Dylan Charles's Blog, page 34

Boston Museum of Fine Arts

Neither Emily nor I have been to Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and since we had the day off together, we decided to check it out.

This sounds like a simple thing on the surface: Emily and Dylan head off to the museum together and enjoy fine arts. In reality, we spent an embarrassing amount of time wandering around Boston's Back Bay looking like especially bewildered tourists, even with the aid of Emily's tricorder-ish phone.

But! We actually did make it to the museum, about five minutes before w...

Confronting Confrontation Confrontationally

I've never been a very confrontational person. I prefer sulking and passive-aggressive snarking to out and out telling someone off. Any attempt to "get up in someone's grill" usually leads to a mild sputtering and a red face on my part. Even just thinking about it makes me want to throw up.

It took me a long time before I was comfortable with talking to strangers on the phone or making small talk with strangers on the bus. Confrontation is ten steps above that and makes me break out into a...

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...

Google Nonplussed

I've been using Google Plus for the last few days. For people who aren't aware, Google Plus is Google's attempt to unseat Facebook with their own social networking system. It's still in Beta testing, but it's not too hard to get an invitation nowadays. You should have at least one friend who's sitting on a couple of invites.

So far my experiences with Google Plus have been positive. For a beta, it's very polished and I haven't bumped into any bugs. It is missing one or two feautures that I'd l...

Hero Worship

So today, Stephen King walked into the bookstore where I work and I became slightly excited.

I've been reading his books since I was twelve and they've been scaring the shit out of me ever since. In fact, I like how he writes so much, that for an embarrassingly long time, his writing style heavily informed my own. I've read his book, "On Writing", and used it to guide how I write and when I write and how I market, though my discipline is a little lacking.

So when I say I was slightly excited...

Angry Reading

It is very rare that I read something that makes me actually angry. Partly because I avoid books written by political pundits and partly because I very carefully stick to authors and stories I know will interest me.

Occasionally I'll stray and try something new; something outside my usual parameters. Recently, when I've done this, it hasn't ended well. I've been weighted down with eye-rolling moments of obviousness or dialog so stilted it could only be written or plot devices that make me...

Ten Percent

Last week, my computer was out of commission for about four days. It wasn't a very long time and I was able to access everything I needed using either Emily's computer (Thanks El!) or my iPod. So there was no real first world hardship involved and I was able to do pretty much everything that I was able to do before my computer decided to lose its marbles.

That didn't change the fact that I felt a lot better after I had gotten my computer back. It's a mix of a wide variety of different...

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 ...

End of the Month

So it's the end of the month and my attempt to go a whole month posting every day has gone without a hitch. I think I managed to maintain a level of quality throughout. Granted you might disagree with me there, but I'll assume that you don't.

Now I have to decide if I want to do this from now on. It makes sense from a business standpoint, since more people seem to read and comment when I blog regularly as  opposed to once a week. And I think it has helped me become a better blogger.

It's also p...

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 ...