I can not believe it’s MAY already and this is my FIRST blog of the year! Oh well, as I’ve no doubt said before, the best laid plans of Mike and men …

My biggest news book-wise is that the German edition (and audio version) of The Things That Will Not Stand was released in Germany under the title Dinge, die so nicht bleiben können.

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I’ve been really thrilled with the wide coverage and lovely reviews it has been receiving.

You can read some of them HERE.

A big thanks to everyone at CARL HANSER VERLAG and HÖRCOMPANY (audio) for their continuing support and their beautiful editions!

It was also wonderful to be interviewed and do readings via Zoom recently with Claudia from the Internationale Jugendbibliothek about THE THINGS THAT WILL NOT STAND as part of the Munich Book Show – junior.

We had 5 classes of grade 8/9s tuning in for the session. Thankfully it was in English and all went smoothly. A big thank you to everyone who made that possible.

In other news, my ’21 in 21′ READING CHALLENGE is going well and for the first time ever I’m actually ahead of schedule with 14 books already done and dusted.

There’s quite a variety of books here all of which I have enjoyed reading.

A bunch of the other things that have occurred in the first 4 months of 2021 are summarised pictorially below and since they are obviously self-explanatory I won’t bore you with any extraneous comments.

As for MY WRITING, I must admit that I’ve had a bit of a hiatus of late, but soon I hope to get back to the YA novel I’ve now been working on for some time.

Also I’ve been fiddling around with some possible picture book texts and in 2022 I’ve been reliably informed that a certain rabbit will make a reappearance, so all is not LOST!

Of course it goes without saying (although I’m going to say it anyway) that THE VERY BEST THING that’s happened this year is that my wife and I became grandparents for the second time when we welcomed into the world our first grandson Harlan.

And what a brilliant, perfect little guy he is!

Cheers

Michael