DONALD J. BINGLE

Great and gracious greetings! Being an author is like being an actor or a door-to-door salesman. There's lots of rejection and disappointment and you have to have a healthy ego to not let it get you down. Plus, you need to engage in a bit of shameless self-promotion. That's why I submitted Frame Shop to the Soon to be Famous Illinois Author Project last December, when it first came out. I'm happy to say that the top twelve books (i.e., the semi-finalists) have been announce

As most of you probably know by now, I launched a Kickstarter today for my novella, Frame Shop. It’s a mystery/thriller set in a writers’ group and punctuated by violence, humor, and occasional writing advice. I’m hoping it appeals not only to my regular readers (“Hi, Mom!”), but to mystery readers in general, along with authors, NaNoWriMo participants, writers’ group members, and aspiring writers. If you haven’t checked it out yet, take a look at http://kck.st/YMyWaS and fee

Summer is not only convention season--I am a regular panelist on writing topics at both Origins and GenCon--but it is also the season for outdoor cafe' readings and open microphone nights at local coffee shops and art galleries, which means that I have more readings scheduled than other times of the year. That's fine. I like reading and some people tell me that I do a good job of them. (Of course, most of those people are my friends, so their judgment is already suspect.) A

I do plenty of readings at writing and genre conventions, book signings, local author nights, and the like of excerpts from my books or short stories. You can find two of my readings online: Seasons Critiquings at http://vimeo.com/57106257; and Someday at http://vimeo.com/63190661. I think I do a pretty good job at readings and I like the opportunity to add pauses and inflection to the bare words to make them even more dramatic. But I never felt that I was up to the task of