New (German) book release: “Four Stories of Flowers and Children”

If you like flowers and children, I have something special for you. While revising my first book, “Für ein Kinderlachen” (For a Child's Laughter), a few people brought up the idea of making the stories from the appendix available separately. So I started writing a booklet in parallel, in which four of my stories would appear with new and more detailed commentary than before.

Today, on January 1, 2026, “Vier Geschichten von Blumen und von Kindern”
(Four Stories of Flowers and Children) was released!

The homepage for the book: max2cents.eu/en/blumen-kinder

Initially today, it will only be available at Lulu.com, both as a print version and as a PDF eBook. The global book trade, however, will take a little longer, probably a few weeks. Unfortunately, the book trade also sets a price that I find a little embarrassing for such a small booklet of only 70 pages: unfortunately, there are such outrageous fees that, as the author, I only get a solid euro when the retail price is higher than I feel comfortable with. I will see if I can make sales via Lulu cheaper selectively. So far, I see that they offer the option of applying a discount for a maximum of one month from time to time which may offer at least a small relieve.

The book contains these four stories:

• “The Rose Garden”,
• “Nicht seine Kinder” (Not His Children),
• “Das Kind” (The Child) and
• “Flowers Along the Way”

They alternate with extensive commentaries on the background and the story behind their creation. I tried to work out how writing helped me process things and what meaning and function they had for me.

Lately, I've been wondering more and more how I can counter the impression that pedophiles are just poor souls, miserable and plagued by severe psychological pressure. Here on my blog and also in this publication. This is what I write about it:

The stories [helped me, above all, to work through the negative emotions] that overwhelmed me. However, I do not wish to leave you with the impression that this is simply the fate of people with pedophilia. There are aspects of my life that remain challenging, but none of them are any longer related to controlling my sexuality. Through learned self-reflection and a growing understanding of how children function, and how I myself function, I have for a long time been able to interact with them calmly and responsibly. […] I keep my sexuality clearly separate from them. I feel no shame about my pedophilic feelings and now approach them in a more pragmatic way. What continues to torment me instead is the stigma: the impossibility of speaking openly, and the ease with which even otherwise liberal people feel entitled to condemn pedophiles wholesale, using the harshest language and attributions. […] It also troubles me deeply how support systems and anti-discrimination laws draw exceptions as soon as non-offending pedophiles are concerned […]. This continues to weigh on me. The stigma affects approximately one in thirty¹ adolescents and adults. And this is a grave injustice.

I hope that this will not only appeal to seasoned community members, but also give newcomers something to think about. And now I wish you lots of joy in reading, but even more so: lots of joy in writing yourself.