DONALD J. BINGLE

As most of you know, I ran a successful Kickstarter through my publishing company, 54-40' Orphyte, Inc., for my mystery thriller, Frame Shop, last October. The great news is that I am easily in the black for Frame Shop (partially, of course, because of how inexpensive it is to self-publish these days), which is always a good thing for an author. The bad news is that post-Kickstarter sales have languished since the launch despite good reviews and the book being named as a semi

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

Writers write for all sorts of reasons, but the general public always seems to want to create a simple dichotomy between writers who write for money and writers who write for the love of writing. Of course, then they generally sneer at the former and laugh at the latter. As with most things, all is not as simple as it might appear to those who glibly gloss over subjects, rather than giving them any serious thought. Even with minimal thought (I like to think I'm efficient, n

In the midst of my Kickstarter campaign for Frame Shop, Gail Martin offered to let me do a guest blog post on Killing Off Fictional Characters. You should all go check out Gail's website at www.disquietingvisions.com. In the course of setting up my new website and transferring over my old blogs for ... er ... posterity, I include the text below: Many years ago, an amateur graphologist told a business colleague that I was, based on my signature, a serial killer. When she assu

During the Kickstarter for Frame Shop, Jennifer Brozek, a prolific writer and fellow GenCon Writers' Symposium panelist, let me do a guest post on her blog, Tell Me. Check her blog and her books at www.jenniferbrozek.com. Here's the text of that post: Every once in a while, I see a t-shirt that says “Be nice to me or I’ll put you in my next novel.” My non-writer friends think it is funny. Heck, a few writers I know have worn such shirts. Truth is, those t-shirts really irri

Janine Spendlove let me guest blog on her site during the Kickstarter for Frame Shop because, well, she's generally a swell friend. Check out her site and books at www.ailionora.com. Check it out You may recall that Janine's book, War of the Seasons: The Human, ws one of the stretch goals Kickstarter. Here's the text of my guest post: You understand quite a bit about group dynamics already. After all, you went to high school. High school is all about group dynamics. How to re

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

I've already blogged about serendipity in my writing career and about my reluctance to write for free, at least in situations where I am not writing to assist a charity or cause I support or am not writing to promote my other work or some aspect of my development as a writer. One way, of course, to help develop your career as a writer and to help hone your writing skills is to take on projects that are outside of your comfort zone, that introduce you to new genres, new edit