Colin Bell is a novelist and poet - formerly a television producer-director.
- WolfieWolfgang (Colin Bell)
- 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.
Sunday, 3 November 2013
COLIN BELL - NOVELIST, POET AND BLOGGER
BIOGRAPHY:
Colin Bell was born in a Franciscan convent in Surrey but grew up in Sussex, UK – almost everything he’s done, he did for the first time in Brighton.
His first novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love was published in October 2013 (Ward Wood Publishing) and long listed for the Polari Prize 2014. It is set in Brighton in 1967.
His latest novel, Blue Notes, Still Frames will be published in October 2016 (Ward Wood Publishing). His poetry has been published in the UK (including Cinnamon Press and Soaring Penguin) and the USA (Musepie Press, The Blotter, Every Day Poets). He has been nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize. He has also published short stories (Ether Books) and children’s books (Novello).
He was a producer-director and then Executive Producer of music and arts programmes for Granada Television in Manchester and executive producer, EuroArts-Primetime. He’s made programmes for ITV, Channel Four and the BBC as well as for American, Japanese and German broadcasters.
He now lives in Lewes, Sussex where he also writes a daily blog - http://www.wolfiewolfgang.com. His new Brighton novel, Blue Notes, Still Frames will be published in 2016. He is now working on a third Brighton novel.
TELEVISION PROGRAMMES:
His television credits include the Granada arts documentary series, Celebration, the ITV series God Bless America, the Channel Four series, My Generation, the ITV documentary Curves, Contours and Body Horns, the BBC documentary Menuhin's Children, the SDR documentary Szabo Meets Solti and the ITV documentary It Was Twenty Years Ago Today as well as international co-productions of opera galas from San Francisco and Covent Garden and the Tenth Anniversary Concert performance of Les Miserables from the Royal Albert Hall.
PUBLICATIONS:
His first novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love was published in October 2013 (Ward Wood Publishing) and long listed for the Polari Prize 2014. It is set in Brighton in 1967.
His latest novel, Blue Notes, Still Frames will be published in October 2016 (Ward Wood Publishing). His poetry has been published in the UK (including Cinnamon Press and Soaring Penguin) and the USA (Musepie Press, The Blotter, Every Day Poets). He has been nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize. He has also published short stories (Ether Books) and children’s books (Novello).
He now lives in Lewes, Sussex where he also writes a daily blog - http://www.wolfiewolfgang.com. His new Brighton novel, Blue Notes, Still Frames will be published in 2016. He is now working on a third Brighton novel.
TELEVISION PROGRAMMES:
His television credits include the Granada arts documentary series, Celebration, the ITV series God Bless America, the Channel Four series, My Generation, the ITV documentary Curves, Contours and Body Horns, the BBC documentary Menuhin's Children, the SDR documentary Szabo Meets Solti and the ITV documentary It Was Twenty Years Ago Today as well as international co-productions of opera galas from San Francisco and Covent Garden and the Tenth Anniversary Concert performance of Les Miserables from the Royal Albert Hall.
God Bless America
It was Twenty Years Ago Today
Celebration 15 - 25 Arts Festival
My Generation
Curves, Contours and Body Horns
Celebration
Menuhin's Children
Szabo meets Solti
Les Miserables 10th Anniversary Gala
The Gold And Silver Gala
The Golden Gate Gala
FICTION:
STEPHEN DEARSLEY'S SUMMER OF LOVE
Colin Bell's novel, Stephen Dearsley's Summer Of Love, was published on 31 October 2013. It is the story of a young fogey living in Brighton in 1967 who has a lot to learn when the flowering hippie counter culture changes him and the world around him.
It is now available as a paperback or on Kindle (go to your region's Amazon site for Kindle orders)
You can order the book from the publishers, Ward Wood Publishing:
...or from Book Depository:
...or from Amazon:
BLUE NOTES, STILL FRAMES
Colin Bell's second novel, Blue Notes, Still Frames, will be published in October 2016 by Ward Wood Publishing. It begins with Joe Edevane, a Brighton street busker with surprizing powers who borrows a towel from well-heeled strangers, Alan and Rachel, for his Goth girlfriend, Victoria, and begins a chain of events that changes all of their lives.
POETRY
ANTHOLOGIES:
The Needlewriters
The Frogmore Press
2015
Poetry anthology
Genius Floored: Whispers in Smoke
Soaring Penguin Press
June 6, 2014
Poetry anthology
Tic Toc
A Kind Of A Hurricane Press
June 2014
Poetry anthology
In The Night Count The Stars
Bittersweet Editions
March 1, 2014
An "uncommon anthology" of images, fragments, stories and poetry.
Genius Floored: Uncurtained Window
Soaring Penguin Press
June 15, 2013
Poetry anthology
Reaching Out
Cinnamon Press
December 2012
Poetry and short story anthology
JOURNALS:
The Blotter
The Blotter Magazine Inc.
November 2009
Three pages of poetry in the American South's unique, free, international literature and arts magazine.
The Fib Review
Musepie Press
My Fibonacci poetry has appeared in this journal from 2009 until the present
Shot Glass Journal
Muse Pie Press
My poetry has appeared in various issues of this short form poetry journal
Every Day Poets Magazine
Every Day Poets
I have various poems of the day published in this 365 days a year poetry magazine.
Thursday, 31 October 2013
All You Need Is Love: Stephen Dearsley's Summer Of Love is published today.
I was young in 1967, probably a lot younger than I realized. I was moved by the so-called Summer Of Love but I'm sure I can't have understood the half of it. I felt it though and some of those feelings must have made it into my novel, Stephen Dearsley's Summer Of Love. I suspect a small part of me is there, hidden somewhere between those pages hoping not to be discovered now that the book is published and Stephen Dearsley, formerly "my" Stephen Dearsley, is out there with you all or with any of you that decide to read about him and his momentous young man's summer.
I might know Stephen a lot better than I know the moody young man in the photograph at the top of this blog. Who I was then or, maybe, who I was trying to be then in the Summer of 1967 may have to remain a mystery to me as well as to the rest of you. I do remember though that even then I wanted one day to write a novel and to get it published as a paperback. That was very clear to me, as The Beatles sang that summer about love, it was easy. Young ambitions are not the mountains they look like from a distance. Those youthful summer days were for dreaming dreams. It would all be fine, it was easy. Well nothing's quite that easy and a lot of years have passed before that sultry summer dream came true.
I remember the ambition just as I remember a song from that year - both were vivid, thrilling and, yes, I guess, erotic dreams and both, I was sure, would come true. It was easy.
The song, of course, was all You Need Is Love by The Beatles, first performed on the first ever simultaneous live international television relay on the 25th June 1967 to an estimated audience of 400 million people. It was, naturally, the answer. Love really was all you needed if everyone agreed to go along with that thought or so it seemed that day. I was excited, maybe even more than that, to be there as a witness to a moment of revelation. Then came the new Beatles album Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and, for me at least, life was never to be quite the same again.
The Beatles, 25th June 1967
It wasn't, as we all found out, that easy after all, love or people agreeing that love was all you needed, but it turned enough of us on at that time to make a difference. It wasn't just the music but the whole counter-cultural shift that those records revealed to my innocently voracious eyes and ears. Even though The Beatles split up, became disillusioned, some of them died, were even murdered and the others grew old, I still can't listen to that song of songs without the same thrill of optimism and the spirit of delight that awoke in me then and has never fully died.
When I think of Stephen Dearsley, I often say 'poor Stephen' and hope that he forgives me for all I have done to him. If you do decide to read my novel, be kind to him and try to think well of those idealists and dreamers who once thought achieving the sublime was easy.
It was a sublime moment too this afternoon when I first laid hands on a copy of my book. There's no other feeling like this one.
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Stephen Dearsley's Summer Of Love by Colin Bell
Click on image to buy from Amazon.