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R.F.Ollerhead -The Midfolk Seasons - Bitterns End

Welcome to Midfolk, the fictional English East Anglian county where anything can happen and often does.

R.F.Ollerhead has written four 'Midfolk Seasons' farcical comic novels. The first one is called 'Bitterns End'. The others will be published in due course.

'Bitterns End' is about artists and the creative

climate they inhabit in our society. The story follows an innovative landscape painter who toils away in her small dwelling perched on the edge of an eroding cliff.

The man she is still married too, but has been

separated from for seventeen years, has now achieved both celebrity and notoriety as a conceptual artist in London.

Their son, who has not set eyes upon his father since he was a baby, lives with his mother. The narrative charts his sexual awakening and when an unbelievable storm arrives, a turbulent and tumultuous period is heralded for everyone.

the author

R.F.Ollerhead - Bitterns End

After completing a degree in graphic design at the London College of Printing, R.F.Ollerhead undertook an MA at the Royal College of Art. He has worked in London in Studio TV, animated film, independent cinema and in broadcast documentaries.

For several decades now he has lived in South Norfolk. As well as being an arts lover in general, his lifelong passion has been for serious music and he has latterly earned his living in East Anglia as a busy piano teacher.

When a valued friend had commented that a film script he had written was perhaps too novelistic, R.F.Ollerhead started to write novels. 'Bitterns End' was the first of them. So far he has finished six novels and also a volume of linked short stories about a portrait painter called 'Watching Paint Dry'. He trusts that the experience of reading his novels is not comparable to watching printing ink dry.

R.F.Ollerhead stands at the end of the road to oblivion and looks out to sea from the Hopland clifftop in Midfolk, unaware of the rodent on his shoulder

other Midfolk novels

Coming soon from R.F.Ollerhead, author of Bitterns End:

A legendary crinkly rock group reunites in the twin feuding resorts of Upper and Lower Snottisham.

The rockers come up against a baroque viol consort that had given a passionate passiontide church concert on Good Friday and listen hard.

The Easter celebrations lead to seemingly miraculous events and to chaos during the group's gigantic gig at an old US airbase.

Oxbridge archaeologists dig alongside a riverside Roman fort. They discover much more than they bargained for. Then the bargaining really begins.

A nearby Midfolk Broads holiday centre form hell gets involved and so does a disfunctional American hereditary earl and his decaying stately home.

In the scorching summer weather, several disasterous fires help stoke up the passions.

On Christmas Eve a vicar, who is dreaming of heaven, scans the heavens with his telescope from the top of his church tower.

Is an ambitious high energy physics experiment getting out of control at nearby Midswich University so as to threaten the existence of the Universe itself?

And what about the Second Coming on the dark side that seems have taken place?

more projects

R.F.Ollerhead, author of Bitterns End, eventually intends to publish the books below

The Afterlife of Anton B.

Harold in Germany

Watching Paint Dry

Nell and Martin, once art students together, meet years later to plan an experimental film about the great but eccentric Austrian composer Anton Bruckner. They have finance promised from a retired supermarket mogul who is somewhat eccentric too and mentally very frail.Nell, the director, tries to get Martin to write the script she dreams of, but Martin isn't too keen on the composer or his music. Eventually, that all changes and the production goes on a manic roller coaster ride of intrigue and complications.Will the film get made? Will anyone connected with the production remain sane?
A young viola player, Harold Kidd, on the back desk of a London orchestra is called up to the army and subsequently finds himself in the front row of a landing craft on D-Day.After becoming shell shocked, in a confused state, and dressed in an overlarge German uniform acquired from a corpse, he decides to set off to Berlin in order to assassinate Adolf Hitler.Of course, as we all know from history, he doesn't actually manage to achieve this, but he does eventually reap vengence on another very nasty Nazi.With a plot like this, believe it or not, this is the author's attempt at a more serious novel!
Francis Oakerbee is a succesful portrait painter with a vast warehouse studio and living area in the East End of London.This book is a set of linked short stories, each one centred on a particular portrait commission. However, running through them all is the continuing saga with Francis' older mistress, Georgina, the wife of a French diplomat. Georgina is always trying to get Francis to expensively furnish and decorate his studio. Francis would really like to be more bohemian, but then portrait painters need to behave very conventionally with their clients. This is his central conflict. His relationship with his au pair, an out of work Sanskrit graduate, with whom he is rather taken, as well as that with his impossible agent also loom large in this situation comedy series in first person prose.
where to buy

R.F.Ollerhead - Bitterns End

A Bright Pen book published by Authors OnLine Ltd

ISBN 978-07552-1337-5

Available in paperback:

£8.99 UK, $13.95, €10.88

from www.authorsonline.co.uk, from all bookshops,

Amazon, Amazon UK and other websites

Available as an eBook:

from www.authorsonline.co.uk at £3.95

Amazon Kindle at £4.07

Other R.F.Ollerhead Midfolk Seasons volumes to follow in due course

contact

R.F.Ollerhead

The Midfolk Seasons - Autumn

Bitterns End

If you have read this novel, whether you really loved it or hated it or if your experience of it was somewhere in between these poles, the author would welcome your comments. He will do his best to try to get back to you if it is appropriate.

news

Latest News

The author's signing at Beccles Books on Saturday 12 November was so successful that he ran out of copies of 'Bitterns End' to sign! He thanks again everyone who was kind enough to buy or order books. Also many thanks to Lee Mason of Beccles Books who runs such a brilliant bookshop and who was so helpful throughout. Thanks are due to Alison and Jo at Lowestoft Waterstones for their encouragement and help during the signing on 1 December. The town is lucky to have such a well stocked bookshop with such committed staff. The author was pleased to sell copies and to be able to further spread the word about 'Bitterns End' and the County of Midfolk.R.F.Ollerhead hopes everyone who has the book will enjoy reading 'Bitterns End' and pass on any enthusiasm they may have for the novel to other friends, far and wide.With independently published books, when an author does not have a the benefit of a publisher's publicity machine, word of mouth is very important.Ipswich Waterstones did the author proud on Saturday 7th January 2012 at his signing. He thanks all those who purchased copies and hope they like the book. He was also pleased to meet lots of lovely people to whom he gave out his card with the details of 'Bitterns End' and this website. Janine Smith and other bookshop staff, who were so welcoming, made life as comfortable as possible during the author's stay near the front of the store.BITTERNS END IS NOW A BEST SELLER!YES!IT WAS THE MOST PURCHASED BOOK AT BECCLES BOOKS IN 2011.Now having conquered Beccles it's time to take on the WORLD!Meanwhile, in the hyper-real world of Midfolk, 'Bitterns End' has also been causing quite a stir!READ ON:R.F.Ollerhead was recently mobbed as he signed copies of 'Bitterns End' in the bookshop of Geraldines, the legendary Midswich department store. Teams of bouncers had been installed at all the doors of the building but they were powerless to hold back the hoards as they surged towards a great piles of volumes surrounding the seated, perspiring author. Afterwards, the store's book buyer, Stuart Pratt, observed that it was so lucky that he had played his hunch and ordered the famous book printers Clods of Bunbury plc to turn out lots of extra copies beforehand. He said it was the biggest sensation since T.K.Maxwell visited them to sign one of her teenage witch-school sagas, 'Betty Botter and the Anthopologist's Egg'.'Bitterns End' has just been short-listed for the 'Babbling Brooker Literary Prize'. This year the jury has decided to try and counteract the perceived dumbing down of recent times. The chair of the jury, the model, ghost-writer-assisted novelist and generally over-inflated personality, Kathy Bruce said: "We've ad too many books lately with lots of f****** f words in em and we chose Bitten Ends (sic) cuz it don't have none in it apart for one 'effing'. It's about time we f****** cleaned up our act and went for big-time literature, whatevah, instead."Shooting is about to start of the feature film 'Goodbye Secksea Broad' based on 'Bitterns End'. In order to shoot the interiors, the Great Framthorpe Film Studios are being brought out of retirement. It's their first film since 'Trawlers' shot in in the 1930s. No expense being spared - they're building an ambitious set of the whole of Central London on the back lot for the scenes in the Capital. It is rumoured that American star Jimmy Dipp is due to play Will Constable and Vermilion Schwarzenegger is to portray Celia McCallum. Ms. Schwarzenneger is undergoing an intensive muscle-wasting regime in preparation. Do look out for the film at a Midswich multiplex before long!

N.B. R.F.Ollerhead Statement

R.F.Ollerhead has put his name 'R.F.Ollerhead' and the novel name 'Bitterns End' in this website many times so as to attract search engines to it. R.F.Ollerhead hopes they find it soon as endless sites pop up when R.F.Ollerhead and Bitterns End are entered on search engines. This site is the personal one of R.F.Ollerhead and so it needs to come up on the first page when 'R.F.Ollerhead' is entered for a search. At the moment the own site of R.F.Ollerhead doesn't seem to be on the list that pops up on, for instance, Google. But one is sure the situation will improve and R.F.Ollerhead will one day be near the head of the list. Until then, R.F. Ollerhead will do his best to help communication the existence of the R.F.Ollerhead website and so this final 'R.F.Ollerhead' should reach the total needed on the site according to Wix information.

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