The Russians are coming

I've been tracking who is reading my blog. You can find out how many people have been looking at it and where they're from.

This week so far:

207 from the UK
23 from Holland
21 from Ireland

and

48 from Russia

I understand the Ireland ones. I spent Monday to Wednesday there working with 500 kids. A lovely time. Such nice kids - and adults.

But Russia?

My book Dead Ball is about Danny Harte taking on a Russian billionnaire who is intent on murdering England footballers. I wrote a follow up story to that, where the billionnaire actually comes after me for writing that book. (You can read it all for free here.)

Recently two Russian boys - who I met in schools - asked me why I cast Russians as baddies. It was a good question. I said I'd cast baddies as English, Italian, South African, Ukrainian and others, but that Russians were sort of traditional baddies and all the Cold War history made for interesting stories.

They weren't impressed.

So I told them the real reason. I set my books in countries I want to visit. The baddies necessaily have to come from those countries. So, in fact, it is a compliment to Russians that I wrote about - and visited - their country.

They still weren't impressed.

So... in my next book everyone thinks the Russians are the baddies, whereas in fact it's the...