DONALD J. BINGLE

Two quick knife thrusts skewering my gut, then the man in black leather twisted the knife and ran, but not before grabbing the McGuffin. As I lie here on the floor, blood soaking into the medium pile carpet, my vision dimming as life flows out of me in crimson pulses, I wonder if it was all worth it. The betrayal, the confrontation, the plotting, and all the burials -- Jeez, it's a lot more work to bury a body than you think. And for what? Life was so simple, so happy, so v

I confess, I didn't read a lot of comic books before my college days (where my dorm had a comic book library), but on the great divide between fans of DC and fans of Marvel, I'm clearly a Marvel guy. One of the main reasons for this is the difference between the powers of the mainstays for the two franchises (Spiderman, for Marvel, with limited powers vs. Superman, for DC, with virtually unlimited powers). Sure, this is a broad generalization re the two worlds, with plenty of

Now, I'm not a writer for television (though I'm available--call me, really), but I'm an avid consumer of television and I'm a writer, so I confess to having a few opinions about writing and television, including why some shows are successful and some aren't and how shows change over time (aside from the fact that the female lead's hair tends to get longer and longer, the longer a show stays on the air--heck, you can tell what season a clip from Castle is by that fact alone).

My last blog post dealt with issues raised by letting people at work know you are a writer, but one thing I did not touch on in that post is the role serendipity--luck, fate, coincidence, whatever you may call it--can have on your writing career. Actors are very familiar with this topic. Whether "discovered" by a talent scout in a drugstore or getting a plum role because the first choice backed out because of other commitments (Sean Connery as James Bond; Harrison Ford as I