A fan called John Robert Douglas posted the following on Facebook recently: "I really think there should be a short series, maybe three-four books, about Steve Leonard in his time between the books, and show his side of the story. It would be a great way of rebooting the story and showing how he got his powers and became the Lord of the Shadows, or Darren depending on how you view it. Start it from when he was basically told to f*** off from Larten and made to feel so down, and show his adventure. Who else would like to see it?"

I've no plans to ever write about Steve again -- I think we know too much about his story arc, and I don't think you can write a meaningful, suspenseful book when that's the case. With Mr Crepsley, we knew almost nothing about his two hundred years before he met Darren, so it was possible to create a storyline which worked entirely independently of what happened later (i.e. in the original series). With Steve, that wouldn't be the case. I'd merely be filling in blanks, not building a dramatic storty that could work on its own terms.

That said... When I wrote the books, I'd planned to write a lot more than the twelve that we eventually had. There were going to be more than twenty of them (!!!!) and Steve would have featured prominently in the second half of the storyline. That's why we saw so little of him between books 1 and 8 -- I didn't want to overuse the character and have readers grow bored of him. If I'd known in advance that I was going to stop at book 12, I probably would have looked for a way to work him back into the storyline earlier, so that we could have seen more of his development.

Now, obviously there's nothing I can do to rectify that now -- I'm not going to go back and rewrite the books!!! BUT if the series even gets rebooted, and made into a TV show, I'm going to suggest (if the makers are open to having me involved in such a capacity) that they bring back Steve in some way before we meet him at the point where we do in the books. I've got a very strong idea of how that would happen, and where in the story he could fit in perfectly, but I don't want to say any more here, just in case it ever does happen -- I don't want to ruin the surprise for you guys!!!

But, yeah, if the vampire gods are good to us, we MIGHT get to see a bit more of a growing and changing Steve Leopard a bit further down the line...