Derek Landy, an author and screenwriter, lives near Dublin. Before writing his children's story about a sharply-dressed skeleton detective, he wrote the screenplays for a zombie movie and a murderous horror film. "I think my career-guidance teacher is spinning in her grave," he says, "or she would be if she were dead". The first book of the series, Skulduggery Pleasant, was published in 2007 and won the 2008 Young Teen Fiction Book Award. This was followed by Skulduggery Pleasant: Playing With Fire in 2008 and Skulduggery Pleasant: The Faceless Ones in 2009. Two of his screenplays that have been made into films, Dead Bodies and Boy Eats Girl, have won and been nominated respectively for IFTA awards. As a black belt in Kenpo Karate, he has taught countless children how to defend themselves, in the hopes of building his own private munchkin army.