Chuck Tingle

Last updated

Chuck Tingle
Pen nameDr. Chuck Tingle
LanguageEnglish
NationalityAmerican
Genre
Years active2014–present
Website
www.chucktingle.com

Chuck Tingle is a pseudonymous author, primarily of niche gay erotica. [1] [2] His stories mainly take the form of monster erotica, featuring romantic and sexual encounters with dinosaurs, imaginary creatures, anthropomorphized inanimate objects, and even abstract concepts. He self-publishes his works through Amazon: primarily as ebooks, but also as paperbacks and audiobooks. [3] [4] [5] [6]

Contents

In 2016, his short story Space Raptor Butt Invasion was a finalist for the Hugo Awards as the result of a coordinated campaign which he disavowed. In the following year's awards, he was a finalist for the Best Fan Writer award.

Personal life

Little has been confirmed about Tingle's identity, beyond the fact that "Chuck Tingle" is a pseudonym. [7] A photo presented as a portrait of Tingle was found on a stock photo web site. [3] [8] When appearing in person, Tingle maintains his anonymity by wearing sunglasses over a pink sack on his head, which has "love is real" written on it in black marker. [9]

Tingle presents himself as a bisexual [10] [11] taekwondo grandmaster who was born in Home of Truth, Utah (a ghost town established in 1933 as a religious commune and abandoned in 1977 [8] ), acquired a PhD in holistic massage at DeVry University (which does not offer such a degree), [12] and now lives in Billings, Montana. His Facebook account and website state that he is autistic [13] [14] and has a son named Jon. [7]

In 2016, a person identifying himself as Jon stated in a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" session that he edits his father's work for publication and cares for him. [7] Jon made a number of claims that have remained unconfirmed or been denied by Tingle himself, including that Tingle is an savant and that the anthropomorphism found in many of Tingle's works reflects "identity issues that he has been working through his whole life". [15] [7] [12]

Tingle displays distinct verbal tics, such as consistently referring to Jon as "son name of Jon" and calling his fans "buckaroos" or "ladybucks". [10] [12] He claims this is an intentional effect put on for privacy reasons. [14]

Career

Tingle began self-publishing erotic fiction through Amazon's ebook service in 2014, with the titles My Billionaire Triceratops Craves Gay Ass, Pounded by President Bigfoot, and Taken by the Gay Unicorn Biker. His work includes erotic encounters with personifications of inanimate objects, such as I'm Gay for My Living Billionaire Jet Plane and Creamed in the Butt by My Handsome Living Corn. Other titles feature abstract concepts as sexual partners or involve metatextual references, such as Angry Man Pounded by the Fear of His Latent Gayness over a Dinosaur Transitioning into a Unicorn, Slammed in the Butt by My Hugo Award Nomination, and Pounded in the Butt by My Book "Pounded in the Butt by My Book 'Pounded in the Butt by My Book "Pounded in the Butt by My Own Butt"'" (referring to a series of previous publications). Tingle often incorporates current news stories or public figures into his titles, using sound-alike or look-alike names, such as Domald Tromp's Ass is Haunted by the Handsome Ghost of His Incriminating Tax Returns and Billionaire Elons Mugg Takes the Handsome Planet Mars in his Butt. [16] [17] [7]

Tingle refers to his stories as "Tinglers". Although they typically feature apparently cisgender male couples, stories also feature bisexual, lesbian, and trans characters. He stresses the consensuality of the encounters, and the stories end happily with "an optimistic, philosophical moral about love and togetherness". [12]

Tingle says he uses Photoshop software to create his own book covers, [18] which usually feature a photo of a muscular, bare-chested man juxtaposed with an image of the entity whose sexual escapades are featured in the story.

In 2019, Tingle was one of the special guests featured on a benefit livestream for the British transgender youth support charity Mermaids hosted by YouTuber Hbomberguy. A few days later, Tingle published a book entitled Pounded in the Butt By the Handsome Sentient Manifestation of My Twitch Stream. [19]

Hugo Award nominations

In 2016, Tingle's Space Raptor Butt Invasion was a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Short Story. [20] This stemmed from a voting campaign by the alt-right "Rabid Puppies", a faction of the Sad Puppies campaign that opposed diversity and "political correctness" in the Hugo Awards. [12] [21] [22] [23] However, Tingle disavowed the campaign, saying via his Twitter account that it was the work of "devils" [12] and that Zoë Quinn would accept the award on his behalf if he were to win. [24] [25] Space Raptor Butt Invasion did not win the award, and he subsequently published Pounded in the Butt by My Hugo Award Loss. [26] In 2017, he was a finalist for a second Hugo Award, this time for Best Fan Writer. [27] [28] He again did not win, and later published Pounded in the Butt by My Second Hugo Award Nomination. [29]

Mainstream publication

In July 2022, Tor Books signed Tingle to a two-book deal under its Nightfire horror imprint. Camp Damascus was published in July 2023, with Bury Your Gays scheduled for release in 2024. [30] Camp Damascus reached number 32 on the USA Today bestseller list on July 26, 2023. [31]

Selected works

Novels

Romance novellas

Harry Potter parody

Platonic

Satire

Self-referential

Compilations

Other

Other projects

In 2016, Zoë Quinn announced that they and Tingle were developing an erotic adventure game with the working title Project Tingler. [33] The game was finally named "Kickstarted in the Butt: A Chuck Tingle Digital Adventure" and a Kickstarter campaign was started in October 2016 asking for $69,420 to fund the project. The game raised over $85,000 from 2,450 backers in a couple of weeks. [34] As of 2023, the game has not been released.

During Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, Tingle created the web site TrumpDebateFacts.com, which purported to fact-check various imaginary Trump claims, mostly attempts to hide Trump's supposed non-human origins (such as "I am not a poorly disguised mass of crabs wearing the skin of bloated human"). Tingle also released a number of satirical novellas featuring "Domald Tromp[ sic ]", including Slammed In The Butt By Domald Tromp's Attempt To Avoid Accusations Of Plagiarism By Removing All Facts Or Concrete Plans From His Republican National Convention Speech. [35]

In 2017, a group announced DeepTingle, a computerized text prediction and classification system based on a database of Tingle's fiction, providing a means to "foreground and confront the norms embedded in data-driven creativity and productivity assistance tools". [36]

In 2018, a podcast titled Pounded in the Butt By My Own Podcast, based on Tingle's works, debuted in association with the producers of Welcome to Night Vale , a horror-fantasy podcast. [37] Each episode is an audiobook version of one of Tingle's novellas, often read by an alum of the Night Vale podcast (including Cecil Baldwin and Mara Wilson). [38] My Friend Chuck, a podcast co-hosted by Tingle and writer/comedian McKenzie Goodwin, aired from 2019 to 2020. [39]

Tingle has been a strong advocate for transgender rights. In 2020, he began publishing satires of the Harry Potter series featuring "Trans Wizard Harriet Porber" in response to J. K. Rowling's stances against transgender rights. In 2022, he purchased the domain governorabbott.com and used it to protest Governor of Texas Greg Abbott's policies impacting transgender individuals. [40]

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References

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