News and Reviews

Newsletter

JANUARY - 2026

Hi

Pleasantries first - a very Happy New Year. I hope the festivities were to your liking and you had a great Christmas Day and all twelve days thereof. I certainly did, the downside being it's a little sad when it all comes to an end. But it definitely has and my Christmas slippers and twelve-days-of-Christmas whisky glass are now back in storage for the next eleven months.

Incidentally, the light coloured bits on the slippers are antlers, and not hands making rude gestures with the fingers!.

December was a great month for me. I had some very enjoyable book signing events at Costa Cafes in the Tesco supermarkets in Bury and Prestwich, and at TG Jones stores in Altrincham and the Trafford Centre. A great atmosphere at all locations as you can imagine at that time of year, and it was very satisfying helping so many people with their Christamas shopping!

And in the middle of all this excitement, I had to fit in my birthday. Earlier in the year, I told you that for my previous birthday - a 'special' one, being divisible by 10 - my daughter, Hannah, bought me a fabulous one hour's drive on a John Deere tractor. Well, the theme continued this year with this excellent Lego set.

At my current rate of progress, I should finish it just before my next birthday.

The enjoyment of Christmas itself was helped in no small way by our usual 'journey' on the Polar Express. This was a tradition established within the family around sixteen years ago when our grandchildren, Tom and Ellen, were in mid single digits, and, to our surprise and pleasure, they themselves insisted on keeping it going until very recently. This year, we sampled it twice - as a DVD then a jigsaw.

But without the grandchildren this time. We did see them on Christmas Day, however, when we enjoyed an excellent meal provided by our son, Daniel, and his wife, Annette, followed by an equally excellent and extremely rowdy quiz. Fierce competition is alive and well in the Knaggs family!

And so to 2026. Last year at this time things were a bit hectic in advance of the launch of The Moorstone at the end of February, followed by a very busy ten months. Here's a picture of my 'work' calendar for 2025

The red dots are talks I gave to a variety of groups - twelve in all, ranging in size from three to seventy-three -and the green dots are book signing events (thirty-two). There are also a couple of blue dots for radio interviews. That's a lot of people who contributed in different ways to my enjoyment and success in 2025. I wish I could reach them all to say thank you. 

So far in 2026 I have a couple of talks arranged for February and one in May. Plus a good few in the pipeline at libraries in Trafford (Urmston), Rishton and Accrington, dates yet to be finalised. And I'll very soon be back on the book-signing trail again.

Many thanks for staying with me through 2025. It's very much appreciated, but if you feel you've had enough of the Newsletters, please let me know and I'll take you off the distribution list.

Thank you again

Best wishes

Micahel

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