Chuck Tingle is a

pseudonym A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person or group assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true name (orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individua ...

ous author, primarily of niche gay erotica. The stories mainly take the form of

monster erotica Monster erotica, also referred to as monster porn or cryptozoological erotica is a subgenre of erotic literature that involves sexual encounters between humans and monsters. It sometimes crosses over with erotic horror. Themes The monsters featur ...

, featuring romantic and sexual encounters with dinosaurs, imaginary creatures,

anthropomorphized Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology. Personification is the related attribution of human form and characteristics t ...

inanimate objects, and even abstract concepts. He self-publishes his works through

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon (company), an American multinational technolog ...

, primarily as ebooks, but also as

paperback A paperback (softcover, softback) book is one with a thick paper or paperboard cover, and often held together with glue rather than stitches or staples. In contrast, hardcover (hardback) books are bound with cardboard covered with cloth, ...

s and

audiobook An audiobook (or a talking book) is a recording of a book or other work being read out loud. A reading of the complete text is described as "unabridged", while readings of shorter versions are abridgements. Spoken audio has been available in sc ...

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

Personal life

Little has been confirmed about Tingle's identity, beyond the fact that the name "Chuck Tingle" is a pseudonym. He claims to have been born in Home of Truth, Utah, a small isolated southern Utah

ghost town Ghost Town(s) or Ghosttown may refer to: * Ghost town, a town that has been abandoned Film and television * ''Ghost Town'' (1936 film), an American Western film by Harry L. Fraser * ''Ghost Town'' (1956 film), an American Western film by All ...

established in 1933 as a religious commune and abandoned in 1977. He has described himself as bisexual and transgender. Tingle presents himself as a

taekwondo ''Taekwondo'', ''Tae Kwon Do'' or ''Taekwon-Do'' (; ko, 태권도/跆拳道 ) is a Korean martial arts, Korean form of martial arts involving punching and kicking techniques, with emphasis on head-height kicks, spinning jump kicks, and fast k ...

grandmaster from

Billings, Montana Billings is the largest city in the U.S. state of Montana, with a population of 117,116 as of the 2020 census. Located in the south-central portion of the state, it is the seat of Yellowstone County and the principal city of the Billings Met ...

, who acquired a PhD in holistic massage at

DeVry University DeVry University () is a private for-profit university with its headquarters in Naperville, Illinois. It was founded in 1931 by Herman A. DeVry and is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission. DeVry is predominantly an online educator but ...

(which does not offer such a degree). A photo presented as a portrait of Tingle was found on a stock photo web site. In 2016, a person presenting as Tingle's son Jon stated in a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" session that Tingle is an

autistic savant Savant syndrome () is a rare condition in which someone with significant mental disabilities demonstrates certain abilities far in excess of average. The skills that savants excel at are generally related to memory. This may include rapid calcu ...

. Jon also said that his father has

schizophrenia Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social wit ...

, but Tingle has stated this is not true on multiple occasions. Jon stated that he edits his father's work for publication and provides day-to-day care for him. Tingle's Facebook account and website confirmed that Jon is his son and that Tingle has

Asperger syndrome Asperger syndrome (AS), also known as Asperger's, is a former neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction and nonverbal communication, along with restricted and repetitive patterns of beha ...

. Tingle has said that his wife drowned in an automobile accident, but Jon stated that his parents are divorced, and the woman who died was Tingle's caregiver. Tingle has a distinctive style of conversation, such as consistently referring to Jon as "son name of Jon" and his fans as "buckaroos" and "ladybucks", but this does not carry over to his published fiction. Tingle claims this is for privacy reasons.

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''. Tingle refers to his stories as "Tinglers". Although they typically feature apparently cisgender male couples, stories also feature bisexual, lesbian, and trans characters. Tingle stresses the consensuality of the encounters, and the stories end happily with "an optimistic, philosophical moral about love and togetherness". The person presented as Tingle's son Jon stated that the anthropomorphism in many stories reflects "identity issues that he has been working through his whole life", which have manifested as him "'becoming' other people or things." Tingle says he uses

Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the industry standard not only in raster ...

software to create his own book covers, 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 YouTuber

Hbomberguy Harris Michael Brewis (born 19 September 1992), better known as Hbomberguy, is a British YouTuber and Twitch streamer. Brewis produces video essays on a variety of topics such as film, television, and video games, often combining them with argu ...

's charity livestream for the UK trans children's support group

Mermaids In folklore, a mermaid is an aquatic creature with the head and upper body of a female human and the tail of a fish. Mermaids appear in the folklore of many cultures worldwide, including Europe, Asia, and Africa. Mermaids are sometimes asso ...

. A few days later, Tingle published a book titled ''Pounded in the Butt By the Handsome Sentient Manifestation of My

Twitch Twitch may refer to: Biology * Muscle contraction ** Convulsion, rapid and repeated muscle contraction and relaxation ** Fasciculation, a small, local, involuntary muscle contraction ** Myoclonic twitch, a jerk usually caused by sudden muscle co ...

Stream''.

2016 Hugo nomination

In 2016, Tingle's ''Space Raptor Butt Invasion'' was a finalist for the

Hugo Award for Best Short Story The Hugo Award for Best Short Story is one of the Hugo Awards given each year for science fiction or fantasy stories published or translated into English during the previous calendar year. The short story award is available for works of fiction o ...

in the prestigious

Hugo Awards The Hugo Award is an annual literary award for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year, given at the World Science Fiction Convention and chosen by its members. The Hugo is widely considered the premier ...

for science fiction. This stemmed from a voting campaign by the alt-right "Rabid Puppies" group, a faction of the

Sad Puppies Sad Puppies was an unsuccessful right-wing anti-diversity voting campaign run from 2013 to 2017 and intended to influence the outcome of the annual Hugo Awards, the longest-running prize (since 1953) for science fiction or fantasy works. It wa ...

movement that objects to modern social trends in science fiction. However, Tingle disavowed the campaign, saying via his Twitter account that it was the work of "devils", and that if his book were to win, video game designer and anti-harassment activist

Zoë Quinn Zoë Tiberius Quinn (born 1987) is an American video game developer, programmer, and writer. Quinn developed the interactive fiction game '' Depression Quest'', which was released in 2013. In 2014, a defamatory blog post by their ex-boyfrien ...

would accept the award on his behalf. His story did not win, and Tingle subsequently published ''Pounded in the Butt by My Hugo Award Loss''. In 2017 Tingle was a finalist for a second Hugo Award, this time for Best Fan Writer. He did not win, and later published ''Pounded in the Butt by My Second Hugo Award Nomination.''

Mainstream publication

In July 2022,

Tor Books Tor Books is the primary imprint of Tor Publishing Group (previously Tom Doherty Associates), a publishing company based in New York City. It primarily publishes science fiction and fantasy titles, and is the largest publisher of Chinese sci ...

signed Tingle to a two-book deal under its Nightfire horror imprint. The books, titled ''Camp Damascus'' and ''Bury Your Gays,'' are scheduled for release in 2023 and 2024 respectively.

Other projects

In 2016,

announced that they were developing an erotic adventure game with the working title ''Project Tingler'', in collaboration with Tingle. 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 weeks later. As of 2022, the game has not been released. During Donald Trump's 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 the book ''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''. 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". In 2018, a

podcast A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosin ...

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 ''Welcome to Night Vale'' is a podcast presented as a radio show for the fictional town of Night Vale, reporting on the strange events that occur within it. The series was created in 2012 by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor. Published by Night Val ...

'', a horror-fantasy podcast. Each episode is essentially an audiobook version of one of Tingle's novellas often read by an alum of the ''Night Vale'' podcast (including

Cecil Baldwin ''Welcome to Night Vale'' is a podcast presented as a radio show for the fictional town of Night Vale, reporting on the strange events that occur within it. The series was created in 2012 by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor. Published by Night Vale ...

and

Mara Wilson Mara Elizabeth Wilson (born July 24, 1987) is an American actress and writer. She rose to prominence as a child for playing Natalie Hillard in the film ''Mrs. Doubtfire'' (1993) and went on to play Susan Walker in ''Miracle on 34th Street'' (199 ...

). Another podcast, ''My Friend Chuck'', co-hosted by Tingle and writer/comedian McKenzie Goodwin, aired from 2019 to 2020. In 2022, Tingle purchased the domain governorabbott.com and used it to protest Texas Governor

Greg Abbott Gregory Wayne Abbott (born November 13, 1957) is an American politician, attorney, and former jurist serving as the 48th governor of Texas since 2015. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the 50th attorney general of Texas from 2002 ...

's policies impacting

transgender A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through ...

individuals.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Tingle, Chuck 21st-century American writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American short story writers 21st-century pseudonymous writers Autistic savants People on the autism spectrum American erotica writers American LGBT novelists American non-fiction writers American short story writers American satirists Bisexual writers Transgender writers Internet memes Living people LGBT erotica Writers from Billings, Montana People with Asperger syndrome Place of birth missing (living people) Year of birth missing (living people)