Hello and welcome! I am Colin Bell, a novelist and poet, previously a TV producer-director of arts programmes, also known as the blogger Wolfie Wolfgang. My novel Stephen Dearsley's Summer Of Love was published in 2013, my next novel Blue Notes, Still Frames will be published in October 2016 - check them out on Amazon. I hope you find something here among my daily blogs. I write about anything that interests me - I hope it interests you too. Let me know.
I have two new Fibonacci poems published today in the splendid Fibonacci specialist journal, The Fib Review. It's always a challenge to try to squeeze big things into little boxes but I had a go when I picked the great, melancholy and alcoholic Finish composer Jean Sibelius as the subject of one of these miniature syllable-count poems that are based on the so-called Fibonacci Code with the sequence of numbers 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 etc. In the second poem, I try to take us back to our common ancestry in Africa.
Here's the link - there are a lot of other Fibs there too - well worth you reading.
If you have never heard Sibelius' music, take a listen to this, the finale from his 5th Symphony. It is thrilling - you might even hear those swans flying.
My new novel, Blue Notes, Still Frames is now officially published and generally available from online sites as well as bookstores and it's now time to announce the book's Brighton launch which will take place on Thursday, 2nd March at the splendid Have A Word event, brain child of the enthusiastic and energetic host, Ellis Collins. As Blue Notes, Still Frames is the second in my series of Brighton-themed novels, it's seems right to give it a grand Brighton send off so i'm delighted to be reading in my home town with my good friends and fellow novelists, VG Lee and Allie Rogers. Music is an important theme in the novel so it is doubly appropriate that Brighton band Octopuses will be there too, playing music from their current album, Yes Please, and, I'm told, songs from their projected new album too. As Octopuses is my son Adam Bell's band this will make the show a family affair.
Family too is VG Lee, or so it seems, as her work is published by Ward Wood Publishing, http://www.wardwoodpublishing.co.uk/ as are both my novels. My good friend VG Lee, is also a Sussex writer, and her novels are both wonderfully funny and powerfully poignant. Her latest, Mr Oliver's Object of Desire came off the Ward Wood production line just ahead of mine. It's a great and entertaining work and VG Lee is a terrific performer, so her reading will be terrific, I know.
I'm really happy too that the other reader on the night will be another of my friends, fellow Brighton novelist, the highly talented Allie Rogers who will be reading from her debut novel, Little Gold, due to be published by Legend Press in May this year. http://www.legendtimesgroup.co.uk/legend-press/books/1446-little-gold
To put you into the mood, take a listen to Octopuses' latest single, Not The Bees, now officially endorsed by Caroline Lucas and the Green Party. They are great, believe me, hear it for yourself:
Copies of my new Brighton novel arrived today - hurray! Now that I have the actual physical objects, I really feel like it's been published.
Stephen Dearsley, from my first novel, Stephen Dearsley's Summer of Love, isn't a bit jealous that he has a new companion - it's a bit like having a baby brother - or maybe not. Anyway, I feel like a new child has been born.
Many thanks to Ward Wood Publishing, and especially to Adele Ward, for producing such a beautiful book. Thanks and admiration to to Kayla Bell who designed the brilliant Modernist cover - I love it.
So folks, it really is out there now -Blue Notes, Still Frames is my second Brighton novel and it moves forward to 1994 - My first Brighton book, Stephen Dearsley's Summer of Love was set in 1967. Here's the publisher's blurb, if you want to know what it's all about.
You can buy the paperback edition a number of ways. Either directly from the publishers:
Or, of course, you can order it from your local independent bookshop. Mine, here in Lewes is the excellent independent bookseller Skylark - the owner, Matt Birch is a champion of Lewes' artist community and for that we are all grateful.
He is stocking both my novels so go and see him at the Needlemakers, West Street, Lewes, or contact him via his website:
