Chuck Tingle is a pseudonymous author of primarily gay niche erotica. He self-publishes his works through Amazon.com, primarily as ebooks, but also as paperbacks and audiobooks. Tingle began his career by writing dinosaur erotica and expanded to stories based on unicorns, Bigfoot, and various anthropomorphized objects and even concepts.
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 established in 1933 as a religious commune and abandoned in 1977. He has described himself as bisexual. Tingle presents himself as a taekwondograndmaster from Billings, Montana, who acquired a PhD in holistic massage at DeVry University. In 2016, a person presented as Tingle's son Jon – and identified as such by a statement from Tingle's Twitter account – stated in a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" session that Tingle "is an autistic savant, but also suffers from schizophrenia." Jon stated that he edits his father's work for publication, and provides day-to-day care for him. Tingle confirmed his autism in a Facebook post.
Career
Tingle claims to use Photoshop software to create his own book covers, which invariably feature a photo of a muscular, bare-chested man juxtaposed with an image of the dinosaur or other unlikely entity whose sexual escapades are featured in the story. Vox author Aja Romano has speculated that Tingle's work may be a deliberate satire on poorly written self-published erotic fiction. In April 2016, Space Raptor Butt Invasion was shortlisted for a Hugo Award for Best Short Story in the prestigious Hugo Awards for science fiction. This stemmed from a campaign by the alt-right "Rabid Puppies" group, a faction of the Sad Puppies movement that laments the perceived politicization of 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 would accept the award on his behalf. His story did not win. Tingle subsequently published Pounded in the Butt by My Hugo Award Loss. 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. 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 Tingle was nominated for a second Hugo Award, this time for Best Fan Writer. He did not win. He later published Pounded in the Butt by My Second Hugo Award Nomination. In January 2019, Tingle was one of the special guests featured on YouTuber Hbomberguy's charity livestream for the UK trans children's support group Mermaids. A few days later, Tingle published a book titled Pounded in the Butt By the Handsome Sentient Manifestation of My Twitch Stream.
Other projects
In August 2016, Zoë Quinn announced that they were developing an erotic adventure game with the working titleProject Tingler, in collaboration with Tingle. Quinn raised over $85,000 from 2,450 Kickstarter backers weeks later. As of 2020, the game has not been released. In May 2017 a group announced DeepTingle, a computerized text prediction and classification system based on a database of Tingle's fiction, for the purpose of "foreground and confront the norms embedded in data-driven creativity and productivity assistance tools". On February 13, 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. In it, various alumni of the Night Vale podcast read from Tingle's novellas to the reaction of a live audience. On September 3, 2019, another podcast debuted, My Friend Chuck, co-hosted by Tingle and writer/comedian McKenzie Goodwin. Tingle's dinosaur-themed work is also frequently mentioned on Sofie Hagen and Jodie Mitchell's the Secret Dinosaur Cult, a podcast which discusses daddy issues and dinosaurs, ending with a 'bedtime story' which is a piece of dinosaur erotica.
