A fan called ALFIE wrote to me recently. He'd bought a rare first edition of Hell's Horizon (the second book of my The City Trilogy for adults, which was published way back in February 2000). To his surprise and delight, he found the book was signed when he opened it, with my full, REAL name -- Darren O'Shaughnessy. But was it a genuine signature or a forgery?!? He wrote to me and I was happy to confirm that it looked like a 100% genuine signature to me -- hurrah!!!

My general rule of thumb, when signing one of my books, is to sign whatever name is on the cover, which is one of four candidates -- Darren Shan is the one I sign most often, of course, as it's the name I've used for all of my of YA releases, which have fared considerably better from a commercial point of view than my books for adults! On the adult front, I originally released two (Ayuamarca and Hell's Horizon) using my real name. Years later I then re-released those two (Ayuamarca was retitled to Procession Of The Dead) and City Of The Snakes as D B Shan. (They were later rebranded and reissued as Darren Shan books, as was Lady Of The Shades, a stand-alone supernatural thriller.) And these days I release my books for older readers as Darren Dash.

If you weren't aware that I wrote for adults as well as children, and are interested in tracking down some of my books for adults (nine released so far, with the tenth to hopefully see print later this year), the Darren Dash books are all currently exclusively sold through Amazon stores worldwide, either as eBooks or paperbacks -- you can find out more about them here: http://www.darrendashbooks.com/

You should be able to order the latest printings of The City Trilogy or Lady Of The Shades through your local bookseller, or an online site like Amazon -- as I said, those four books these days boast the name of Darren Shan on the covers.

If you'd like to get your hands on a first edition of any of those four books with a different name on it (Darren O'Shaughnessy or D B Shan) you'll probably be able to find them on a site like Abebooks or Alibris.

Happy hunting!!!