An interesting article about the ouroboros – some of you may recognise the symbol I used in the Order of Darkness. It is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail and in medieval times a version was used as the emblem for the Order of the Dragon, a group of selected noblemen set up to defend Christendom from its enemies. Notable members included the founder Sigismund of Luxembourg who became Holy Roman Emperor, England's Henry V and, importantly for our story, Vlad III of Wallachia (sometimes known as Vlad the Impaler or Vlad Dracula). It has been such a fun series to write and the next instalment, book four, will be out in January. 

http://bbc.in/2y7X75n

Images: ouroboros illustration from the Order of Darkness series; detail from the cover of Dark Tracks (Order of Darkness Volume IV); Dragon Order Badge, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7... ; Dragon Order Insignia, By No machine-readable author provided. CristianChirita assumed (based on copyright claims). [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons