I have just finished the third draft of my new Brighton novel, my third, Over the Hills is a Long Way Off. I will put it aside for a few months and then take a final look at it, but, it is, bar the shouting, ready to go off to the publishers.  It will have to wait though because my poetry collection, Remembering Blue, is ahed of it in the queue. It’s an exciting moment to bring another long project to an end. Now I shall recover and take delight in the thought of that blank piece of paper. I haven’t had that for a long time.

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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:

http://www.wardwoodpublishing.co.uk/titles-fiction-colin-bell-blue-notes-still-frames.htm

From Book Depository, especially if you are outside the UK:
http://www.bookdepository.com/Blue-Notes–Still-Frames/9781908742629

You can buy it at Amazon too – especially if you want the Kindle edition which is already online:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_2_24?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=blue+notes+still+frames+by+colin+bell&sprefix=Blue+Notes%2C+Still+Frames%2Caps%2C124&crid=1N88VF8VOJ86O

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:

http://www.skylarkshop.com/

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I shall be reading from my about to be published novel, Blue Notes, Still Frames,  (Ward Wood Publishing –  http://wardwoodpublishing.co.uk/titles-fiction-colin-bell-blue-notes-still-frames.htm ) on Thursday the 12th January here in Lewes UK.  If you can make it, it would be great to see you there.

I’m waiting neurotically for the printed copies to arrive and also for the Kindle edition to be published. Exciting times.  This will be my second Brighton novel. My first, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer of Love, was set in 1967,  but, this time, it’s in the year 1994. Here’s the blurb that will appear on the back cover:

‘Colin Bell transports us back to Brighton in 1994 for his second novel Blue Notes, Still Frames, with a full cast of characters drawn together through the music and photography of the title.

Busker Joe lives on the beach with his flute and his troubled Goth girlfriend, Victoria, who’s a singer. He borrows a bath towel for her from Rachel and Alan, a prosperous young couple from the rapidly growing world of computers. The meeting will change all their lives…and other lives too.

There’s Harry, a beach bum drummer; Nico, a transient American who takes revealing photographs of passers-by; Kanti and Diep, mysterious artist twins from Nepal; Lionel and John who reveal more than their bodies on the nudist beach; and pub landladies Jacqueline and Rosemary who top up their income by dabbling in the sex trade.

Joe is always there, weaving more than  melodies with his flute.’

The reading will take place at the Needlemakers in Lewes, the splendid quarterly literary event where I was invited to read from my first novel too. I’m lucky to be sharing the billing with a friend, the novelist and poet, Kay Syrad and science fiction author Matthew De Abaitua. It should be an entertaining evening.

Matthew De Abaitua is an Arthur C Clarke Award shortlisted author of science fiction. His second novel If Then is set in Lewes in the near-future and was written in the flat above the Needlemakers. Locus described it as ‘full of magisterial weirdness, melancholy joy and hopeful terror. If I begin to toss out names like Adam Roberts, Brian Aldiss, and J. G. Ballard, I will not be lavishing undue praise.’

Kay Syrad’s publications include a poetry collection, Double Edge (2012), two novels, The Milliner and the Phrenologist (2009) and Send (2015), which investigates pre-verbal experience; and Exchange, an art-text work with Chris Drury (2015). Her artist’s book work of the lightship men: 1000 tasks (2013) was bought by the National Maritime Museum. She is Poetry Editor of Envoi and co-founder of the VERT Institute for art events & writing in Laughton.

Before becoming a writer, Colin Bell worked as a TV producer-director and executive producer making arts programmes for ITV, Channel Four, the BBC and also for American, Japanese and German broadcasters. His first novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer of Love (Ward Wood Publishing, 2013) was long-listed for the Polari Prize. His second novel, Blue Notes, Still Frames is due out in January. His poetry has been published in the UK and the USA where it has been nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize.

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I’m sorry everyone, if you’ve been looking for my regular blogs. I’ve been busy all year on my novel-writing activities and decided to give the blogs a rest. Today though, yay, I finished the third draft on my third Brighton novel, Over The Hills Is A Long Way Off.  I also heard, last week, that my second Brighton novel, Blue Notes, Still Frames, is to be published (by Ward Wood Publishing) in October this year. So I’m not only feeling truly excited and chuffed but also, dare I say it, a bit whacked too. It’s been an amazing year because I’ve been pushing myself on both novels almost simultaneously, after deciding that I wanted to up my game in 2016.

You could say it was part of my New Year’s Resolution for 2016.

I spent New Year’s Eve with family – staying in with a bottle of whisky and some DVDs. That might sound tame to all you party-lovers out there, but I was fine about it. Actually I have always thought New Year’s Eve was about putting my life into perspective – looking back on the year now ending and looking forward and making plans for the future.

On that night, I watched the inspirational  Oscar-winning film Whiplash (2014) directed by Damien Chazelle and starring Miles Teller as a young drumming genius, Andrew Neyman, and his terrifying, bullying but also inspiring teacher Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons). It’s a great music film, of course, but it is much much more.

It was engaging enough watching the film for its own inner drama but, while I was suffering with the young jazz drummer who was being driven to produce the best possible performance that he was capable of,  I was wondering if I had ever pushed myself that far.

In the film, the drummer practises again and again until his hands begin to bleed and the blood, memorably, splatters onto the drums.

Could I do that? I asked myself. Not on the drums but with my writing. I had recently done a new draft of my novel Blue Notes, Still Frames (which is about, amongst other things, music and musicians) and thought that it was in a pretty good state. But was it? Had I gone over it until I bled? Well no.

So, beginning in the first week in January, I went back to the book and slogged it out and, in my own way, I bled a little. Then, as January moved into February, March, April and then May, I continued on that book (which is now with Ward Wood Publishing) but also on my new novel,  Over The Hills Is A Long Way Off,  which is a comedy about people’s dreams and fantasies and whether they can actually come true. I hope I’ve given this book too the energy I admired so much in Whiplash. Certainly, now that this period of intense writing is over, I am looking at my hands for signs of bleeding.

That is how it has been – I have been ignoring friends and family and you my loyal blog-readers but i’m hoping you forgive me.  Now I can  begin to think of other things – that is why I’ve returned here to my blog-site.

I’m looking forward to the new novel coming out this October and hope that you will find yourself a copy when the time comes. In the meanwhile, if you haven’t done so already, you can always get a copy of my first Brighton novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love (also published by Ward Wood Publishing). Between now and October I hope to write more about why I seem to have written a trilogy of Brighton novels, hoping that you will continue the journey with me. I might even put my toe back into the water on other subjects  now that a year has passed since the UK General Election that made me, at least, despair of politics.

Anyway, if you’re looking for similar inspiration to mine, then here’s a look at that movie – if you haven’t seen it already, or even if you have, it will make you rethink just how much you put into trying to achieve your dreams.

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The lively online writers’ community, Virtual Writers, has asked me to do a questions and answers session about my novel Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love (published by Ward Wood Publishing). It was enjoyable thinking back over the time when I wrote it just when I’m finishing my new novel, Blue Notes, Still Frames (soon to be published by Ward Wood Publishing), and working on the third one, Over The Hills Is A Long Way Off.  All three novels are based in Brighton, UK, but in different decades – 1967, 1994 and 2017. Sometimes, it’s difficult to remember what year I’m living in.

I’m grateful to Virtual Writers for encouraging me to go back to my first published novel and to remember or try to remember the impulses that led me to write it. If you’d like to find out what I said, here’s the link:

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Yesterday reminded me of my singing days when I learned how to prepare for a performance because, last night, I was doing a reading, just down the road from my house, at Lewes’ excellent quarterly literary event, Needlewriters Lewes. On days such as these, as I remembered from the days when I’d be doing a performance of, say, German lieder or an oratorio, the show always begins directly you get up in the morning. So, yesterday, was a classic example of preparing but not over-doing things so that you peak at just the right time.

Every road in Lewes, yesterday, seemed to lead to the Needlemakers Centre where the event was to be held.

A brisk walk round town was just right to get my lungs going and to clear my head.

I’m fortunate to live in such an attractive town and, this time, it was also good that the venue was no more than a two minute walk from my front door.

The Needlemakers centre, once a candle factory then a surgical needle factory, is now a cosy conglomeration of craft shops, an excellent bookshop, Skylark, and a restaurant where the readings take place four times a year. I was booked a year ago but I was still trying to decide what to read on the day. I was sharing the evening with the poet, an American but now Lewes resident,  Liz Bahs, who writes absorbing poetry sequences where the subject is approached from a variety of different angles. She was in great, exuberant form on the night. The other reader, also a fine poet, was Sian Thomas, a friend from the days when I used to run a Lewes poetry event called First Wednesday Writers. She read from her wonderfully sardonic but powerful pamphlet, Ovid’s Echo (published by Paekakariki Press) where she takes classical themes and gives them more than just one twist. She, like Liz, also read some new poems – her’s, written as part of her project as Poet in Residence for Ashdown Forest, were richly evocative. I don’t think she actually has to live in the forest but she’s certainly spending a lot of time there.

I was the only prose writer in the mix so I had no doubt about reading from my novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love but I thought it would be fun if I read a short passage from my new novel too. Blue Notes, Still Frames, will be published next year, and as both books are set, just down the road from Lewes, in Brighton there was an added local interest in reading them in Lewes. Stephen Dearsley’s Summer of Love is the story of a young fogey who discovers a whole new world in that hippie summer of 1967 and Blue Notes, Still Frames, returns to Brighton, thirty years on, with different characters.

As I have had a neurological stammer since my brain haemorrhage, six years ago, I’m always slightly anxious about reading prose in public so I decided I too would read some new poetry. I hardly ever stammer if I’m reading poetry as the speech rhythms seem to help. I wrote a new batch of Fibonacci poems in September for my on-going Fibonacci collection Brief Encounters, ten of which are about to be published in the Fib Review by Musepie Press so I thought I would give them their first public airing as a warm up for me, my voice and my stammer, before moving on to the prose works. When I’d finally decided on the ordering of the poems and the sections I would read from the two novels, I uploaded all the texts onto my Kindle so that I didn’t have to do all that fiddling around between books.  All I had to do now was some of my old singing exercises and to put my brain into dormant, meditative mode trying not to imagine that this must be what if feels like for a prisoner awaiting execution. If I could disappear,  out of body and out of mind for a few hours then, I thought, I would be ready to ‘turn on’ my public persona for the evening.

Some more vocalises helped to clear the remnants of the fluid on my lungs which are the aftermath of my Pulmonary embolism, and I was ready. Actually this was the first time since the publication of my novel that I have felt at all well when doing public readings from it. So dressed suitably flamboyantly, I headed off down the street to met my fate.

As I walked into the venue, all that meditative monkishness disappeared and I was set to go. A bit of socialising as the audience arrived – it was heartening how many of my good friends made the effort to attend, and then it was just a matter of a single glass of wine on an empty stomach and I was, abracadabra, in performance mode.

The preparation paid off because, once I was up there, I felt terrific and, yes, I actually enjoyed myself.

The Needlewriters audience was the very best – attentive, responsive and, or so it felt,  gentle and generous.

They’ve got it just right at Needlewriters, people can have a drink and some food and get mellow without getting legless and the ambience is intimate without being claustrophobic.

I was glad that I decided to read some of those Fibonacci poems not just because, people said, they enjoyed them, but also because they did their trick and my speech barely stumbled all evening.

I even sold and signed some copies of the novel and, yes, enjoyed the whole evening thoroughly. I was ready though,  when it was over, to walk round the corner to our excellent Indian restaurant for a late night curry and, yes, I have to admit it, the rest of that bottle of white wine. Thank you Needlewriters Lewes for inviting me and thanks again to everyone who came along.

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I’m feeling good today. I know that’s not headline news stuff but, actually, for me, it is. Some of you may know that I have been ill with Pulmonary Embolism, blood clots in my lungs, since about this time last year. It hasn’t been fun feeling ill most of the time, having difficulties breathing and, at times, even walking. Well, after some rough months of illness, I got diagnosed in March this year and then the medication began.

First of all a few weeks of self-injecting with a drug called Tinzapanin sodium – this was a great way of getting over any squeamishness I might have had about sticking needles into myself. Soon I was doing it as if I was merely putting a pin into a pin cushion. This was the emergency treatment which was designed to stop the clots from growing any larger.

Then I was moved on to Warfarin tablets, the stuff often used as rat poison, yes, I know, charming,  I thought so too. I had to take these tablets for six months, the plan being that they would lower my blood’s coagulation rate so that the blood clots could begin the long job of dissolving without the danger of new clots forming. This, of course,  increased the danger of haemorrhaging so I had to carry an emergency card just in case I had an accident because the scene would have been rather bloody. I was told I couldn’t have a tooth extracted or any surgical procedures while I was on Warfarin.  I was also told that the doctors didn’t want me to take it for more than six months because, six years ago, I had had a brain haemorrhage. So you can see, this has been a difficult year.

These daily doses of Warfarin where regulated by regular blood tests to see the level of coagulation in my system.

This ritual was performed twice a week, then once a week, then eventually once a month, unless the level of anti-coagulant dropped. I was often recognised as the man with the bandage on his arm.

After all those scans and x-rays, I wasn’t too worried about this blood-test regime and, gradually, I started to feel better – less breathless as the fluid on my lungs dispersed, and, eventually, I felt almost energetic again. The consultant decided after regular visits to the hospital, that six months of Warfarin should do the trick as they could find no underlying cause of those blood clots and decided that they were probably caused by the severe lung infection I suffered last winter.

Pulmonary Embolism is a serious, in fact a life-threatening condition so it is with relief that I can now consider myself out of danger. There’s a 1 in 5 chance of developing another clot once you have had the condition but, I’m told,  that this is unlikely in my case and I certainly hope that the doctors are right. I have to repeat  something I have said on these pages many times before: yet again, in my experience, the British National Health Service, in spite of its difficulties, has been fantastic. Without its care, I might not have been here writing this. So, as I said at the top of this blog, the fact that I’m feeling good today is news-worthy – well for me anyway.

Before my diagnosis, I did a number of public readings of my novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love, without realising that I was seriously ill. I’m glad I didn’t realise the danger I was in when I took part in the Polari Literary Salon readings at at the Royal Festival Hall in February but, looking at the short video that someone took, I can hear that my breathing was anything but normal. Phew. No such problems next week then when I’m reading at Needlewriters Lewes with the poets Sian Thomas and Liz Bahs.

I plan to read from  my first novel Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love (published by Ward Wood Publishing) but also from my new one, Blue Notes, Still Frames, to be published by Ward Wood in 2015. If you are anywhere near Lewes, UK, it would be great to see you there – no wheezing or breathlessness and definitely no blood this time, I promise.

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I’m getting ready for my next novel reading and this time, very conveniently, it’s in my home town of Lewes, UK, just down the road from my house at the building known as The Needlemakers.  I shall be sharing the evening with two other East Sussex writers, the poets Sian Thomas and Liz Bahs.  http://www.needlewriters.co.uk/

The building was once a candlemakers’ factory that,  during World War I, became a surgical needle manufacturers. It now houses an eclectic collection of specialist shops and a splendid cafe where the Lewes Needlewriters’ meetings take place four times a year. The events are usually well attended because Lewes folk appear to like the mixture of readings, food and drink. The atmosphere is always benign and receptive so I am really looking forward to it.  http://www.needlemakers.co.uk/

The Needlemakers Cafe doesn’t just russle up great meals, it makes an excellent performance space too in the middle of our arty and rather liberal town here in the South Downs National Park. So, you might like to come on down next Thursday and make a night of it with some wine, supper and, I hope you’ll agree, some interesting readings.

I am now thumbing through my novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love (publisher Ward Wood Publishing) trying to decide which passages to read – the bits that give the spirit of the novel without giving out too many spoilers.

I’m also trying to decide whether to read some of the Fibonacci poetry that I have recently put together in a collection called Brief Encounters about, yes, some of my brief encounters,  or, maybe to include a chapter from my new novel, Blue Notes, Still Frames, also like Stephen D, set in Brighton and due to be published by Ward Wood in 2015. I may just go with the flow on the night. These Needlewriters events are always supported by Matt Birch who runs Skylark, one of the Needlemakers shops, a splendidly Lewesian emporium that stocks not only books but arts and crafts many with an ecological and ethnic bias.  http://www.skylarkshop.com/

Matt is one of that great but endangered species, an independent bookseller, and I, for one, am impressed by his support for writers – and not just us local ones. He will be selling tickets for the event but he will also do a display of the books being read on the night so, if you haven’t done so already, this would be a great opportunity for you to buy yourself a copy of my and the other readers’ books – the authors’ signing will be free!

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I’ve been looking at some of my answers published on-line yesterday, pleased to remember those foothill years as a novelist when I was planning my first novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love.
Sometimes, I’m amazed that I ever got it together and that it finally made it into print. Amazed and thrilled.

My fellow Ward Wood novelist, the Irish writer, Shauna Gilligan came up with some great questions when she asked me to do an interview with her for her blog, A Girl’s Writing Is Never Done. We did a question and answer session on my novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love and it was a useful exercise for me to go back into my memory to find some of the reasons and motivations for my writing about Stephen and his progress through the late 1960s in his hometown of Brighton, Sussex. Shauna’s impressively sharp line of questioning drew out of me thoughts I didn’t know I’d had or that I’d forgotten. So thanks Shauna – much appreciated, especially the stuff about James Joyce and one of my favourite books, The Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man.

I hope, some time, that she will let me pose her a series of questions about her terrific novel, Happiness Comes From Nowhere.

If you’d like to read our interview, here’s the link to Shauna’s blog:

http://shaunaswriting.com/wordpress/2014/09/colin-bell-on-brighton-music-and-his-own-stephen-d/

Thanks for asking me to do this, Shauna.

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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:

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