About the author, A. E. Engle in his own words…
I have been writing for quite a long time, off and on really for over 40 years or so. I’m an old man now. I’ve always been a pantser, but have learned the art of outlining. When I was in high school back when Duran Duran and the Rubik’s cube were all the sensation, I read Elric from Michael Moorcock. Then I read the other 5 books. Then just about anything similar, except all the popular stuff. I’ve only just recently read The Crystal Shard by R.A. Salvatore for example. But I was a nerdy kid, played AD&D, listened (still do) to heavy metal, specifically Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, and so on. I dressed like it too.
In creative writing I or II, with Mr. Larry Lasley (hey Las!), I started a piece on a D&D character of mine. He loved it. I loved it. Part of it a friend of mine wrote. Actually, the pieces Lasley liked, he wrote. it was my first real lesson in Creative Writing and one I will (obviously) never forget. My junior or senior year I was turned on to a completely different book: Anthem, by Ayn Rand. I was blown away. I was listening to a lot of Rush then too, specifically 2112. Such was my life.
Years later after the military and coming back to civilian life, I started writing again. In 2004 I heard about National Novel Writing Month. I decided to run with a short story I wrote in ’99 called Tender Rage. I turned a 900 word short into a 50,000 word novel by the seat of my pants. Literally. I did Nanowrimo three more years, acting as Municipal Liaison, started a writers group, and a youth writers group, where we published anthologies for 2 years, then pfft… I stopped writing again after I graduated with my Master’s. I dunno why, I don’t remember, my life once again shifted.
Fast forward sixteen years later… I’m on a coaching call (I’m a real estate agent) and my coach says “tell us something about you we don’t know” and called on my first. I said, “well, I’m a writer. I’ve written four 50,000 word novels, a few short stories, and I’m an award winning poet. But I’ve never been published.” and I thought… WHY???? I started writing again. Oh, this was COVID era by the way. I started free writing in a journal which was write for 20 minutes, don’t stop. And I wrote short stories in that journal so each day I would continue the story. if I ended a story in the middle of the 20 minutes, or even with 2 minutes to go, I had to start a new story.
And I did Nano again that year for the first time since 2007.
I pulled my first nano novel off the shelf and said, “well… let’s publish this one” and set out to revise AND most importantly FINISH the novel. Two years and an extra 75000 words later, as of this writing, I am in the final stages of edits, revisions, and BETA reason.
Darkness of the Northern Sky is that novel pulled from an old 900 word short story I wrote last century (so fun to say that). Oh, yeah, that short story… is a potion of a chapter in this book.
My second nano novel by the way, is pulled from that little story I wrote (well, my friend wrote-ish) back in high school.