David Bell

David Bell grew up on a diet of 'Tintin', 'Sharpe', 'Hornblower', 'Where the Wild Things Are', and all Iain M Banks's books.

He studied Graphic Design and Illustration at Liverpool Art School, and with a successful career in London advertising under his belt, swapped hemispheres to do ads in New Zealand. In 1999 he set up Adschool, Auckland's internationally acclaimed course for aspiring young writers and art directors. He returned to creative advertising in 2010, a job he now shares with his first love- storytelling.

David is currently working on his latest series- ‘The Only Dog is a…’ which is a mammoth full-colour illustrated children's story book project, aiming to do at least 100 variations of the same story, each book featuring a different breed of dog. The story itself is a return to the original inspiration for ‘the Adventures of Llewelyn and Gelert’, about how Feiyan the dog breeder gets a rather silly Emperor to stop asking her to give him ever sillier dogs and settle for the best dog ever. The series will culminate in book featuring all 100 dogs in the same place.

His previous work includes 'The Dog Hunters', 'The Dog Assassins' and 'The Dog Army', the first trilogy in the ongoing series of 'the Adventures of Llewelyn and Gelert'. The series has garnered 5 star reviews on Amazon worldwide.

He also has two other ongoing book projects, unrelated to wolfhounds and medieval action, as well as developing various movie treatments for Hollywood.

David says 'I got the idea for the Adventures of Llewelyn and Gelert when I realised that in ancient China, Chow dogs were bred to look like lions and Pekingeses to look like Chinese dragons. "How and why did that start?" I wondered. The more I looked into it, the more I realised that nearly ALL dogs look the way they do because of the intervention of man. What an amazing subject to shape stories around, and what an opportunity to invent entirely new, fantastic dogs. Then all I needed were some characters to follow as they investigate the forces that shaped all the weird and wonderful dogs we live with today. That's when I remembered the sad story of Gelert, the legendary medieval wolfhound who died defending baby Prince Llewelyn. If I re-wrote the ending so that Gelert lived, then he and Prince Llewelyn would be the glue to hold the narrative together.

'Spoiler Alert: By the end of The Dog Army, Llewelyn and Gelert are both immortal. This will allow them to go through time, which was always part of my long term dream- to involve my characters in all the great moments in history. For instance, I want Gelert to be responsible for the death of Genghis Khan and to be mistaken for one of the War Dogs that Cortez and Pizarro took on their conquest of South America. I’d like him to pee in Napoleon’s boots the night before Waterloo, and I've half a mind to have Llewelyn learning to fly a Dambusters Lancaster bomber in WW2. There might be sporadic incidents when Llewelyn attempts to reclaim his right to be ruler of Wales- a constant thorn in the side of the English monarchy.

It’s not that I want to do ‘alternative history’ or historical novels, but I love the idea of Llewelyn and Gelert becoming Flashman-like characters who are always ‘there’, always subtly altering the course of events to create the history we know today.

Other characters from Jiang will continue to pop up, especially Feiyan (who will also become immortal), Llewelyn’s only true love. Captain Chang will run a large brewery in modern day Thailand (Chang Beer is a real thing), and the evil Friar William (Chien Mow) is never going to go away. He will be Llewelyn and Feiyan’s eternal nemesis.'

David uses Auckland NZ as a base from which to travel the world with Jeneal and Frank, their son, and Dexter, a dog of mixed parentage and very small brain.