ABLE ARCHER

 

The Cold War lasted nearly 50 years, pitting the world’s superpowers against one-another with the threat of mutually-assured destruction hanging in the balance.  In the decades since the fall of the Soviet Union, it appears that humankind has not learned to treat one-another better.  Maybe we have the same binary fixation, no longer on a global level but now at the person-to-person level.

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There were stark contrasts between the Marxist Communist East and the Reaganomics Capitalist West of the 1980’s.  John Le Carre’s spy novels delved into the existence of the smaller nations of the great binary.  The gray that make black and white.   Of course, the superpower binary inspired much of Tom Clancy’s early work.  These differences seemed quite clearly defined by the politicians during the 1980’s, but what has happened in the decades since?  Are the lines still so clear?

 

Able Archer is a revisionist view of our shared history.  Taken directly from the events of September 1983, Able Archer not only considers the geopolitical landscape of the era, but the social and economic conventions of the times.  The novel does not avoid the tumult of American and Soviet misconceptions of one another, but rather dives head-first into the paranoia and saber-rattling.

I have taken the opportunity to use the events of 1983 to speak to our modern world.  To present the fractured society we call America in a symbolic and meaningful way. 

 

“I loved traveling into the cold war with you, and was reminded while reading your novel of how much power there is in fiction that imparts knowledge at the same time as it entertains (just look at The Godfather, The Jungle, Gone With the Wind…!). Though you’re clearly diverging from the historical record as the novel progresses, I loved how your book is so clearly about something, and is written with a corresponding urgency.” -Eliot Schrefer

 

My reader is someone that desires accuracy.  A fan of Robert Ludlum or Dan Brown, my reader wants strong storytelling that speaks to them.  My writing is clean, uncomplicated in language, yet deep in concept and message.  The lines between actual history and speculation blur, giving the reader a deep sense of the "what if?"

 

“This is a highly ambitious project, one which Lars makes look easy, as where the story has so many moving parts, the telling—from Lars’ unfussy and invisible prose style, to his tidy and well-groomed chapters—delivers the reader directly to the unfolding events, which are palpably tense.” -David Grand

 

I consider Able Archer to be the Prequel to Dystopia.  I had originally intended the novel to stand alone, but my first agent convinced me that the story was so compelling, I should expand it into a trilogy.  I have done so, recently completing the follow-up, Autumn Forge, and commencing work on the final piece, Last Train to Clarksville.  A treatment for a television series and a rough screenplay for the pilot have also been created, at the first agent's behest.