Back in 2015, Frame Shop, my book about murder in a suburban writers' group, was a semi-finalist in Illinois' Soon-To-Be-Famous-Illinois-Author Contest. I just got an email letting me know that Flash Drive, the latest book in my Dick Thornby spy thriller series, is a semi-finalist in the same 2021 contest. I guess that makes me doubly semi-soon-to-be-famous. You can check out the announcement here. In celebration, I'm going to leave the special, reduced pricing on my Dick Thornby books that I set up for my now-concluded blog tour stay in place until at least the end of the month so you can get the whole series at a great price.

The pre-order links are live for the re-release of The Love-Haight Case Files, Book 1: Seeking Supernatural Justice, and the release of the new sequel, The Love-Haight Case Files, Book 2: Fighting for Other-Than-Human Rights. Even more importantly, the links are live for the print version of both Book 1 and Book 2. That means you can order and get the print edition of Book 2 before the Kindle version goes live in September!

Also, remember that the blog tour for The Love-Haight Case Files, Book 1 begins August 23. The blog tour for Book 2 begins September 20. Contact Let's Talk! Promotions to add your blog as one of the stops for Book 2.

My Olympic Moment

If you know me at all--or have even seen my picture--you know I'm not an athlete, so, "No," I'm not talking about me having been in the Olympics. And even though I was the world's top-ranked player of classic RPGA roleplaying tournaments for the last fifteen years of the last century and once won  the AD&D Nationals, I'm not talking about my gaming career. Instead, I'm talking about how I once saw how freaking fast Olympic swimmers are.

In the early 80's when I was an associate at a law firm in downtown Chicago I read about something called the Corporate Challenge, where teams from big businesses would compete in various sports (track and field, swimming, volleyball, tug-of-war, etc.) for charity. Think of it as kind of a Battle of the Network Stars event, except nobody was famous. Despite the fact that lawyers are known for having fancy boxes at sporting events, they're generally not really athletes. Accordingly, we didn't expect to do well, but it was for ... you know ... charity. (In actual fact, the only team we beat in the final standings was Dove Chocolate, who only did well in the tug-of-war.)

Many teams had real athletes. Bally Fitness fielded a strong team and the scuttlebutt was that several of the big accounting firms gave their people time off in the weeks before the competition to train. For some reason, perhaps because of the quirky nature of recruiting interviews, the accounting firms also were supposedly stacked with guys who were on the swim team back in high school.

We only had one person on our team who could be called an athlete. I won't name her, but she was an Olympic-quality swimmer. (I think maybe she missed the actual Olympics because of the boycott of the Moscow games.) So, we entered her in every swim event we could--unfortunately they wouldn't let her swim all four laps of the relay. When her first event came up, there she was on the blocks against a bunch of guys with swimmer-builds, all gunning to be the best in the 100 meter free-style. (Seeing we had a woman as our entrant even drew a we-feel-bad-for-you look from the Dove Chocolate team, which had passed on all of the swimming events.) Then the gun went off and our swimmer had a sizeable lead even before she surfaced. The PA announcer was agog, but as she pulled away at speed he went absolutely crazy. By the time she won the 2 lap race by more than a lap against a bunch of guys who thought they were going to relive their glory days from the high school swim team in front of their peers, the announcer was screaming like a lunatic.

What's all this got to do with writing? Not much, except that if you spend your time comparing your sales to J.K.Rolling and Ernest Cline and the like, you're in for a lot of disappointment. Ignore them. Just stay in your lane and keep swimming ... er writing ... as fast as you can.

Donald J. Bingle is the author of seven books and more than sixty shorter works in the horror, thriller, science fiction, mystery, fantasy, steampunk, romance, comedy, and memoir genres. His books include Forced Conversion (near future military scifi), GREENSWORD (darkly comedic eco-thriller), Frame Shop (murder in a suburban writers' group), and the Dick Thornby spy thriller series (Net Impact, Wet Work, and Flash Drive). He also co-authored (with Jean Rabe) The Love-Haight Case Files, Book 1 (Seeking Supernatural Justice) and Book 2 (Fighting for Other-Than-Human Rights (about two lawyers who represent the legal rights of supernatural creatures in a magic-filled San Francisco). Don also edited Familiar Spirits (an anthology of ghost stories).

Many of Don's shorter works can be found in his Writer on Demand TM collections.

Get the audiobook version of Net Impact at Audible.com, Amazon, and iTunes and the audiobook version of Wet Work at Audible.com, Amazon, and iTunes.

Full disclosure: Various links in my newsletter or on my website may include Amazon Affiliate coding, which gets me a small referral fee (at no cost to you) if you purchase after clicking through.