Gauthic Times #77 News & Other Stuff from Bill Gauthier, or Born in the U.S.A.

Hello, friends.

Another busy week here in Gautham. Writing, art, shmoozing, and getting the ol’ heart broken one news story at a time. This coming week looks to be pretty crazy, too.

The Fourth of July was a bittersweet one, wasn’t it? I’ve never really been a fan. I’m not a flag-waving type. I think giving a pledge of allegiance to a flag every day is a little much. I don’t trust people who feel the need to be super patriotic. One of the reason’s Captain America is a favorite superhero is because his modern incarnation is the ideal. He sees an America that’s broken and could be so much better. It’s the same reason I love Superman so much.

With this week’s Supreme Court travesty–well, a lot of their recent travesties–and with Project 2025 finally making it to the more mainstream consciousness, it’s a time to be scared. As it is, the United States is a country born on the backs of slaves and has grown more and more totalitarian in the last 50 years, certainly since Nixon took the Presidential office.

Love him or not, if Biden loses, that’s it. Everything Atwood, Bradbury, Ellison, Huxley, and Orwell tried to warn us about will come to fruition.

In the shadow of the penitentiary
Out by the gas fires of the refinery
Ten years burnin’ down this road
Ain’t got nowhere to run
Ain’t got nowhere to go
I was born in the U.S.A.
–Bruce Springsteen

Let’s get into things.

Welcome to the 77th installment of Gauthic Times, the newsletter about my writing, my life, and using why too much technology is bad.

Becoming a paid Patron on my Patreon would help me write even more. On Patreon, I write about things in more detail than I do in the newsletter or on my website and include the actual names of my works-in-progress and not just codenames. The lowest tier for Patreon is $1 but at $5/month, we’re looking at some serious help.

I mean, if every subscriber or reader of this newsletter, or every social media follower I have became a Patron at even just the $1 tier, I could write more and pay my bills better. The same would happen if they bought copies of my books.

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Grab Echoes on the Pond if you haven’t already. If you have bought it already, books make great gifts! And if you’ve read Echoes on the Pond, please consider reviewing on Amazon or Goodreads, and wherever else books are sold and reviewed.

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

Anyway, let’s do this!

***

I started the week with my typical editing of Project: Monster. Tech issues resumed. I spent an hour working on four pages one night, using Adobe Acrobat. The next night, I open the file and the four pages of edits were gone. Vanished. The saving I thought I’d done seemed not to be anywhere. I spent an hour trying to troubleshoot and find the correct edits but they were gone.

So I had to change things up a final time.

Here’s Project: Monster being printed. I decided to do it double-sided in order to save paper. I printed out the PDF so my edits were there from the iPad. Yesterday, I resumed editing by only using a pen on paper. I’m not going to lie, it feels good.

I was thinking of making a video about the whole ordeal and my thoughts about it. What do you think? Is it a good idea?

***

I also had some back-and-forths with various bookstores. I landed another event at a different local Barnes & Noble, this one in Warwick, Rhode Island. It’ll be an event with other writers, too. It’ll be August 20th at 6pm. I’ll give more info about it as we get closer.

***

Over on Patreon, I showed some art I’m playing with and talked about a comic book idea I have! Become a Patron to find out more.

***

The news this week was all sorts of horrible, wasn’t it? You had the Supreme Court basically granting immunity to Presidents to do whatever they want, pointed to the last guy, the would-be-dictator. This is a stunningly terrifying turn and something that anyone with half a brain could’ve seen coming back in 2016. Writing this will probably get me tossed into a work camp next year, or on the line for the firing squad or whatever Draconian things will come to pass if Biden loses the election. Terrifying.

Then there’s the news of the horrible accusations against Neil Gaiman, a writer whose career has inspired me as it has so many others. While I don’t know everything, it seems Gaiman was up to some bad shit, and it breaks my heart in so many ways. Everyone’s mileage will vary with this but I’m still a fan of his writing. I can’t simply undo almost 40 years of admiration for the man’s work. I know some don’t approve of separating the art from the artist and if that works for them, fine, but when you’re talking about building blocks of one’s psyche, you can’t undo that.

***

The new Star Wars show The Acolyte is all kinds of good. It’s brutal, too, without ever being gritty or too much.

I’ve been reading The Reformatory by Tananarive Due, You Like it Darker by Stephen King, and The End of the Road by Brian Keene, as well as comics from both DC and Marvel. It’s taken me a long time to read the Due novel and the King collection because I’ve grown to love the characters in their stories and have been hesitant to read the bad things that must happen to them. The Keene book is a nonfiction collection of a column he did on a book tour back in 2016. I’ve been reading it on the Kindle for over a year as my waiting room/standing in line book. I’ve read other books in between some of the installments but now can’t seem to stop. Keene is a master storyteller and is in good company with King and Due.

***

Next week is the book signing at Barnes & Noble in Wareham! I’m equal parts excited and terrified. On the one hand, I haven’t done a ton of signings. Three or four, I think, and mostly with other people also signing. As someone who is pretty much an introvert, the idea of putting myself out in a public way is scary. On the other hand, I love my book(s) and want it (them) to sell. I want to be able to walk into a bookstore and see them, and if this is what it takes, then that’s what I’ll do. Also, it’ll be fun.

Here’s the Facebook Event link. Please go on over and check it out!

***

Well, I think I’ve come to the end of this week’s update. Please keep the word out there about Echoes on the Pond and my signing(s). Thank you for reading!

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