Stephen Dearsley makes it to The Huffington Post

I was thrilled this week to read a truly encouraging review in the popular Huffington Post for my novel Stephen Dearsley's Summer Of Love from Dr Michael Petry, the director of London's Museum of Contemporary Arts. It was equally encouraging and terrifying as it came just before the announcement of the short list for this year's Polari Prize. I was lucky enough to appear on the long list of 12 books and next week I will discover if I've made it to the short list of five. I keep telling myself it is great even being on the long list so I'm turning my face to the wall but not holding my breath. Whatever the outcome, it is so pleasing to receive such an understanding review from someone who obviously "got it" as far as I'm concerned. It is great to have my work compared to that well-known author Philip Hensher too. I know that my much put-upon character Stephen Dearsley would have been happy to have known that he has a such a supporter in his troublesome life trying to find himself in the late 1960s.

Here is a section of Michael Petry's article:

"Hensher is well known and highly regarded with his The Northern Clemency being shortlisted for the 2008 Booker Prize and Kitchen Venom winning the Somerset Maugham Award. His The Emperor Waltz is a wonderful read across many time periods. Early Christians in the 3rd century clash with young artists at the Bauhaus and young men in the 1970's at London's first gay book store. How they all link together is rather complex and like David Mitchell's The Cloud Atlas a brief description does them no service at all. But there is a neat surprise at the end of the waltz through time, which involves signed copies of a novel. As a book collector myself, I know how exciting it is to find a signed copy or better still, one inscribed to a mysterious person whose identity I will likely never know. But holding those physical objects is another link across time, and as long as physical books exist I am sure there will be people like me who want to have them. An e-book is not quite the same, and is there a first edition of a digital book?

Colin Bell's Stephen Dearsley's Summer of Love is on the longlist and I do hope it makes it to the next stage. It also cuts across time as the young fogey Stephen, who is uptight, and upright, finds love, drugs and the facts about the mysterious Austin Randolph who's biography he has been commissioned to write. Like Hensher's the form of the book is alternating chapters of time and characters, that gather together to create a whole picture of various times and lives. Randolph proves to have been one of Oswald Mosely's Blackshirts, yet a highly charismatic figure who everyone, including his own half brother was in love with and lusted for. Stephen's summer of love in Brighton is well observed. Bell and Hensher easily convey a sense of what it must have been like to have been at the many times described. Bell is published by Ward Wood (a small UK company) while Hensher works with Harper Collins (a large international publisher) and their coverage has subsequently been very different. I don't really like artistic competitions as they are inherently based on the personal biases of the judges. What I think, matters to a few friends, but I hugely enjoyed reading both books and hope others do too."

Dr Michael Petry

Artist, curator and author, director of MOCA London

Huffington Post 4th September 2014.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/dr-michael-petry/

Four have fun in Greenwich - the Ward Wood Writers hit the road.

It was a full house at the very welcoming Greenwich gallery, Made In Greenwich yesterday when I and three of my Ward Wood Publishing colleagues gave our first collective reading together. Like a band on the road, the four of us had a great time and have vowed to do this again in the spirit of The Beatles movie, A Hard Day's Night.

An idea dreamed up months ago in a conversation at London's Poetry Café finally came to its very enjoyable conclusion last night in front of a large and encouragingly receptive audience (many of them were poets from the Greenwich area) hosted by the wonderfully informal and enthusiastic Irena Hill, co-owner of the gallery who stepped in at the last minute to replace our publisher, Adele Ward, who had become a victim of the London Underground strike. Thanks, Irena, you were great.

First up was Peter Phillips who fully engaged the audience right from the start with his wryly humourous and yet passionate readings from his two Ward Wood poetry collections, No School Tie and Oscar And I.

The No School Tie poems provide a vivid poet's impression  of a boarding school childhood as well life as a writer,  a husband and a grandfather. Then Oscar And I, the confessions of a fictional minor poet George Meadows who experiences all the fragile hopes and stoically received disappointments of any writer's life but with irony and honesty and humour. If you have read the poems but not heard Peter read them then you've missed a treat. Once heard, his voice always sounds in my head when returning to these delightful collections.

Next was American-born but London-based novelist and poet, Sue Guiney who is working on a series of novels set in Cambodia where she has founded a writing workshop for street children in Siem Reap and now spends about two months each year teaching there.  Her most recent novel, Out of the Ruins, the second in her Cambodia series, was published by Ward Wood in January. 

Sue read from Out Of The Ruins continuing her exploration of what happens when East meets West, in this case when two European doctors set up women's clinic in Cambodian town of Siem Reap with the passionate assistance of a young Khmer nurse. Sue read this and some of her new Cambodian poems with the real passion and commitment she feels for this much put-upon country. She also read from her Ward Wood poetry collection, Her Life Collected, my latest "loo read" - a collection of wonderfully direct and personal poems that are my current inspiration.

Then there was Joe Stein, Ward Wood's impressive crime writer, who is much more than that. He is a terrific writer who draws on, amongst other things, his life as an amateur boxer and professional bodyguard. His main character, Garron, is a body-guard with a philosophical soul and an ever-questioning attitude that gives the Garron books their special quality - I would say literary quality if that didn't sound dull which the books most certainly aren't.

Joe read from his latest Ward Wood novel, the third in the series, That Twisted Thing Called Truth and then, a special treat for people like me, hooked on what is going to happen next with the intriguing existentialist Garron, Joe read from his new novel, Through Another Night due to be released in October. I can't wait.

And then there was me, the newest of all the Ward Wood novelists. I read some extracts from my book Stephen Dearsley's Summer Of Love enjoying the contrast between my hapless young fogey character Stephen and Joe's much more muscular Garron. Afterwards, Joe and I pondered what it would be like if the two of them met. As Made In Greenwich usually hosts poetry events, I read part of my Fibonacci poetry sequence, Brief Encounters, a work still in-progress, but one day, I hope, a collection in the spirit of the Romantic song cycles by two of my heroes, that I used to sing as a young music student, Schubert's Winterreise and Schumann's Dichterliebe.

Peter, Sue, Joe and I are enthusiastic about doing this again. Our work is so contrasted that collectively the readings really do add up to something greater than it's individual parts. More important than that though, it was fun.

Come and see me and my writer friends today in Greenwich.

It's today, folks. I'm reading from my novel, Stephen Dearsley's Summer Of Love and my fellow Ward Wood Publishing writers are reading from their work too. Come along and lend us your support - come and say hello too.

For more information here's the link to my previous blog on this event:

http://www.wolfiewolfgang.com/2014/04/im-join-some-of-other-ward-wood-writers.html

I'm the "writer who cheated death" - if you don't believe me buy today's Sussex Express.

I've finally made it to the pages of my local newspaper, the Sussex Express, who have decided to run a "human interest" piece on the imminent publication of my novel, Stephen Dearsley's Summer Of Love.  It's always interesting to see what journalists home in on as their main tag. I'm now "the writer who cheated death." Well so be it - actually it's true.

I'm now officially excited about next month's launch of the book. It comes out on 31st October, Halloween, the day after the fifth anniversary of the brain haemorrhage that nearly cheated me of my life. I'm doubly glad that I have a new and much jollier anniversary to celebrate in late October.

So thanks, Sussex Express, for taking an interest. Dare I go out though? Will I be stopped everywhere I go in Lewes today? I'll let you all know.