A.R.Yngve's "Notes Toward Becoming A Better Writer": January 2011

Monday, January 24, 2011

Homepage Update: ALIEN LAND

 Now, I'm not very fond of having to rewrite my old stuff. But people asked me: When are you going to do a sequel to DARC AGES and ALIEN BEACH? (It amazes me that I actually have fans -- three or maybe four of them, wife included.)

I went into my files and looked at a sequel I tried to write years ago, ALIEN LAND. It wasn't very good. I took it off my old homepage in 2006.

So now I'm trying to rewrite ALIEN LAND on the fly, as I make it a Web serial on my homepage.
This is of course very foolish.
On the other hand, to see one's own incomplete stuff posted online makes a powerful incentive to finish it... and there's the added excitement of not really knowing for sure how it's going to end (honestly!).

- ALIEN LAND - Web serial in progress

- The "prequel", ALIEN BEACH (complete novel)

As for DARC AGES... a short sequel already exists, but I plan to write more and longer sequel books.

Friday, January 21, 2011

DARC AGES Kindle Edition -- Out Now


My epic novel DARC AGES (originally appearing as an illustrated Web serial in 1999) is now finally released in a special Kindle edition. The e-book is for sale on Amazon.com for $10.99 (includes free international wireless delivery via Amazon Whispernet).

And if you think 10.99 is too expensive for a 100,000-word novel, you can still read the complete illustrated Web edition for free, at my homepage. (Freedom of choice!)

Some reader reactions to previous editions of DARC AGES:

"DARC AGES is one of the best books that I've read in a LONG time, the only other thing that is up to par with it is Catch 22, in my humble opinion."
-Scott Lovenberg, USA (Guestbook posting, 2000)


"It has suspense and action and romance. It has a great ending and I wouldn't mind seeing other books by this author..."
-David Andrew Ellison, USA (Amazon.com reader review, 2001)

"Darc Ages by A.R. Yngve is a very entertaining story that walks a tightrope between humor and seriousness. Many of the humorous elements have a light and a dark side; I both laugh silently to myself and get an uncomfortable feeling in my stomach. "The uncomfortable element is hard to put one's finger on, but comes from that under the surface of this wacky and exciting adventure lies social criticism on different levels. Sometimes it is obvious and sometimes covert, but often to the point. [...]
"It is difficult to score Darc Ages, for it is rather uneven, but the fact remains that I simply like it. It gets a strong 3."
Score: 3 out 5
-Vinter (Review on Swedish website Catahya, 2006.)

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

DARC AGES Serial Complete, Other News, Film At Eleven

This week's homepage update is the final chapter and Epilogue of my web serial DARC AGES.


Which makes the illustrated online novel complete -- and a special Kindle Edition will come in 2011.

I'm currently writing a novel in my native tongue Swedish (so I won't forget how to -- just kidding). It's a kind of "deconstruction" of the Heroic Fantasy genre, with the working title DEATH'S BROTHER. (Of course, in Swedish that would be "Dödens Broder".)

The novel came about when I asked myself:
Could I write a fairly credible story about a "lost civilization", set in prehistoric times, without getting into any Atlantis-ish nonsense?
Because there are such vast eons of time that are currently blank spaces in our history books. One can't help but wonder: Did humans sit around and twiddle their thumbs for 90,000 years, until someone shouted: "I just invented agriculture! Let's build a civilization!"
The big problem with writing about a "lost civilization" is that the story will naturally have a downbeat tone: It's about something that didn't last. But since I've started the book, I might as well finish it...

A children's book I wrote for the Swedish press Wela Förlag will come out in 2011, titled SUPERMOBILEN.

Saturday, January 01, 2011

Homepage Update & More

My official homepage has been updated with more free reading:

- DARC AGES
- THE ARGUS PROJECT

The DARC AGES serial is soon complete.
A new Web serial of ALIEN LAND - the sequel to ALIEN BEACH - will begin around springtime 2011. This version differs from the original Web serial, and will probably be a bit longer.

Also look forward to several more short stories in the PRECINCT 20: DEAD STRANGE cycle, with the titles "The Spiteful Dead", "Sylvester Bevere Must Die" and "The Two Deaths of Lamminkein".

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And here's an interesting essay by Trent Walters:


Oh, the Humanity of A.E. van Vogt's Monsters: Reorienting Critics and Readers to the van Vogt Method

Choice quote:
Van Vogt's first plotting technique was the 'fictional sentence.' For the first story he sold, a true confessional, he made every sentence ring with an emotion. 
For science fiction, he wanted critics and readers to read every sentence and use their imagination to fill the sentence in, leaving at least one - what he called - 'hang-up' per sentence. 
The hang-up did not yield all there was to know about the subject, forcing the reader on to the next sentence, then the next and so on. 

Read the rest.