Who is Dan Brown?

Dan Brown

Dan Brown is an American author of thriller fiction. He is best known for the 2003 bestselling novel, The Da Vinci Code.

Early life

He was born on June 22, 1964,  in Exeter, New Hampshire, USA. He is the eldest of three children. His early life was influenced by his parents:

• His father, Richard G. Brown, was a teacher of mathematics, and wrote textbooks from 1968 until his retirement in 1997.
• In Addition both of his parents are also singers and musicians, having served as church choir masters.

After graduating from Phillips Exeter, Brown attended Amherst College. Brown spent the 1985 school year abroad in Seville, Spain, where he was enrolled in an art history course at the University of Seville. Brown graduated from Amherst in 1986. 1991, he moved to Hollywood to pursue a career as singer, songwriter and pianist. It was there that he met Blythe Newlon, a woman 12 years his senior, who later became his wife. Dan Brown Started teaching to support himself.

Secrets and Puzzles

The presenece of secrets and puzzles in Dan Brown's novels has their origine in his childhood. In fact, mathematics, music and languages were a common characteristic of his education. When he was a child, he participated in elaborate treasure hunts devised by their father on birthdays and holidays. For example on Christmas Brown and his siblings did not find gifts under the tree, but followed a treasure map with codes and clues throughout their house and even around town to find the gifts. In addition this, Brown spent a lot of time working out anagrams and crossword puzzles.

Career

After dabbling with a musical career, Dan Brown started writing. He read Sidney Sheldon's novels and was influenced by his style especially in the novel The Doomsday Conspiracy. He was inspired to become a writer of thrillers and started working on Digital Fortress, setting much of it in Seville, Spain, where he had studied in 1985. His wife, with whom he co wrote a book with his wife, 187 Men to Avoid: A Guide for the Romantically Frustrated Woman, did much of the promotion of the novel when it was released.
Brown subsequently wrote Deception Point and Angels & Demons, the latter of which was the first to feature the lead character, Harvard symbology expert Robert Langdon.
Brown's first three novels had little success. However, when he released The Da Vinci Code, it quickly became a bestseller, going to the top of the New York Times Best Seller list during its first week of release in 2003. It is now credited with being one of the most popular books of all time, with 81 million copies sold worldwide as of 2009.
Brown's next novel featuring Robert Langdon, The Lost Symbol, was released on September 15, 2009.It had a huge success and according to the publisher, on its first day the book sold over one million in hardcover and e-book versions in the U.S., the U.K. and Canada. The story takes place in Washington D.C. over a period of 12 hours, and features the Freemasons.

Writing habits

Because Dan  Brown does a lot of research, he spends years writing his novels. He has a habit of rising at 4:00am when there are no distractions (a practice he began with Digital Fortress when he had two daytime teaching jobs) and when he feels most productive, in order to give symbolic importance to the first order of business each day. He keeps an antique hourglass on his desk in his lof where he does his writing, so that he can stop briefly every hour to do push-ups, sit-ups and stretching exercises to keep his blood flowing.
Recuring themes in his books include Chritianity, historical events, codes, puzzles, treasure hunts, secretive organizations and academic lectures on obscure topics.

Bibliography

• Digital Fortress, 1998
• Angels & Demons, 2000
• Deception Point, 2001
• The Da Vinci Code, 2003
• The Lost Symbol, 2009