Hello, friends! Another week down and it was another crazy one. I had a medical consultation on Monday and a colonoscopy on Thursday. Work was both stressful and not, boring but really busy. Lots of disappointments and lots of fun.
Let’s see…
Welcome to the 55th installment of Gauthic Times, the newsletter about my writing, my life, and feeling the end coming (take that how you will, he says, ominously).
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Anyway, let’s get into it.
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This week saw around 5,100 words added to the novel-n-progress (I need to come up with codenames for projects…). Most days had 600-700 words, one day was 400, and another was 1,100. The overall word count right now is almost 159,000 words, or 574 pages.
I definitely feel like I’m barreling toward the end of the novel. The characters are movin’ and shakin’ and I’m following along, surprised by some of their choices. I think there’ll be some big rewriting on it in the future but not the overhaul that I’ve sometimes have had to do in the past. Maybe a little focusing. We’ll see.
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I finished listening to the audiobook of Don Winslow’s City of Dreams, the second of the Danny Ryan Trilogy of crime novels. The first two books are so good and the audiobooks totally do them justice. They’re read by Ari Fliakos who gives a great performance. I listened to both books after reading them in order to get ready for the next volumes of the series. I was still listening to City of Dreams as I began City in Ruins, the third and final volume.
I’m about halfway through City in Ruins, which I got through NetGalley, and am having a blast. I call books like this “Potato Chips in Book Form.” I can’t put them down and have to read as much as I can in one sitting. Thoroughly enjoying it.
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I realize I have about ten short stories in various states of completion that are just sort of hanging around. Three or four of them may be ready for submission, four-to-six of them need to be revised, and couple need to be majorly rewritten. I think that these, along with the middle grade space adventure books (codename: Space Adventures), will be what I work on after I finish the novel-in-progress (codename: Project Amusement Park)(is that good?).
I’m still waiting to hear back from an agent The Monster in the Closet.
All this reminds me that even though I’ve written every day since September, I still have plenty to do. I may have to come up with a schedule and change some of the ways I’m working. The 30-60 minutes a night is great for a completing a novel but I need a little more time to do the other things. The best way to do that, I think, is to come up with a schedule.
Now that my cough is almost gone (I am still coughing, but not nearly as much), I want to start employing some of the things I’d hoped to start with the new year. We’ll see how it works out. If it works out at all.
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Pamela and I began watching Griselda on Netflix, which good so far.
The second season of Marvel’s What If…? was a lot of fun. I enjoyed the hell out of it. I also watched the DC Animated film Justice League: Warworld, which was fun.
Last week when I was sick, Pamela and I watched American Nightmare on Netflix, which was fucked up.
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Gautham: Bill Gauthier.com 
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