Schools are shut in Ireland at the moment, as they are in many other countries, while we struggle to contain Covid-19. Hopefully they won't remain closed for TOO long -- my son Dante is really missing his teacher and friends, and I'm sure most kids are in the same boat. Fingers crossed they can all get back to normal sooner rather than later.

In between lockdowns, I was interacting with quite a few schools, as I normally do, even though I haven't been out on tour for a long time. For instance, the students at St Phillips wrote to me, and were pleased to receive a reply. I always reply to fan mail -- I've attached the letter that I wrote to them, to give you an idea of what my responses are like, and also to illustrate how bad my handwriting is -- my teachers always despaired when it came to my handwriting, and it hasn't improved over the years!

The next two photos were shared with me by the students of Mount Carmel, who posed with some of their favourite horror books in the run-up to Halloween. As you can see, they have impeccable taste!! :-)

A couple of things for any teachers or librarians reading this...

First, if you want to teach my books online during lockdown, that's absolutely fine. You can record yourself reading them and upload the videos for your students -- it really isn't an issue at the moment.

Secondly, if your students want to write to me, you can find the address in the Contact form on my website. All I ask is that you send all the letters in one big envelope, and I'll reply with a single letter to the group. https://www.darrenshan.com/contact

Oh, and finally, it's not just students who can write to me -- anyone and everyone is free to get in touch! :-)