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

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. There are lots of hints and clues in book 7 relating to the later books in the series! This was quite a tricky one -- I had to to do lots of setting up for the next few books, but I also wanted it to be a good book in its own right. So I had to try to find the right balance, as in book 4 and book 10.

Vancha is one of my faves -- he's just lots of fun to write!! He's actually based on a character in The Belgariad by David Eddings, though I can't remember what he was called!! He was a small, ugly, smelly, foul-mouthed magician! I loved these 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 it!!!! 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. 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!!!!