I did another online school event yesterday, this time with the first year students of Patrician Secondary School in Newbridge, County Kildare, in Ireland. I had been scheduled to do the event early in January, but COVID disrupted things on that occasion, so we pushed it back a few weeks. That's one of the benefits of virtual events -- they're incredibly easy to re-schedule if something happens and they have to be postponed!

Students from three different classrooms were involved -- another benefit of doing these things virtually is that they were able to join in from their own classrooms, so they didn't have to gather as a big group in a large room. I was only able to see and directly interact with the students in one of the classrooms, but the others were able to ask me questions using the ZOOM chat function.

I usually pop on a Cirque Du Freak T-shirt for these events (my American publishers made a load of them nearly 20 years ago, and I still have a few that I wear on special occasions!), but yesterday (as you can see in the second photo) I happened to be wearing a Pennywise The Clown (from Stephen King's epic novel, IT) T-shirt, and that seemed perfectly appropriate, so I saw no need to change! :-)

With World Book Day coming up, I'm going to be even busier than usual on the virtual touring front, so if YOU are a teacher or librarian (or if you're a student who wants to show this to your teacher or librarian), and are interested in contacting me to enquire about the possibility of arranging your own online event, please feel free to reach out and drop me a line using this email address: [email protected]

I do events with schools all over the world (that's yet another big advantage of online events -- geographical location is irrelevant!!). I don't charge, and I'm happy to talk about any of my books, old or new. I don't say yes to every request, but if you're well organised and can put together a large group of students (either in your own school, or by including others in your area), then I'll do what I can to make it work.

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The February issue of my monthly newsletter went live online yesterday, with all the latest Darren Shan news and updates, plus an exciting COMPETITION that will be on special interest to fans of manga and my Cirque Du Freak series: https://darrenshan.com/news/shanville-monthly