Songwriter and best-selling author Mishka Shubaly hits #1 with “Of Mice and Me” via Amazon.com

A songwriter praised by Doug Stanhope and Johnny Depp among others, Mishka Shubaly leads a double life… as a best-selling author.  His first five Kindle Singles have all been #1 bestsellers – “The Long Run” has sold more than 80,000 copies worldwide and has been translated into Spanish, German and Polish.

“Of Mice and Me” marks a significant departure for Shubaly, whose past Singles have dealt primarily with disasters, death, drink, drugs and deceit. The new story opens with Shubaly discovering an orphaned, infant mouse, barely a week old… and his fateful decision not to just put it out of its misery, but to save its life and nurse it back to health.

An alcoholic with five years of sobriety behind him, Shubaly quickly discovers that the mouse is much more than he bargained for. Mishkalito (as the mouse gets named) spurs love and hope and tenderness but also an intense evaluation of the shortcomings of the sober life Shubaly’s built, his relationship with his divorced parents and extended family and, indeed, his entire existence.

Mishka Shubaly is a veteran DIY singer/songwriter. He has shared the stage with Broken Social Scene, Metric, The Strokes, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Sleigh Bells, and The Decemberists. He has been compared to luminaries like Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Johnny Cash and Nick Cave, and his work has been praised by The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Denver Post, The Portland Mercury and Crawdaddy among others.

Shubaly will release Coward’s Path via In Music We Trust Records on February 3, 2015.

Amazon customer reviews of “Of Mice and Me”:

“A beautifully crafted story. I could not stop reading! The writing is raw, efficient and driving. I laughed, I cried and I was rooting for a tiny mouse and a sober alcoholic the whole time. 5 stars without a doubt. After reading this, I have to read everything Mishka writes.”

“Mishka’s previous Singles offer us a lot about his past and his present surroundings; sobriety, running and personal relationships, all are a constant in his writings. Of Mice and Me presents us with his stripped-down heart. If you’ve read any of Mishka’s past work or follow him online, you know well of his struggles – struggles that aren’t really in the past but that he manages with grace every single day. The self-hatred that led him into alcoholism doesn’t disappear when the drinking stops, and he is brave about revealing how it impacts his decisions, his relationships and his ability to give and receive love. This story is about a mouse, and a family, and a very human man who tries to reconcile what he believes about himself with what the rest of the world believes about him.”

“A beautiful coming-of-age story about a man whose biological clock is ticking, but the Peter Pan in him struggles to leave behind the lost boys and join Wendy in the nursery. Can he resist the unconditional love that having a child brings, or will he default to the old familiar unfulfillment of remaining unaccountable?

Adopting a baby mouse and nursing it back to health proves to be an emotional roller coaster ride, triggering unpredictable joys and fears. A beautiful and brutally honest account of a man learning what it means to truly ‘man up.’”