This is what happens when you let your guard down and get attacked by a pack of vampaneze when you're on your way home late at night!!! :-) :-) :-)

No, seriously, I went out for a special dinner with Mrs Shan last night, to celebrate the 21st anniversary of our first ever date. Six courses, with wine pairing. Lovely. The food was very nice, as was the wine, and we chatted away merrily, before rolling home about 10.30pm and going to bed a bit later.

In the middle of the night, I woke feeling a bit sick. Nothing to worry about, I thought, just my stomach reacting poorly to too muich rich food and vino. I headed for the bathroom to get sick in the toilet, thinking that would be the end of the matter. But when I got there and started to throw up, I felt weak, so I knelt down to rest.

Next thing I knew, I was lying in a small pool of blood, and a VERY concerned Mrs Shan was kneeling over me, asking if I was OK, and if I'd had a stroke. I'd fainted and banged my head on something on my way down. It took me quite a while to recover, and as you can see from the photos, I've been left with a nasty scrape and some bruises which are going to turn a perfect shade of vampaneze purple before they fade.

I've been in touch with my doctor, who doesn't think it's anything much to worry about, but I'm going to go in for some tests regardless -- I meant to do that last year, when I turned 50, but have been procrastinating. Maybe this was the vampire gods' way of telling me to get a move on!!

While this will probably turn out to be an isolated incident, and hopefully not a signal for something seriously wrong internally (although of course you can never be certain until you're tested), it did set me thinking about my mortality. As I think I've made pretty clear in my body of work, the axe can fall for any of us at almost any time. We're all just temporary visitors to this world, and we can be called away at any given moment. I hope MY moment is still quite a few decades away (I'd like to get to 100 if I can, though I'd say that's doubtful), but it COULD have easily come last night if I'd fallen a bit more heavily, or on a sharper object.

Anyway, when my moment DOES come, and assuming you guys are around to hear the news (I imagine most of you will outlive me, as I'm quite a bit older than the vast majority of my followers here), and assuming you still care about what happens to the old Shan man (hey, you might not, if it's 20 or 30 years down the road!), here's how I would LOVE you to respond, if you're inclined to bid me a fitting farewell. Shed a few tears if you wish, but please not too many, and when you're ready, head for the great outdoors -- your back garden, or the front of your house, or wherever -- and roar up to the heavens...

EVEN IN DEATH MAY YOU BE TRIUMPHANT!!!

And if your neighbours, or complete strangers, stare at you oddly and ask what the hell THAT was about, I'd like you to smile at them and say, "There was this guy called Darren Shan, and he was always fascinated by spiders..."

:-) :-) :-)

Tread carefully, my friends, be ready for the end when it comes, but make sure you enjoy the time before that as much as you possibly can, because there's no point overly worrying about death until there's nothing else TO worry about.