I'm not going to milk the knock to my head that I endured about 36 hours ago (see yesterday's post) but as I suspected, the bruising around my eye has come on quite impressively, so I thought I'd post a couple of more follow-up photos, then leave it at that. I've never had a black eye like this before -- it's an odd experience, especially when I woke this morning and could barely see out of my left eye -- for a few seconds, before consciousness properly returned, I was "What the hell is going on with my eye?!?"

Two things of note -- 1) Despite the look of it, there's almost no pain, so I'm very lucky on that front. 2) I must admit that part of me is kind of sorry I didn't also bump my head on the same spot on the other side, as I'd look very owl-like with two such eyes, and I'd love to see the startled expression on people's faces when they saw me!!! :-) :-) :-)

I was supposed to do an online school event yesterday, but had to push it back until next month. Luckily for the boys in CBS Kilkenny, I was OK on Tuesday when their event was scheduled, and that went ahead as planned. Their teacher sent me a very nice email afterwards and said:

"They absolutely loved it and quite a lot of them were hanging on every word you said. When you finished the reading [chapter 2 of Lord Loss] and said they would have to read the book to find out more, one boy off camera threw his hands in the air and was gutted that it was over."

That put a BIG smile on my face!! I took a bit of time off from school events after my house fire last November, but I'm back doing them now. If you're a teacher or librarian interested in setting up an online Darren Shan event, feel free to get in touch if you wish to make an enquiry. You can contact me by email: post at darrenshan dot com -- if you're not able to format that into a working email address, then you're probably best to steer clear of virtual events!!! :-) My events run for 30-35 minutes. I do a reading, chat about myself a bit, then take questions from the students. They're always fun, and always free -- I don't charge anything for them.