Chuck Tingle has never colored inside the lines — and thank goodness for that. With a bibliography that includes everything from sentient objects falling in love to surreal social commentary wrapped in unicorn erotica, the Doctor of Love has long reigned as genre fiction’s most unexpected wildcard. But if you thought you had Tingle pegged, think again.
With Lucky Day, Chuck shifts gears into something far more disorienting: a full-throttle existential horror story that shares more DNA with “The X-Files” by way of Final Destination than anything else on the shelves, filtered through a lens of identity, loss, and cold statistical logic.
Already racking up spots on 2025’s most-anticipated lists, Lucky Day follows Vera, a bisexual statistics professor wrestling with a world where probability has turned feral. When a Las Vegas casino starts winning a little too often, reality begins to unravel. What follows is a cerebral descent into madness, numbers, and the terrifying consequences of a universe where chance no longer plays fair.
To mark the occasion, CinemaChords’ own Howard Gorman sat down with Tingle for a heady conversation that dives deep into the philosophical horror swirling at the heart of Lucky Day. We’re talking realities without time, space, or matter. Big questions with even bigger implications. Yet somehow, Chuck keeps his latest narrative human. Grounded. Relatable. You might lose your grip on reality, but you’ll never lose sight of the emotional core.
And of course, we couldn’t let him go without talking Tinglers — those mind-melting, genre-defying fever dreams that turned him into an underground legend. It’s clear he still has a huge soft spot for his bizarre, beloved brand of self-published weirdness, and the passion is as palpable as ever.
How does he maintain his footing on that precarious line between absurdity and authenticity? What grounds his wildest concepts in emotional truth, allowing the surreal to strike with genuine human resonance? We came armed with questions—and, true to form, Tingle delivered a volley of thoughtful, deftly disarming answers.
But we’ll let Tingle do the talking. Enjoy the full interview below — just don’t blame us if your perception of reality starts to feel a little… elastic by the end.
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