Hello, friends! I’m writing this later on Saturday night than I normally do and might have to finish this tomorrow. Things were busy today and I couldn’t get myself to the computer.
This week was a good one but it had one bad moment. On Monday, I started a new medication and it didn’t agree with me. It knocked me on my ass. I haven’t taken it since. It wasn’t a mandatory medication but something I was trying to help lose weight. While what was happening to me on Monday could definitely have resulted in losing weight, the manner in which I would’ve done so wasn’t how the medication should’ve worked.
The rest of the vacation week was good. It was mostly laid-back. Saw my father and my adult daughter on different days. I tried some stuff with Gabby Ray. Basically, I just tried to rest.
Now that the week is over, the anxiety is mounting again and I suspect that this week is going to be quite tough. We’ll see, I guess.
Welcome to the 59th installment of Gauthic Times, the newsletter about my writing, my life, and overbearing anxiety and sadness.
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This week I wrote about 5,400 words in Project: Amusement Park. The novel now weighs in at around 177,900 words, or 641 manuscript pages.
February 20th marked one year since I started the novel. I’d hoped to have finished the first draft months ago, but I’m happy the story is being told. I’d also hoped to finish it this week but I didn’t write as much as I’d wanted, choosing instead to be with my family. It was, of course, the correct decision.
I found myself looking into some local Native American myths that might match some of what I’d written and found some that worked. It sounds strange to look into such things this late in the game but that’s how I roll. And while some of the things I’m writing about will have ties to these myths, they’re not supposed to only be from these myths, but older.
It’ll make sense once you read it.
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I mentioned I was doing something with Gabby Ray this week. I played around reformatting the first sample book I did to be better viewed on Instagram. Here are a few samples:
For some, it meant resizing and adding new things, fixing inserts that wouldn’t translate well in the Instagram format, and thinking of a different way to tell the story in a way that’s compatible with Instagram.
Sometimes, the page setups just needed to be trimmed but the basic format from the book still worked.
Here’s an example of taking panels that, on the page, are side-by-side and making them fill the square in an interesting way. Part of the storytelling is making sure the panels and text move in a way that amplifies the story and the drama.
I haven’t decided yet how to proceed. I was thinking of doing either an art Instagram or a dedicated Gabby Ray one. But that’s in the future. I may test this on my main IG and see what happens.
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The past week marked the fifth anniversary of my mother’s death. How the hell has five years passed? So much as happened and yet it still feels like yesterday that we last spoke. I miss her but I have to wonder what would’ve happened in the last five years had she not died in 2019. Would she have survived Covid? Would her health have deteriorated in other ways?
Grief is strange. I can still hear her voice in my head. Do you know what I can’t do? I cannot bring myself to actually hear her voice. I have videos and voicemails from her. She had a mini-cassette recorder that she used to dictate Queer As Folk fanfiction. No joke. She became pretty well-known, apparently, in those circles until her vision got too bad for her to write.
I can’t listen to any of those. I’m afraid hearing Mom’s voice again will wreck me. I have no problems looking at the pictures of her other than sadness but the idea of hearing her voice is too much.
Someday, I guess.
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Okay, that’s this week’s newsletter. Thank you for reading!
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Gautham: Bill Gauthier.com 
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