I did what will most probably be my final online event of the school year this morning, with students in Cliffe Woods Primary School in the UK. It was lots of fun, with the kids throwing loads of good, interesting questions my way -- a nice way to wrap things up on the virtual touring front for the term.

I always like to start an event by reading from one of my books. Usually I choose a scene from Cirque Du Freak or Lord Loss -- but these pupils had already read Cirque Du Freak, and I felt that most of them were a bit too young for Lord Loss. So at the very last minute I decided to read out an extra from my website -- An Essay On Vampires By Steve Leopard!!!

This was an amusing little piece that I wrote many, many years ago (probably in mid or late 2000, around the time that I first put my web site together), an imaginary essay that Steve Leopard had written at school, which had been found years later. It was actually published in a book in Japan some years later (that's a scan of the cover attached), along with a selection of other extras from my site. While it was never prinited in a physical English language edition, it remains on my site, where you can read it for FREE any time you like, by clicking here: https://darrenshan.com/extras/feature/short-stories-an-essay-on-vampires-by-steve-leopard-book-1-tie-in-story