Gauthic Times #54 News & Other Stuff from Bill Gauthier, or Coffee, Coughy, and Echoes

Hello, friends! I’m actually writing this on a Saturday again! Whee! Last week I mentioned I was starting a Ko-Fi account and HERE IT IS! Feel free to “buy me a cuppa” and please share it (and this newsletter/post) with your friends. Please.

I’m not going to lie with you. Things are getting tight here in Gautham. The prices of everything are going up but my pay is not. At least not in any significant manner. I haven’t been this worried about money in more than a decade. So I’ll be trying to do some stuff to help and I’m going to try to do it with my writing and creativity. Amplifying my work will help.

If you haven’t left a five-star review of Echoes on the Pond on Amazon or Goodreads (or both), please do. Even if you have problems with those specific sites, they’re what most people are using and every review counts. And as far a five-star review…the more five-star reviews books get, the more they show up in searches.

The thing that’s so frustrating is that what I’m making is really not shabby, but in today’s climate, it’s rough. So thank you in advance for sharing my work. I really appreciate it.

Welcome to the 54th installment of Gauthic Times, the newsletter about my writing, my life, and coughing.

If you like my newsletter and would you like to see more, if you’d like to help me write more, you can become a Patron on my Patreon, where I talk about things in more detail and include the names of my works-in-progress. The lowest tier for Patreon is $1. If every follower I had on social media did the $1 tier, I could pay my bills better and maybe even write more. Same if they bought copies of my books.

And, as I mentioned above, there’s now Ko-Fi.

Echoes on the Pond is out now! Grab a copy, if you haven’t already. If you have bought it already, books make great gifts! And if you’ve read Echoes on the Pond, I’d also really love (and appreciate) it if you’d leave a nice review on Amazon or Goodreads.

You can also get my collection Catalysts or my novellas Alice on the Shelf and Shadowed.

Anyway, let’s get into it.

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This week saw 3,100ish words added to the novel-in-progress. Most days had 500-600 words added, one day had a measly 240. It was a rough day and I was tired. Things are moving in the novel and I’m having fun. The overall word count right now is almost 154,000 words, or 555 pages.

The characters are still surprising me and dictating the story. There are a lot of POVs in it, so hopefully it’s not too confusing, but then, I love novels with lots of POVs, so it’s not surprising that I employ them.

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I had to go back to the doctor’s last week because I still have my cough from the cold. Another round of Prednisone and a steroid inhaler to join my normal one. After one two days on it (yesterday and today) I feel like I’m already noticing a difference. I have two appointments this week, including a colonoscopy for the Crohn’s, so this will be a strange week in an already-strange time.

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I finished Becoming the Boogeyman by Richard Chizmar and enjoyed the hell out of it! It doesn’t have as much of the Bradburyesque rose-colored glasses of the past and small town life—though it is present—and I think that helps it. I’d guessed who the killer was fairly early on but that didn’t detract from my enjoyment one iota. For me, it’s always the journey, and Chizmar frickin’ delivers!

Now I’ve started the advance reader copy of Don Winslow’s City in Ruins, the third and final volume of the Danny Ryan Trilogy, and what is said to be Winslow’s final novel. I’m also listening to second volume (almost done with it) even though I read it about a year ago, I wanted to refresh my memory for the new book. Because NetGalley has a timer on my availability on how long I have access to it, I’ve decided to start the third book before finishing my listen to the second.

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I’m thinking of trying to do book signings for Echoes on the Pond. If there’s a bookstore you think I should hit up, or a convention or something that’s coming up, please let me know. I know that several of you wonderful Patrons have your thumb on the pulse of literary happenings. Let me know. Books have no time limits (I tell myself) and I really want to move more copies of Echoes.

I went to a local Barnes & Noble last week where I picked up a friend’s book. But when I went to the horror section and looked at the Gs on the shelf, my heart broke a little. Here I have a novel out. A novel. Not a novella or a collection, but an actual novel but you can’t find it at a brick-and-mortar Barnes & Noble. As far as I know, you can’t find it at any brick-and-mortar store because every bookstore I reached out to didn’t get back in touch with me. Except Barnes & Noble to reject me. You can special order it through them, but you have to pay for it because they don’t want to shelve it.

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If you’d like to see what I could do if I wrote full-time, share this newsletter with others and consider a paid subscription.

You also tip/donate on Ko-Fi.

Of course, you could also become a Patron on my Patreon, which has a lot more information about my works-in-progress and the books I’ll be querying, including titles and some simple, non-spoiler details.

Get my collection Catalysts, my novellas Alice on the Shelf and Shadowed, and definitely order Echoes on the Pond, out now!

If you haven’t left a review on Amazon, Goodreads, or anyplace else for Echoes on the Pond, please consider doing so. This greatly helps sell copies.

And maybe call your local brick-and-mortar bookstore and demand they carry it! I’ll even sign copies! Well, if they’re local to me. That means Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and maybe some of the other New England states.

Have a great New Year and thank you for subscribing. If you choose to move to my website or my Patreon, let me know. I can always make a free tier at Patreon which could easily replace this newsletter.