A couple of weeks ago -- September 30th to be exact -- marked the 10th anniversary of the release of Birth Of A KIller, Book 1 of my Saga Of Larten Crepsley series. I've got to be honest -- I wouldn't have remembered if not for a fan called Mine Akatsuki, who drew this wonderful drawing to mark the occasion and shared it with me.

Hard to believe a decade has come and gone since I went back 200 years to tell Mr Crepsley's life story before he met Darren and Steve at the Cirque Du Freak. When I was writing the original Saga Of Darren Shan, I never thought I'd go back and write about a young Mr Crepsley -- I usually run very shy of prequels, seeing them as cash cows that are normally churned out by writers desperate to milk a successful story one last bit! In fact, my Japanese publishers asked me to write about Mr Crepsley, at the height of the original Saga's mega success over there -- it would have been a nice little earner, but I said no, because I had no stories in mind and wasn't inclined to dredge something up just to make a few quick bucks.

But then, over the next few years, I found myself thinking about Mr Crepsley a lot, wondering what his story was, how he'd become a vampire, and why he'd walked away from the clan when he did, on the verge of becoming a Prince. I didn't mean to write about him -- the questions just nagged at me, and I sought for answer purely for my own sake, not imagining I'd end up writing about him again. But eventually that search for understanding demanded I sit down and thrash out all the grisly details, as I could know no peace until I did. And that's how, 10 years ago, a Killer was Born...

If you'd like to know more (a LOT more, in fact!) about the book's genesis, you can check out my author notes for it over on my web site. I write up notes for every book that I release (though I've yet to add notes for Molls Like It Hot or Archibald Lox -- they're on my To Do list, promise!). Here's the direct link for Birth Of A KiIller: https://www.darrenshan.com/books/details/birth-of-a-killer