, and the next 6 focus on what happens when B sets off on a perilous mission.

Vancha was one of my favourite characters -- he was just lots of fun to write. He was actually based on a character in The Belgariad by David Eddings, called Beldin, who was a small, ugly, smelly, foul-mouthed magician. I loved those books when I was a teen, and this was my way of saluting them, just as I did with Lord of the Rings when I was working on Murlough and based him on Gollum.

The purge was originally called vampuberty, and was linked to teenage puberty instead of to vampire blood cells. But my UK editors were dead set against the use of the term vampuberty. They argued VERY strongly against it. It even looked like they might not publish the book unless I changed that name! Well, I had a long think about it, and decided not to give in to them, no matter what the cost. I'm not sure if they really would have dropped the series if I'd stuck by it, but they may well have -- as I said above, these books weren't bestsellers, so they were under no pressure to continue publishing them. Luckily, push didn't come to shove, because while I was listing all my reasons for not changing the term, I came up with the idea of the purge, which actually made more sense and was a stronger concept -- and so a possible major catastrophe was narrowly averted and the second half of the series went ahead and was published -- phew!View full covers gallery

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