Bingle.org

Just a reminder that I have joined Amazon Connect, which means that you can read my blogs about my books and stories through Amazon’s Author Central.  If you are thinking of buying stuff on Amazon, also don’t forget that if you go to www.donaldjbingle.com and click through to one of the webpages with my stuff on it via the handy click-through ads, I’ll get a tiny percentage of what you spend even if it isn’t anything to do with my writing or the page you clicked through to get to Amazon.

Don

Okay, so I don’t usually say much about work here, but this seemed to be the best way to let everyone know that the place where I work is merging with a much larger law firm.  Details follow:

 K&L Gates, Bell Boyd Partners Vote to Combine Firms
Merger of global and Chicago-based law firms to occur March 1, 2009

Pittsburgh and Chicago— Partners of the law firms K&L Gates LLP and Bell, Boyd & Lloyd LLP (Bell Boyd) today voted overwhelmingly in favor of a combination of firms, effective March 1, 2009. The combined firm will comprise approximately 1,900 lawyers in 31 offices throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia, and expands K&L Gates’ domestic offerings to include the strategically significant legal markets of Chicago and San Diego.

“We are delighted and enthused that our partners have seen and supported the strategic value of this combination,” said K&L Gates Chairman and Global Managing Partner Peter J. Kalis and Bell Boyd Chairman John T. McCarthy. “We truly believe that the combined firm’s value proposition for clients will be unsurpassed in the profession.”

The combined firm will have offices in Anchorage, Austin, Beijing, Berlin, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Fort Worth, Frankfurt, Harrisburg, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Newark, New York, Orange County, Palo Alto, Paris, Pittsburgh, Portland, Raleigh, Research Triangle Park, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Shanghai, Spokane/Coeur d’Alene, Taipei, and Washington, D.C.

Strategic advantages resulting from the combination include:

Global Reach for Chicago and San Diego Businesses: The combined firm will provide businesses and enterprises in the economically vibrant markets of Chicago and San Diego access to one of the legal profession’s few credible three-continent platforms, including offices in global financial and commercial centers, world capitals, and other key markets.

Leading Practices: In addition to enhancing the existing strengths of both firms in such areas as investment management, intellectual property, corporate transactions, bankruptcy, and real estate, the combination also adds a K&L Gates presence in the key life sciences market of San Diego. At the same time, with two dozen Bell Boyd lawyers joining the already formidable Washington, D.C., office of K&L Gates, the combined firm’s presence in the U.S. capital will grow to approximately 250 lawyers and policy professionals.

Enhanced Domestic Coverage: K&L Gates’ entry to the Chicago and San Diego markets expands the firm’s domestic footprint to 23 U.S. offices – now including the world’s fourth-largest legal market in Chicago – and creates greater opportunities for current and prospective clients of both firms. With more than 200 lawyers in Chicago, K&L Gates’ Chicago office will be among the largest of any non-Chicago-based firm.

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About Bell Boyd
Bell, Boyd & Lloyd LLP has helped emerging and established businesses of all sizes grow and prosper for 120 years. With approximately 250 attorneys located in offices in Chicago, San Diego, and Washington, D.C., the firm provides a full range of business related legal services, with nationally-recognized practices specializing in investment management, mergers and acquisitions, securities, finance, patent and trademark prosecution, intellectual property litigation, commercial and securities litigation, and real estate. For more information, visit www.bellboyd.com.

About K&L Gates
K&L Gates comprises approximately 1,700 lawyers in 29 offices located in North America, Europe and Asia, and represents capital markets participants, entrepreneurs, growth and middle market companies, leading FORTUNE 100 and FTSE 100 global corporations and public sector entities. For more information, visit www.klgates.com.

K&L Gates comprises multiple affiliated partnerships: a limited liability partnership with the full name K&L Gates LLP qualified in Delaware and maintaining offices throughout the U.S., in Berlin and Frankfurt, Germany, in Beijing (K&L Gates LLP Beijing Representative Office), and in Shanghai (K&L Gates LLP Shanghai Representative Office); a limited liability partnership (also named K&L Gates LLP) incorporated in England and maintaining our London and Paris offices; a Taiwan general partnership (K&L Gates) which practices from our Taipei office; and a Hong Kong general partnership (K&L Gates, Solicitors) which practices from our Hong Kong office. K&L Gates maintains appropriate registrations in the jurisdictions in which its offices are located. A list of the partners in each entity is available for inspection at any K&L Gates office.

I’ve been typing away today, trying to convince libraries that promoting GREENSWORD as part of their Earth Day activities is a good idea, so it seemed logical to post the press release for you guys, too.  Here it is, along with the cover of the book.

GREENSWORD: A Tale of Extreme Global Warming by Donald J. Bingle (Five Star; ISBN 978-1-59414-728-9) 

They’re about to save the world; they just don’t want to get caught doing it.  

Zeke, Milo, and Brandon are struggling to keep their environmental protest group, GreensWord, alive.  It impresses chicks and sure beats getting jobs as corporate serfs in the real world.  But their chief benefactor, movie star Matthew Barrington, threatens to cut off funding unless they stop global warming before his Malibu beach house slides into the storm-tossed ocean.  In their desperate effort to save the beach house and their organization, the GreensWord trio is willing to try almost anything.  No scheme is so illegal, so risky, or so outrageous they won’t lend it an ear.  But nothing is fast enough to stop global warming in time … until they think of the unthinkable solution.

Fortunately, they’ve watched enough TV to think that they know exactly what to do to foil any investigation of their noble crime.  And if their drastic solution to global warming means they also take out the reigning internet tycoon and his monopolistic Seattle software company, that’s just organic frosting on the vegan cake.

GREENSWORD is a dark comedy about the environment, extremism, stupid criminals, and the lengths to which people will go to avoid getting a real job.

One person can make a difference in the world.

Of course, three people with a plan to stop global warming overnight can make a big difference.

Reviews: 

Booklist (spoilers omitted):

A novel about three slacker environmentalists may seem an unlikely vehicle for edge-of-the-seat suspense, yet Bingle’s satirical ecoterrorist thriller just might haunt readers’ nightmares for days. Zeke, Milo, and Brandon are twentysomething conservationists whose only claim to fame, aside from a little TV footage spotlighting their faltering environmentalist organization, GreensWord, is their dubious relationship to action movie star Matthew Barrington. Desperate to save his lavish Malibu beachfront property from global-warming-induced surf damage, Barrington cuts GreensWord a million-dollar check, stipulating that its recipients do something about the ecological crisis immediately. Their ensuing, hare-brained schemes to put the money to good use only generate legal woes until they hit upon one that seems fool-proof ….  Needless to say, nothing goes quite as planned, and Bingle’s storytelling acumen makes the scenario all too chillingly plausible.

Library Journal:

Zeke, Milo, and Brandon, members of a tiny ecoprotest group called GreensWord, aim to stop global warming before the beach house of their prime (and only) benefactor, actor Matthew Barrington, slides into the ocean. When Barrington threatens to cut off their funding, the enterprising trio steps up its timetable and changes its agenda from painting … roofs … white to deflect the sun’s heat to a plan that rivals the worst nightmares of everyone living in the nuclear age. The author of Forced Conversion demonstrates his talent for dark comedy in the style of Kurt Vonnegut and Victor Gischler. Bingle takes aim at both sides of the global warming controversy, addressing global complexities in comedic trappings for a cautionary tale that belongs in most libraries.

Hugo and Nebula winning science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer:

Science fiction has always been a great vehicle for biting satire and social commentary — from H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine right on up to Donald Bingle’s engrossing GREENSWORD.  Bingle is a terrific writer.

Conservative commentator Joseph A. Morris:

Donald Bingle’s GREENSWORD is great science fiction, but it is also raucous political satire.  With irony and wit worthy of Jonathan Swift, he exposes the fundamental conceit that drives extremists of all kinds:  Absolute conviction that all the accumulated, hard-earned, wisdom of the past is nothing in comparison with the light bulb that just went off in their heads.  Bingle is a master story-teller and his stories are worth telling.
 
Elizabeth A. Vaughan, USA Today Bestselling Author of the Warlands Trilogy:

I loved GREENSWORD.  The characters made me laugh right out loud, but the actions of this group of half-cocked people, with a half-assed plan, had me gasping in horror as their implausible schemes became all too plausibly real.  Suddenly, the twists of the chilling plot had me turning the pages, unable to look away from the macabre tale and yet still chuckling guiltily as the story reached its terrifying climax in a horribly real way.  GREENSWORD is a darkly humorous, gripping thriller that combines environmental imperatives, terrorist activities, and sex in ways that still make me wake up in a cold sweat, months after reading the book, convinced that it could happen.   

About the Author: 

Donald J. Bingle, a Chicago attorney, is so committed to the environment that he arranged to be born on Earth Day sixteen years before it was even founded.  He is also the published author of two novels and more than twenty pieces of short fiction in the science fiction, fantasy, horror, and comedy genres.  He is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers, and the St. Charles Writers Group.  He was also the world’s top-ranked role-playing gamer for more than fifteen years.  For full details about his writing and gaming, see his website at www.orphyte.com/donaldjbingle.  He is available for interviews, seminars, readings, signings, writing panels, and book club chats.  Contact him at orphyte@aol.com.

Donald J. Bingle GREENSWORD:  A Tale of Extreme Global Warming ($25.95; hardcover)