A literary critic is someone who can't write, but who loves to show he would have been a wonderful writer if only he could!

And I have to consider myself fortunate, because there are plenty of writers who spend most of a lifetime looking for that certain something without ever finding it.

But other vampire stories? Well, no, I really haven't read too many, and I can't say I'm crazy about romantic vampires anyway - to me the vampire is simply an evil monster.

If, like Harry Keogh, I could talk to the dead - God, there are an awful lot of people I would like to speak to! Not least my father. Being in the army for 22 years, I didnt see enough of him, and I know there are a great many things I could have learned from him.

The amazing thing now is that most of those so-called critics who were telling me to find my own voice seem to have lost theirs.

German readers are much like Brits or Americans: They read for the thrill of it, the occasional shudder down the spine, knowing it's not real - but looking over their shoulders anyway, just in case.

But while our parting was mutually acceptable and even expedient, still it was painful. And I would like to think it hurt both of us, for I certainly felt it: a wrenching inside, like some small but improbably necessary organ was no longer in there, that it was missing, torn or fallen out. And at the time I'd thought that was the end of it; what was missing was gone forever