Tag Archives: MY book

September 30, 2012 · 1:17 pm

31 Days of Spoooktacular: The Prequel

I hope you enjoyed yesterday’s descent into madness. I hope I never have to do that again. But it did give you a little taste of what to expect in the coming days.

For the next 31 days, I plan to post more Spoooky Beer Reviews, horror movie reviews, and my occasional over-philosophizing about the horror genre, both in books and in film. I plan to blog from Rock and Shock. I plan to even blog about things that aren’t directly related to Halloween, just to mix it up a little bit.

In the end, I hope that you and I will know each other better  and grow closer together.

And that you’ll buy my book.

-D-

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December 31, 2011 · 8:34 pm

The Death of a Year

Let’s see if I can remember how to do this.

We’ll start with an opening sentence and take it from there.

Oh hi! I don’t really know if there are people who still read this. It’s been about, oh, two months since I last updated. I’ll make the assumption that everyone who reads my blog assumed that I had died over that little break. Well, I’m not dead. Far from it.

I’m here to do what’s likely to become the annual tradition around here. I’ll weep about my failures over the last year and make promises to do better next year.

Actually, you know what, let’s do this up right. Let’s not talk about failures. It’s boring, it’s whiny and no-one likes reading that. Let’s do the opposite of that. So here it is. My top five list of awesome shit that I did.

5. I killed three bookstores and a nationwide bookstore chain in the process. Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Dylan, that’s…not such a good thing.” But it had to be done and I made sure it gone done smoothly. No one died, product got sold and there are people all over the city with Borders bookcases in their homes cause I did my job like a ninja. A retail ninja. And I did while remaining sane.

4. I submitted a whole crapton of stuff to be published. None of it got published, but that’s not the point. After a few years of sitting around and not doing anything with my writing career, I actually got out there and started things up again. It’s awfully hard for me to get going once I’ve stopped doing something (see: this blog), but by God, I did it.

3. I read a metric-crapton of books. For those of you who use Imperial measurement, a metric-crapton is a lot of books. Every book I read helps me be a better writer. You know what else helps me be a better writer?

2. I started writing stories again. I hadn’t written a new piece of fiction in almost a year and I finally got back up on that horse. But! The biggest piece of news from the previous year?

1. I self-published a book. It’s still there on Amazon and for even cheaper now. You should go buy it if you haven’t done so already. And, if you want it in paperback, then, holy crap, you have that option now too. There’s people out there, right now, reading my work. Bam.

So that’s sounds like a pretty well seized year. Sometimes I’m pretty bummed about how a year went and I’ve been feeling that a little bit the last couple of weeks. But, you know, looking at that list there, I think I can live with how 2011 went. I’m ready for even bigger things next year.

Just…please, no more store closings.

Dylan

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October 1, 2011 · 9:45 pm

Tales of the Whispering Mad and the Mis-Dead: Now in Paperback!

You may remember that I have a book, which is available on the Kindle.

Now, everytime I tell people that I have a book and it’s only on the Kindle, they tell me, “But I don’t have a Kindle.” To which I respond, “Then buy a Kindle and then buy my book!” This never goes over well.

So! I’ve come up with a solution. You can now buy my book IN PAPERBACK. No ereaders required, you just go online, order the book and it arrives in the mail, in paper form. Truly, a miracle in modern technology.

Go HERE to buy my book in dead tree form.

Go HERE to buy my book in electronic radioactive form.

Some day, I might even get around to putting it on the Nook.

Dylan Charles

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September 25, 2011 · 6:59 pm

Branching into Paperback

I’ve long resisted printing my book simply because it makes for a more expensive product. It’s the same product, but with a price difference of fifteen bucks.

But today I finally decided that ya’ll deserve the opportunity to buy my book in an actual, hard-copy form. It’ll be the same thing as the Kindle copy, but printed on for real paper for all you luddites out there.

Pay close attention to this very spot for when Tales of the Whispering Mad and the Mis-Dead becomes available in paperback!

Dylan Charles

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August 2, 2011 · 10:28 pm

The Newest Book

Since it’s been a while, let’s talk about the book. No, not that book. The newest one. The one that hasn’t been written yet.

I’m…extremely tentative about this one. I want this one to be perfect.  I want the table of contents to work properly. I want the formatting to sparkle. I don’t want there to be a single typo or blemish. This next book feels…important. And, if I know anything about me, I shy away from all things important.

Important decisions are to be put off to the last minute. Important events must be ignored until the day they happen, at which point one must sprint through them as briskly as humanly possible. Important emotions must be stuffed into a little box, covered with cement and then buried six feet under ground.

So I’m a little daunted by this book, is what I’m saying. I have five of the six stories that I need, because (as previously mentioned) six is a good number. And the other five stories are in need of some serious work. Well, two need serious work, two need massive overhauls and the fifth is fine. And the sixth I just started writing last night.

So it’ll be a while before the book comes out, assuming that I can get over being daunted and overwhelmed by the sheer importance of this project. This book means something to me, more than the last. The stories in my first book are part of before. I think they’re good horror and I think you should buy the book and read them, if that’s your thing.

But the stories in the next book haven’t ever been seen before. They’re new, both to me and you. They’re something I’ve never done before. They’re part of a continuous universe, a whole world that I’ve been creating over the last six months and still creating. As I type this, I’m expanding the world a little more, going beyond the boundaries I set in the first five stories.

So, I hope you enjoy it when it comes out, because these might be the best stories I’ve ever written.

So far.

Dylan Charles

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July 13, 2011 · 9:11 pm

Helping Hands

I’m not very good at asking for help, nor am I very good at acknowledging the help that I receive. So I’m gonna try and rectify that here, in a small way.

Thank you all the folks who retweeted, reposted and reposted again links to my book. I saw links popping up in places I didn’t expect (like the N.C. Maker Faire facebook page) and that was really awesome.

I’ve seen reviews popping up, which helps a great deal in boosting the visibility of my book, thanks to A.R. West.

And I have an actual, for real book cover, thanks to the Illustrator and Photoshopping skills of Emily. She explained to me, forcefully, that a black background with white text does not constitute a sale-able book cover and then made me somethign a thousand times better. You should go check it out.

Thank you all so much for passing the word along. Ya’ll are awesome and I’m giving hugs to everyone.

Dylan Charles

Buy my book.

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July 1, 2011 · 10:49 am

Marketing

I’ve never been good at self-marketing. When I had to write the description for my book, I got hung up and spent at least three days agonizing over it. Now I have to write a biography for my author page on Amazon and I’m, once again, stuck on what I’m supposed to say. I’ve somehow got to package myself in a way that makes people say, “Hey now, this chap seems to produce good works. I wish to buy the entirety of everything that he creates. Pip pip!”

Unfortunately, the sum total of my marketing ability seems to be, “Buy my book!” And even in that, I feel reluctant. What if I’m pushing my book too much? What if I just end up driving people away with my constant shilling? My god, what if the book isn’t really good enough to sell?

It’s times like these that I wish have someone else to sell my book for me, someone with reach and connections and all that jazz. Since I’m left to my own devices, it’s my own drive that determines how well this turns out. And that’s a terrifying notion.

In the end, it will be me, from one end of the process to the other, from the writing to the editing to the publishing, that determines my own success and failure. And as scary as that is, it’s preferable to the alternative. I want to be in control, I want to be the determining factor in my own life.

So I will.

Dylan Charles

Also, you should buy my book, if you haven’t already. And, if you have, consider reviewing it on Amazon.

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June 29, 2011 · 10:47 am

Looking for Pickman

I was reading Pickman’s Model, one of my favorite Lovecraft stories, and I realized I recognized most of the places he was talking about in the story. There was the studio on Newbury Street and South Station and there was the North End. In fact, Lovecraft placed Pickman’s studio of horrors right smack dab in the middle of the North End on an unnamed street.

But I want to find it. At least, I want to find the general location where the story was set. Since Boston is deadset on staying the same way it was hundreds of years ago, I’ll be looking at the same buildings that Lovecraft saw in his Boston, almost a hundred years ago.

And there’s something distinctly appealing about that, the ability to go and see the places that affected a writer.

So, since I have business up in the North End anyway, I figured I might as well poke around while I’m there and try and see what Lovecraft.

Dylan Charles

Oh look, an advertisement for my book that just came out! If you like horror, you’ll like my book. Go read it. Please.

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June 26, 2011 · 9:57 pm

Do-It Yourself Publishing

Since finishing my book, I’m feeling reinvigorated about writing.

For a long while, I’ve been waiting for some kind of validation. I’ve been waiting for someone to tell me, “Ah-ha! You’ve reached the point where you’re a writer. Congratulations!”

But this time, I said to hell with it and just put it all together and sent it out into the world. And while this isn’t as satisfying as having someone else confirm how awesome I am, there’s still something to be said for pulling myself up by my own bootstraps and getting it done on my own.

And that has given me the boost I need to keep writing and to keep moving forward. It doesn’t matter that the whole ePublishing thing nearly made me pull out all of my own hair. I feel energized, like I could take on anything. So I’ve immediately started working on my next book.

I hope you’re ready for it, cause I sure am.

Dylan Charles

Speaking of my book, go buy my book! Please.

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June 25, 2011 · 8:24 pm

Tales of the Whispering Mad and the Mis-Dead

After months of (sporadic) work, it’s done. The book is done.

You can read it on the Kindle.

You can read it on your computer.

You can read it on your iPad or your iPhone.

Fact is, you can read my book for the low, low price of $2.99. It’s at LEAST an hour’s worth of entertainment; even more if you’re a slow reader. And it’s riproaring good fun.

So buy my book. And when you’re done, tell other people to check it out too. Cause, here’s the deal: ya’ll are my advertising, every last one of you. And the more people who buy this book, the more likely it is that I can do this fulltime and put out another, even better book much sooner.

And if horror’s not your thing, tell that friend you have who digs horror. You all have that one friend who watches the Friday the 13th movies way too much or who REALLY digs Clive Barker. Tell them about Tales of the Whispering Mad and the Mis-Dead. Spread the word, tell your friends. Blog reviews. Tweet the links.

Go forth my minions and spread the gospel!

And read my book.

Dylan Charles

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