Author S. T. SANCHEZ: Interview with Donald Bingle author of Wet Work

Welcome Donald! Can you tell us a little about yourself?

I’m a gamer turned writer. I was the world’s top-ranked player of classic role-playing game tournaments for the last fifteen years of the last century. I also wrote such tournaments and, eventually, adventures and source materials for various role-playing game products like Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2^nd Ed., Timemaster, Paranoia, and Chill. From there I moved on to doing tie-in fiction for Dragonlance, BattleTech, and Transformers, as well as short stories in my own worlds, principally for DAW themed anthologies. Novellas, screenplays, and novels came next.

Sounds like you keep very busy. What brought about the idea for this book?

Wet Work is the second book in my Dick Thornby Thriller series, following on the heels of Net Impact. The series revolves around three core concepts. First, Dick is not a James Bond or Jason Bourne type of spy; he’s a regular guy (with an Army and law enforcement background) who supposedly works a regular job as a waste water treatment consultant, but is secretly a spy. He has a wife, a kid, and a mortgage, along with all the mundane problems of life. Second, law enforcement has to deal with all sorts of new problems in our increasingly digital world. Third, there are all sorts of bizarre conspiracy theories and sensationalist items on the internet that can be worked into spy thrillers, but are often ignored in favor of more traditional, cold war plots.

Donald, have you been given any helpful advice? Yes. If so What?

Try to say yes to new projects and new genres. When I was first writing short stories, I sometimes got asked to write for a themed anthology as a replacement for some other writer who didn’t make deadline or because the anthology was short on word count. I had to write quickly to very specific topic and word count specifications. But, more importantly, I had to write in all sorts of genres and all sorts of topics I never would have thought to write in if just left to my own devices. Pushing your boundaries not only improves your set of skills, it improves your creativity.

Currently, what are you working on?

Between novels I write short stories in a variety of genres, including science fiction, horror, fantasy, mystery, steampunk, and memoir. It’s just as much work finding homes for short fiction as it is writing short fiction, so that takes an inordinate amount of time. I also rerelease many of my short stories in small ebook collections by topic/theme as part of my Writer on Demand TM series. I’m also helping turn the first case from The Love-Haight Case Files, a novel I wrote with acclaimed author Jean Rabe, into a teleplay.

That sounds exciting! What has been the most difficult thing you have struggled with since you began a career in writing?

Writing is like direct sales—there’s plenty of rejection along the way. But it’s even worse, because there’s lots of competition flooding the market with inferior product and way too many people giving away their product for free.

What has been the best compliment you have received?

My first novel, Forced Conversion, is near future military science fiction. It starts off with an action sequence—a firefight in the woods. When my writers’ group read it, one of the guys just a few years older than me, who happened to be a Viet Nam Veteran, came up to me and simply said: “What unit?” I said I didn’t understand his question and he said: “I read the beginning of your book. What unit did you serve in?” That’s when I realized the scene felt authentic enough to him that he assumed I had served in the military on active duty in a war zone. That’s about the best compliment an author who was not in the military can get.

That is high praise. What kind of research do you do before you start a new story?

Prolific writers always have more ideas than time to write them, but in order to generate those ideas, I think it is important to read, especially outside of the genre you are writing. That’s where you find odd tidbits of history and science most people don’t know about which you can then use in your books and stories. Once I’ve concentrated my focus on a topic, read reference materials on the factual topics and Google key phrases to find unusual and bizarre takes on the same material. If you are weak on knowledge in a critical area, always research it especially heavily or you will make mistakes, but also know that it only takes a few phrases to look like more than an expert than you really are. When researching surface-to-air missiles for one book, I looked at specifications for a lot of different types and noticed that the reference material indicated that one particular type had a battery maintenance problem, so I picked that type for my scene. It not only explained why the bad guys might have gotten their hands on these (subpar) weapons, it provided a line or two of dialogue for the bad guys when one warns the other about the issue. For those readers not knowledgeable about such missiles, it provides a interesting tidbit. For those that are, it makes them think I really know my stuff.

Do you have people read your drafts before you publish? Yes. How do you select beta readers?

My beta readers are generally people who are either fans of my work or people I know who have significant editing or critiquing experience over a broad array of genres and whose judgment I have come to trust. I don’t use fans because they will be easy on me; I use them because I know they already connect with my style of writing, the genre I’m writing in, or the voice of the main character, so I know their comments are likely to be relevant and useful. Also, they have a vested interest in making my stories work. If I have experience with editors or writers from a critique group who have helped my work improve before, why wouldn’t I go back to those sources?

How do you handle criticism when it comes to your writing?

I consider it’s source and it’s nature. If someone is complaining that some of my characters use bad language and they don’t like that, I just shrug. It’s a fact of life for some characters and some situations and I like to write realistically. If they complain about the politics or perceived politics of a story or character by attributing those statements or political opinions to me, I usually just smile. Readers should never assume that what my characters think is what I think. I once had a reviewer of one of my short stories say that I obviously “hate gamers” not knowing that I’ve been a ranked gamer in several categories, from RPGs to train games, Diplomacy, and a couple of the more obscure collectible card games. That particular story was unkind to the protagonist gamer not because I hate gamers, but because that was what the story required. Other criticisms I agree with--if you think your writing is perfect, you're wrong. If you don't know what your weaknesses are as a writer, you can never even try to fix them. Having a critic give your self-awareness a nudge from time to time is good.

Is there something you learned from writing your first book?

It’s always better to write something as good as you can in the first draft than to fix it later. Sure, rewrites are necessary and there will always be a lot to clean up on subsequent drafts. But many writers have taken the advice that it is better to have written garbage than to not have written at all (because at least you then have something to fix) too far. A bad first draft is not a goal—a good first draft is a goal. Flow, continuity, subtlety, and transitions are all more difficult to achieve when adding material to an existing draft than when writing the first draft.