A fan of my vampire books, called King Mel, was reading Birth of a Killer, Book 1 of the Saga Of Larten Crepsley series, and decided to compose a cool little piece of music for the scene in which young, human Larten bumps into old, vampish Seba Nile in a crypt, and his life is changed forever...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGjPXEXhEsc

I love that scene -- it was one of my favourites to read out loud at events. A year or so before the book came out, before I'd announced what my new project would be, I'd read it out while I was touring. I'd say very little about it, just tell audience members that this was a story about a boy who lived two hundred years ago, and then go ahead and read it. It was only right at the very end of the scene, in the crypt, when Seba proclaims his name and asks the boy for his, that I'd say, "I'm Larten... Larten Crepsley." At that point, fans would realise who the book was going to be about, jaws would drop, eyes would light up, and sometimes I got very audible gasps, and even the odd excited whoop or two. :-)

Oh, and King Mel had forgotten this, so I figured I should point it out. When Larten first enters the crypt, Seba asks him, "Are cobwebs a treat where you come from?" The line is a little Easter Egg throwback to the original series. There are lots of little links (and sometimes very big links -- I was amazed by how many people missed the Daniel Abrams/Spits Abrams connection!) in the Mr Crepsley books, so if you're thinking of reading the two series again in the near future, I can pretty much guarantee that you'll spot something you missed the last time round -- if you pay attention, that is...

You don't have to digging around in a crypt to find any links to the August issue of the Shanville Monthly! You can access it right here: https://www.darrenshan.com/news/shanville-monthly