It's TATTOO TUESDAY time again, and this one is a real thing of beauty, although it might be a bit of a mystery to many fans of my books!! "What on Earth," I hear many of you muttering to yourselves, "does a tattoo of pink elephants on a pair of boxing shorts have to do with the master of YA horror's gory, thrilling books?!?"

Well, a fan called LEO has a better memory than most of you, and when he decided to pay homage to Gavner Purl, he recalled a moment in the book Vampire Mountain, when the main characters have to strip on their way to the famous gathering of night creatures, and Gavner peels off his trousers to reveal... a pair of boxing shorts featuring pictures of adorable pink elephants!!

I thought little of it when I wrote that scene -- it just tickled my fancy -- but my editor hated it and asked me to remove the reference to the shorts, as she didn't think a vampire general would wear such a thing. But I held firm, and came up with a heart-wrenching short story which explains why Gavner was wearing the shorts. It also sheds light on his final comment in book 5, Trials of Death, and makes clear to whom those words were directed.

This is maybe my favorite short story that I've written (with the honourable exception, of course, of my Christmas-themed Shanta Claus tale), and you can read it online for free by clicking here: https://darrenshan.com/extras/feature/short-stories-an-affair-of-the-night-book-5-tie-in-story