Dylan Charles's Blog, page 24

Laugh or Die: Entry IV

Comedy and Horror have a lot in common. Both are about building tension until the audience can’t take it any more and react in one of two ways: they either laugh or scream.

With this in mind, one might think that it’s easy to combine the two. Historically, it’s happened. Scream, Army of Darkness, Return of the Living Dead, Fargo; these are all movies with strong thriller or horror elements but that also managed to be funny. But these are exceptions to the rule. For every, genuinely funny and c...

All of the Raps: Entry III

As part of my musical explorations, I’ve decided to check out rap. It’s a musical genre that I’ve steered clear of, just like modern country music. But I’ve always felt bad about doing that. Disregarding an entire genre of music (or movies or books or television) without even trying it first seems close-minded. I want to see what it has to offer before disregarding it as a haven for violent imagery and blatantmisogyny.

So I’ve listened to 2Pac and Biggie and Jay-Z and Kanye and Run D.M.C. and...

The Patterns and Cycles of Writing: Entry II

For me and for any writer, I would imagine, there are periods and time when it’s not conducive for writing.

I know of some authors who have claimed that times of high stress prompt their best writing. That’s never been the case for me. I always need everything to be just right. I need the right music to be playing to fit the mood of the story. I need there to be very little else going on in my life. I need for my beverage of choice to fit whatever I’m writing.

In other words, I’m a pampered dan...

The Day of Ten Blog Entries: Entry I

Once again, we find ourselves at the end of the month just a few entries shy of the ten entries that I promised ya’ll. This month, I left it dangerously close to the deadline.

But never fear, I won’t let you down; not this month nor any other month. There will be ten entries by the end of May, no matter the cost.

I’ll write about horror and I’ll write about beer. I’ll write about small parrots and bad movies. There will be entries that will astound you and entries that will make you tear up and...

Fear versus Scare

One of the most frustrating things about modern horror movies and books are their inability or unwillingness to build up tension. There is a big difference between fear and scaring someone. You can scare someone easily enough. All you have to do is hide in a closet and then jump out at them when they least expect it. You’ll get slapped and the other person will walk off shaking their head.

And that’s what most horror resorts to; a brief scare where something shocks the viewer into jumping. Aft...

The North End Excursion (Part II)

There are places in this world where the skin of our world has been worn thin. Here, breaches can happen and travelers from our world can cross over to the other….just as they can also cross over into our world. These are places where the very fabric of reality has been frayed and where the unreal and impossible realities of other dimensions bleed into our own. These are places where the mad prophets have visions of phantasms and the insane see their brain-fever dreams made unbearable reality...

The North End Excursion (Part 1)

I was reading the Necronomicon, a collection a short stories by the Mad American H.P. Lovecraft, when I noticed something interesting in one of his stories, specifically “Pickman’s Model”.

While most of his tales revolve around fantastical locations or rural areas or fictional towns, this particular story takes place in Boston’s North End. There is even mention of several actual streets and locations nearby. With a little research, I discovered that Lovecraft had, indeed, based this nightmare...

A New Story Is Up: Carolyn

Over a year ago, I wrote a story called For Carolyn and it was published on Tales from the Zombie War. There were a few comments asking for more about both Carolyn and her mother, Alex, and while I normally ignore comments asking for a sequel, I actually had an idea about them and where I could take them.

So over the course of a year, I fleshed out a story about Carolyn and her mother trying to survive in woods infested with zombies. I actually liked it a lot. It’s a little story. Focused, I t...

Tell Me Why, Amendment One

I normally don’t talk about politics. I think it ends up being a preaching to the choir situation, where your enjoyment of the entry comes from whether or not you agree with me already. I don’t think I’m going to change any minds and I think, at best, I can just get people to understand where my views are coming from. Which is fine. I think the country would be in a better position right now if people spent less time trying to force everyone to agree than if they just tried to spend five minu...

Tension

Since today was my day off from my job-that-pays-me-money, I decided to do some research for my job-that-is-more-fun-but-way-less-lucrative. I watched four horror movies, most of them slightly-above-average. However, when I got to Insidious, I began to get angry.

There’s a difference between bad horror movies and horror done badly. Bad horror movies acknowledge that they’re never going to be art and go, instead, for cheap thrills and black cat jump scares (“What’s that noise?” “Oh my Jesus! Th...