Donald J. Bingle Writer on Demand TM Holiday Shopping Bonus Issue; Two Freebies |
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Holiday Greetings
This is just a short newsletter because everyone is busy over the holidays. I hope you and your family and friends all have a merry, festive, and delightful December. Remember, if you are shopping on Amazon for holiday gifts, doing so by connecting through my afflilate link or the link of another author helps support inidie publishing at no cost to you. As my holiday gift to you, this newsletter includes two freebie stories. The first is below, a mostly true tale about time travel. It's currently entered in a Vocal+ contest about mystery boxes. The second is my Season's Critiquings story that I mentioned last newsletter (with a link to a reading I did about it). That story kicked off my series of Christmas Carol Critiques, so I've dropped the price on it to zero for a few days beginning the day I'm sending out this newsletter, so you can get or give it for free if you act quickly. Just go to my Amazon author's page listing of books via my link and scroll about halfway down the page, til you see a cover with a cartoon reindeer, then go to the page and grab it like any other book you'd get on Amazon. Reviews are always welcome and, of course, I wouldn't mind if you picked up anything else you saw that looked interesting while you were scrolling through my offerings. I don't actually get any extra income when there's a sale of most of the anthologies I've got stories in, but I mostly write to be read, not to make a living, so that's okay. Merry Christmas! |
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| | Present and Promise, A Mostly True Story I wasn’t expecting anything. Yet, there it was. The unmistakable drone of the … well … drone dropping a package on the front stoop. I hadn’t ordered anything recently and most of the Kickstarter projects I occasionally backed were, as usual, sending out nothing but email updates about why they were running months or years behind their projected delivery schedules. I’d just finished a big project at work, so none of my partners or clients were likely to be sending me a pile of paperwork to read and review. Quite frankly, I was planning to spend my Saturday doing nothing much than relax in the hot tub. It’s where I get all my best ideas for writing stories or developing a unified field theory. Still, best to retrieve the package before the hot tub, just in case. The package wasn’t big: a four-by-four-by-four-inch white box with my address on it, but no logo or return address on the label. I opened it up to find a jewelry box—you know, the blue velvet clamshell lid type that you always see in commercials for engagement rings and diamond stud earrings. Not that I thought it was either of those. Happily married and I don’t have pierced ears, not that the fuddy-duddies at work would appreciate it if I wore earrings in any event. I crumpled up the thin cardboard packaging and stuffed it into a pocket, then opened up the blue velvet box. Inside was a cloisonné lapel pin with a logo and words in a circle around it that said “Time Travel Research Association.” A small, unsigned card was folded up inside the lid. I opened it to find that it read: “For your contributions to time travel.” That was odd. I’m not a physicist or engineer. I’m an attorney and none of my clients were theoretical physics laboratories or Delorean dealerships or even watch companies. Oh, sure, I’d written a few stories in my spare time about time travel, but nothing, you know, serious. And my ruminations in the hot tub about creating a unified field theory were just idle theorizing. I suppose I could have just set the odd gift aside and forgotten about it. Or, I could have gone online and done a bunch of research and tried to track down the sender. Instead, I simply took the pin out and put it on the lapel of one of my suits that I wore for work. Years passed. Most of my friends and colleagues and clients never noticed the odd pin on my suit coat. Or, if they did, they didn’t say anything about it. (continued in next column) | | |
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| | (continued from previous column) But, every so often, I would be at a deal closing or a cocktail party or a business seminar and someone would lean in and squint at the cloisonné lapel pin, eyebrows tilted inward and nose scrunched up. “What’s that?” they’d say. I would just shrug, look them straight in the eye, and say in my most earnest and serious voice. “It’s an award I received for my contributions to time travel.” And, then, I’d go on about my business or our conversation as if that was a completely normal and logical thing to say. They never followed up with another comment or question. Not one single time. And, as time marched unrelentingly forward in my life, I began to think of my anonymous award as more of a promise than a present. Think about it. This pin cost something to make and package and ship. Maybe not a lot, but more than a piece of direct marketing sent to masses of people. Someone spent a fair bit more than parking meter change to create and send this to me. And no one ever followed up from the Time Travel Research Association to ask me for money toward their “cause” or sell me any books or videos or logoed t-shirts. More importantly, if time travel really is possible, the people who can do that could easily go back in time and thank those who helped make it a reality by giving them a little reward or token of encouragement. The pin wasn’t just an oddity—a practical joke from the present or the future. It was a promise. I would make a contribution … no, contributions … to time travel somehow, someday. It was a promise that my existence mattered and that something great would come of it. Until then, I was invincible. This strange present from the future guaranteed that I had a future. Now I’m old—really old. More than a decade past retirement. I don’t mind. That’s not a bad thing, particularly if you have a paid-off mortgage, good health, and a modicum of interests, hobbies, and activities. I still write stories. Some of them are in the science fiction genre. And, my ponderings in the hot tub about a unified field theory are making some theoretical progress. Sure, I’ve read too many obituaries for friends and colleagues who no longer have a future, whose contributions to this world have ended. Time isn’t always kind. But, I was thanked for my contributions to time travel by an organization I’d never heard of and didn’t belong to. I’ll really have to get around to making those contributions someday. I hope you’ll understand why I’m not in a hurry. The End | | |
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The Dick Thornby Thriller Series The omni version of The Dick Thornby Thriller Series became available this year. Why just give a book for Christmas, when you can give an entire series of exciting spy thrillers about a regular guy who takes on some of the biggest and most bizarre conspiracy and disaster theories you can find on the world wide web? if ebooks aren't your thing, you can grab Net Impact, Wet Work, and Flash Drive in print here. Dick Thornby isn't Hollywood's idea of a spy. He's a new kind of spy for a new kind of world. |
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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 series (a three-time Silver Falchion winning paranormal urban fantasy about two lawyers who represent the legal rights of supernatural creatures in a magic-filled San Francisco; Book 2 just came out). 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. |
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