-Writer on Demand-
DONALD J. BINGLE
THE BOOKS
My books include novels and novellas. Some are from traditional publishers, while others are from small presses or are self-published. Take a look and see what you might like.
Flash Drive
ISBN: 9781732343443
Dick Thornby's not Hollywood's idea of a spy. He's a new kind of spy for a new kind of world.
Dick Thornby's been on a lot of missions for the Subsidiary. There's been success, failure, death, and plenty of explosions. He's saved the world, but he's lost partners and maybe his marriage along the way. Being a spy is a dirty job; being a double agent is even worse.
Of course, it's complicated when you're an international spy with a wife, a kid, and a mortgage, but everyone thinks you're really a waste water treatment consultant. And, it's bad when your family finds out about your clandestine life, your wife wants to keep tabs on where you are, and your kid tries to emulate your espionage activities. But, it's downright dangerous for your career, your family, your colleagues, and your prospects of living until retirement when the powers-that-be at the Subsidiary discover you haven't been keeping the secrets you should have. Forced to bring his family in tow on an off-the-books mission to investigate a mysterious flash in the middle of the Australian Outback, Dick Thornby has to contend with foreign agents, a sinister Japanese cult, outlandish conspiracy theories, and futuristic weapons from the past to save his family and himself while still completing his bizarre quest for the truth about what happened out woop woop and why so many people with weapons care.
Semi-finalist in 2021 Soon-to-be-Famous Illinois Author Contest.
Wet Work
ISBN 9781732343429
Dick Thornby is not Hollywood's idea of a spy.
He's not a supercool guy in a tuxedo or a crazed loner who does nothing but kill and drive fast. He's just a regular guy with some skills for a job that needs doing. He also has a wife, a teenaged kid, a mortgage, and all the mundane problems associated with life. His friends from the New Jersey subdivision where he lives all think he is a wastewater treatment consultant. But instead of dealing with the dirty job of processing sewage in third world countries, he is really on missions, some mundane and dirty, others of vital importance and even dirtier.
After taking personal revenge on the criminal behind both his son’s injuries and the continued disintegration of his marriage, Dick Thornby is teamed with Acacia (“Ace”) Zyreb, a young, female agent from the East European office of the Subsidiary, to deal with the mystery behind coordinated hacking of the braking systems of several car models.
Doing his best to maintain his vows to his wife, Dick struggles to deal with the inexperience and provocative attitude of Ace on her first non-European mission. Their somewhat combative investigation takes a left turn by uncovering a much more sinister threat to the world and to Dick's family. He's willing to risk his job, his partner, and his life to eliminate the threat, but the clock is ticking.
Available in trade paperback and ebook versions.
The Love-Haight Case Files, Book 2: Fighting for Other-Than-Human Rights
Evelyn Love and Thomas Brock love the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, love the law, love representing the rights of supernatural OTs (Other-Than-Humans) who accompanied the return of magic to the world, and just might love each other, even though Thomas is now a ghost. But with discrimination against OTs ramping up and the entire law office staff living under threat of death or worse, the cases are darker, the mysteries are murkier, the clients are more desperate, the stakes are higher, and the parallels to the real world are even more compelling. Book 2 of The Love-Haight Case Files tells four new, stand-alone tales of mystery, horror, suspense, action, and romance in a legal procedural/urban fantasy where love and danger both flourish in unexpected ways.
Part fantasy noir, part supernatural legal thriller, Love-Haight sparkles with wit and originality. Fans of urban fantasy are sure to love Thomas Brock and Evelyn Love! —Troy Denning, New York Times bestselling author
More Love! More Haight-Ashbury! More monsters! More case files!
The Love-Haight Case Files, Book 1: Seeking Supernatural Justice
Ever since the Summer of Love, the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco has been known for attracting weird and unconventional souls, but things got even stranger when the monsters moved in.
Magic has returned to the world and with it a host of supernatural creatures--not just vampires and ghosts, but sentient gargoyles, ghouls, sprites, faeries, and more. The frightened citizenry, holier-than-thou bigots, headline-seeking reporters, and harried police refer to them as OTs (Other-Than-Humans), but Thomas Brock and Evelyn Love believe even magical creatures have legal rights.
Delve into their case files for a genre-bending mix of mystery, horror, investigatory suspense, pulse-pounding thrills, courtroom drama, and romance. The city’s OT element is sometimes malevolent, sometimes misunderstood, and often discriminated against. Brock and Love represent them all, dead, undead, or alive—whatever the case, whatever the species.
Winner of three prestigious Silver Falchion Awards
for mysteries, thrillers, and suspense novels:
Best Fantasy, Best Urban Fantasy, and Best Multi-Genre Novel.
Love-Haight is a comedy, locked within a mystery, hidden in a horror story... Wonderfully clever, stylish, and ghoulish. Delightfully twisted fun! —William C. Dietz, New York Times bestselling author
Frame Shop: Critiquing Another Writer Can Be Murder
ISBN-9780692342626
From its lurid, over-the-top prologue to its quirky addendum, Frame Shop delivers fun, intrigue, and variety to its readers, whether they are long-time mystery fans or aspiring writers attracted by its writers' group setting.
Harold J. Ackerman thinks his latest cat mystery proves he is the best writer in the Pleasant Meadows Writers’ Guild and Critiquing Society, not that the motley assortment of poets, poseurs, and wannabe writers in the PMWGCS provides much competition. But then Gantry Ellis, the NYT best-selling author of the Danger McAdams mystery thrillers, joins the group and wows everyone. Still, Harold hopes to leverage his connection to the famous author into a big break, agreeing to help his mentor with some crime research between contentious critique sessions. Soon, though, his efforts lead to murder ... and then more murder.
Frame Shop is a 42,000 word mystery/thriller set in a writers' group. Unlike a traditional who-dunnit, Frame Shop mixes violence, humor, and occasional writing advice in a format that will keep mystery lovers, aspiring authors NaNoWriMo participants, and established writers turning the pages.
Says B.R. Robb, author of both River Ghosts and An Assassinated Man: "Well now - that was a whole lot of fun! Don Bingle's Frame Shop is a book every reader needs now and then, like the tasty dessert of an easy-reading yet intelligent serio-comedy after forcing down the dry, heavy tome we were supposed to like."
Available in trade paperback and ebook versions.
Net Impact
ISBN-9781732343405
Dick Thornby is not Hollywood's idea of a spy.
In his rough and tumble job there are no tailored Italian suits, no bimbos eager to please, and no massive underground fortresses built by evil overlords seeking world domination—just an endless series of sinister threats to the safety and security of the billions of mundane citizens of the planet.
Sure, Dick's tough and he knows a few tricks to help him get out of a tight spot, even if his boss accuses him of over-reliance on an abundance of explosives. But he's also got a mortgage, a wife upset by his frequent absences on "business" trips, and an increasingly alienated teen-age son who spends way too much time playing in gaming worlds on the computer.
When a mission to bust up an arms exchange in New Zealand goes spectacularly bad, Dick is forced to partner with an espionage neophyte to battle evil on multiple fronts, leading to a final confrontation that incorporates real-world conspiracy theories and cutting-edge technology.
In the end, Dick can save his partner, save his marriage, save his son, or save the world, but he can't do it all.
Says Game Knight Reviews: "This is a spy novel that intersects with the world of MMORPGs and combines a set of topics I haven’t seen before. It is a bit of The DaVinci Code with some James Bond and a modern virtual reality spin. We are not talking Lawnmower Man here. Bingle gets it right, making it more Second Life than true interactive virtual reality.
Looking for a modern spy novel to sink your teeth into? Net Impact is a great way to while away some time."
Available in trade paperback, ebook, and audiobook versions.
GREENSWORD: A Tale of Extreme Global Warming
ISBN-9781594147289
They’re about to save the world; they just don’t want to get caught doing it.
Zeke, Milo, and Brandon are struggling to keep their environmental protest group, GreensWord, alive. It impresses chicks and sure beats getting jobs as corporate serfs in the real world. But their chief benefactor, movie star Matthew Barrington, threatens to cut off funding unless they stop global warming before his Malibu beach house slides into the storm-tossed ocean. In their desperate effort to save the beach house and their organization, the GreensWord trio is willing to try almost anything. No plan is so illegal, so risky, or so stupid that they won't lend it an ear. But nothing is fast enough to stop global warming in time ... until they think of the unthinkable solution.
And although they may be crazed fanatics, they've watched enough T.V. to think they know exactly what to do to foil any investigation of their noble crime. And if their drastic solution to global warming means they also take out the reigning internet tycoon and his monopolistic software company, that's just organic frosting on the vegan cake.
One person can make a difference in the world.
Of course, three people with a plan to stop global warming overnight can make a big difference.
GREENSWORD is a dark comedy about the environment, extremism, stupid criminals, and the lengths to which people will go to avoid getting a real job.
Says USA Today Bestselling Author of the Warlands trilogy, Elizabeth A Vaughan: "I loved GREENSWORD. The characters made me laugh right out loud, but the actions of this group of half-cocked people, with a half-assed plan, had me gasping in horror as their implausible schemes became all too plausibly real. Suddenly, the twists of the chilling plot had me turning the pages, unable to look away from the macabre tale and yet still chuckling guiltily as the story reached its terrifying climax in a horribly real way. GREENSWORD is a darkly humorous, gripping thriller that combines environmental imperatives, terrorist activities, and sex in ways that still make me wake up in a cold sweat, months after reading the book, convinced that it could happen."
From the American Library Association's Booklist: "A novel about three slacker environmentalists may seem an unlikely vehicle for edge-of-the-seat suspense, yet Bingle’s satirical ecoterrorist thriller just might haunt readers’ nightmares for days. Zeke, Milo, and Brandon are twentysomething conservationists whose only claim to fame, aside from a little TV footage spotlighting their faltering environmentalist organization, GreensWord, is their dubious relationship to action movie star Matthew Barrington. Desperate to save his lavish Malibu beachfront property from global-warming-induced surf damage, Barrington cuts GreensWord a million-dollar check, stipulating that its recipients do something about the ecological crisis immediately. Their ensuing, hare-brained schemes to put the money to good use only generate legal woes until they hit upon one that seems fool-proof ... Needless to say, nothing goes quite as planned, and Bingle’s storytelling acumen makes the scenario all too chillingly plausible."--Carl Hays
From Library Journal: "Zeke, Milo, and Brandon, members of a tiny ecoprotest group called GreensWord, aim to stop global warming before the beach house of their prime (and only) benefactor, actor Matthew Barrington, slides into the ocean. When Barrington threatens to cut off their funding, the enterprising trio steps up its timetable and changes its agenda from painting ... roofs ... white to deflect the sun's heat to a plan that rivals the worst nightmares of everyone living in the nuclear age. The author of Forced Conversion demonstrates his talent for dark comedy in the style of Kurt Vonnegut and Victor Gischler. Bingle takes aim at both sides of the global warming controversy, addressing global complexities in comedic trappings for a cautionary tale that belongs in most libraries."
Says Romance Reviews Today: "Donald J. Bingle has written a dark, comedic satire on the dangers of extremism on either side of any issue, but global warming in particular. He states that “nobody said environmentalism was easy” and proceeds to illustrate how people are carried away by their idealism with a scenario out of our nightmares. Zeke, Milo and Brandon try to plan for everything, but nothing goes as planned. The characters in the story are somewhat heavy-handed, almost drawn as caricatures. I was not sure a book about such a dark subject could hold my interest, but it did make me think. This is a year when the American public will receive many calls to action and we cannot be manipulated by fear. I agree with Mr. Bingle; we need to think and listen first, but we also need a sense of humor about it all. GREENSWORD is dark, ironic, but humorous as well."
Available in hardback and ebook versions.
Forced Conversion
ISBN-9781594142543
Everyone can have heaven, any heaven they want, but some people don’t want to go.
Mankind has largely retreated to the realms of virtual reality, where resources are unlimited and the problems of the real world--violence, conflict, sickness, and pain--can all be avoided. Unfortunately, those who stay behind in the real world pose the only risk to the immortality of those who have converted to virtual existence.
Derek, a soldier in the Conversion Forces (ConFoes), seeks to enforce the Mandatory Conversion Act on the remaining mals (malcontent Luddites, gangbangers, and religious fanatics). He just wants to put in his time and join his family on one of the virtual worlds. But until then, he is forced to deal with his psychotic squad-mates, the increasingly brutal tactics of the ConFoes, and a mal ambush. And that's just the beginning of his journey.
While most speculative and science fiction deals with worlds transformed by technological advance, Forced Conversion highlights the troubling and chaotic process of that transformation, itself. It combines the adrenaline-soaked action of military fiction with the extrapolation of current scientific trends of the best speculative fiction, while dealing with the moral and religious implications of both war and technology.
When Moore’s Law meets God’s Law, the result is forced conversion.
Says Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo and Nebula winning author: "Visceral, bloody--and one hell of a page turner! Bingle tackles the philosophical issues surrounding uploaded consciousness in a fresh, exciting way. This is the debut of a major novelist--don't miss it."
Says Ed Greenwood, creator of The Forgotten Realms: "I loved it! Many writers have explored hard-hitting and brutal possible futures for Earth, and told colorful tales of people trying to stay alive in them, but few have brought such imagined futures as vividly to life as Don Bingle--and no other book I can think of examines how and why such a future might just happen as well as FORCED CONVERSION does--or provides half the breath-catching twists and turns of Bingle's yarn...Highly recommended!"
Available in hardback and ebook versions.