Hello, friends! Another great week being Mr. Gauthier. Stress, heartache, anger, and fear have become the norm since 2020 but especially right now. That said, there have been some pluses. I had a student tell me I was their favorite teacher ever, which is always nice to hear.
With vacation this week, there’s a bunch of stuff that needs to get done around the apartment and I’m hoping to do some major writing work. But that’s looking forward. For now, let’s look back on the week that was.
Welcome to the 58th installment of Gauthic Times, the newsletter about my writing, my life, and fun. Or something.
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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 do this!
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This week I wrote about 4,800 words in Project: Amusement Park. The novel now weighs in at around 172,600 words, or 621 manuscript pages.
There were two nights where I nearly hit 1,000 words, shy by about 60 words one night and 40 the other. There was also a night where I wrote a measly 290 and almost fell asleep while doing so. Still, anything is better than nothing.
Things in the story are certainly becoming intense as all the pieces are being placed, set up for the finale. I think I should finish the chapter I’m working on tonight and then we’re away on the climax. There’s still plenty of story left to tell and I’m beginning to get a notion of how things will end. Now it’s just shepherding it in.
I’m really hoping to finish the first draft (which is really more like the first-and-a-half since I’ve been doing some rewriting as I go) this week. I may have to do some marathon writing sessions to complete the book.
Somehow, I’ve been working on Project: Amusement Park for just about one year. February 20th marks one year since I started it. I hate that it’s taken this long for one draft but it is what it is. The fact is that I’ll have a first draft that I’m pretty proud of, and that’ll need lots of revising, but maybe not as much as Echoes on the Pond.
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Speaking of Echoes on the Pond, I decided to make some ads for social media for the book. They’re still a work in progress and I’ve had Pamela and several friends helping me with them by critiquing them.
Feel free to take those last four ads and share them. I may make more of these, possibly for my other books, too. Who knows if it’ll help at the Twilight of Art and Creativity, but it’s something and, I guess, better than nothing.
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Speaking of support, author and artist Monica Byrne made a couple of videos that I think are really important for creatives to share. Byrne’s novel The Actual Star is a modern science fiction masterpiece that I recommend to anybody. It’s very deep and follows three intermingled stories that span three thousand years, from 1012 to 2012 to 3012. Calling it a science fiction novel, while technically accurate, does it a disservice. It’s a novel, period. But this isn’t about that, it’s about her videos.
One version of the video is two minutes:
Monica Byrne / Writer, Artist / 2024 from Monica Byrne on Vimeo.
And the other is 90 seconds:
Monica Byrne / Writer, Artist / 2024 from Monica Byrne on Vimeo.
Consider sharing these everywhere.
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Well, I think that’s about what I’ve got in me for today. Thank you for reading!
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.
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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.
Gautham: Bill Gauthier.com 
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