Dylan Charles's Blog

I’ve always been a fan of true crime. Whether it’s because of my ma’s influence or my own natural predilections for the macabre, I’ve long been drawn to tales of serial killers and criminal fiends; their psychologies unraveled in gristly mental vivisections that mirror the sadistic dismemberments perpetrated during their own crimes. However, last year I descended rapidly and deeply into the genre and read over sixty different true crime books. I refuse to believe that I just went ahead and read ...

I’m the kind of guy that thinks way too much about the details of any given thing. Whether it’s the interpersonal relationships of fictional doctors or determining how children are able to grow at expeditious rates under the influence of toy slime, my brain is constantly whirring and fizzing because I can’t just leave anything alone. You tell me it’s turtles all the way down and, by God, I believe you, but I’m going to need to count them and catalog them and determine just what kind of turtles t...

I don’t believe in magic. I have a very rational view of the world, a view that could also be called “boring.” My world has no magic, no monsters, no gods, no fey. I know because I’ve looked. I’ve looked in closets and under beds and in forests and down lonely mountain roads and among tombs in abandoned graveyards and inside houses set to a lean against a night sky. My explorations have shown me that this is a world bereft of the supernatural and the extra-sensory and that the only daemons are b...

For the last year or so, I’ve been struggling with a decision that’s been harder for me make than I anticipated. There are, for me, few positives. I don’t think I’ll gain much from what I’m about to do. I also don’t think I’ll face too many consequences, but maybe I’ll be surprised in that regard.

And that’s what gives me pause. Am I about to be blindsided? Will I find out that there are friends or family that don’t “approve,” that have lost respect for me? I don’t think so. I would like to ...

For a long time, writing had become less than a chore to me.

A chore at least has a purpose, an end goal. If I’m taking on the chore of doing dishes, by Christ, there will be some clean dishes at the end of the day. Writing wasn’t even that to me. The odds that something would result from the time I spent in front of the computer were minuscule. I was doing it to do it. So, I made the decision to just stop. For the last year, with a few exceptions, I haven’t tried to write. I haven’t made an...

SPOILER WARNING: I’m going to go in-depth on the plot of the game, “Life is Strange” and I will be spoiling a major plot point

TRIGGER WARNING: Suicide

I don’t play a lot of games and I rarely finish the games that I play, but I played the hell out of “Life Is Strange.” It puts you in the head of a high school student, Max Caulfield, who finds out that she has limited control over time, and can “rewind” the last few minutes that she’s experienced. While she is learning to develop her power...

Hello,

I’ve reached the end of my blogging for 30 days spectacular.

I’m pretty happy about that.

I found out that it’s really hard to think of thirty interesting blog entries sequentially.

But it has kickstarted my interest in writing and has gotten some gears turning again that I thought would be forever rusted up.

I’ll be back to blog here next week (Monday!) but I need a small cooling off period.

And I’m sure you’ll be glad of the break as well.

Thank you for reading,

-D-

Hello,

I’m not a plotter.

I don’t like planning out my stories at all. It robs me of the thrill of discovery. I sometimes start a story having no idea where it’s going to go, but that’s what makes writing exciting to me. I can go on the same journey as someone reading the story as I go.

But starting a story with no particular place to go might explain why I have so much trouble finishing my stories.

But I’m tackling a story that demands I know the ending before I start, so I’m trying to write...

Hello,

I’m nearing the end of my experiment to write in this blog every day and I’m looking forward to that last day.

There’s only so much I can say, day in and day out and I’m sure there are days when y’all could tell I was checked out, especially on those 11:00pm postings.

But it’s made me think more and more about how I view the world, how I approach writing and getting me back into some kind of writing shape.

I feel I analyze things more, pay attention more, and put more effort into my wr...

Hello,

I realized recently that I get the majority of my news through social media sites and that’s really got to stop.

Most of the time, I only hear about events important enough to be blared out in all-caps, bolded typeface sprayed all over the worst possible photograph of Donald Trump. While this is helpful in continuing to make me furious and enrage, it’s not really keeping me too informed.

The social media echo chamber is probably the most dangerous thing that’s happening to American pol...