Hello, friends!
What a week! The world is a huge, raging dumpster fire, we knew that, but apparently there’s stuff that can explode inside the dumpster, too, and–damn!–we’re in trouble. That said, let’s do what we always do and ignore it and move on.
In my world, the week was stressful and pretty good. Let’s go!
Welcome to the 78th 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.
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.
You can also buy me a coffee through Ko-Fi.
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!
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Work on Project: Monster continued. I’m almost 2/3 of the way through with only about 180+ pages left to edit. There’s a character who I really like whose role is getting trimmed down quite a bit. She had POV chapters that have been excised. The character is a detective who, though provided some movement to the story, didn’t provide enough. Her role being trimmed and her POV being excised may make the book tighter and also a little more mysterious. It’ll–I hope–raise the tension from the main character’s POV.
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Yesterday was the book signing at Barnes & Noble in Wareham, Massachusetts. It was a lot of fun. The woman I’d been dealing with, Nicole, was amazing and my “handler,” Luke, was enthusiastic and welcoming. I couldn’t have asked for a better situation. I saw lots of former students, some co-workers/friends, friends, and met several new readers.
Here is what I walked into. Wait. Did that sound right? I don’t know. Anyway, that’s the table with my books. I designed the sign and sent it to the store. They added the date and put it in the sign. It looks good, I think. I even used a QR code because I’m modern.
Here’s G and I. I asked her permission to put this photo in the update and she said sure, “It’ll probably get you more subscribers and Patrons because I’m cute.” So, prove her right and make a kid’s dream come true! Maybe dream is too big a word…
This gentleman here is Greg F. Gifune. He is a writer who lives near the bookstore and is a Big Deal in the horror/dark fiction genres. He also published some of my earliest stories, providing notes and feedback on “Stray Cats” that acted like a free writing school. When he was working as an editor for Delirium Books, he reached out and asked if I had a novella I could submit for their new novella line. That’s where Shadowed came to be. There’s more to the story in terms of that novella but I can tell it another time. Greg’s part was to reach out, accept, and encourage. We’ve corresponded since 1998 so it was a thrill to finally meet him in-person and get to thank him.
Here’s the post that the Barnes & Noble in Wareham made on Instagram and on Facebook.
One of the former students who came to the signing wasn’t actually one of my students but a student I knew. Asher gave me the gift of some of his art.
This is the backside of the bookmark. He’s a great artist and greater person. Give his website and socials a looksee and maybe buy some art.
It really was a good time and quite humbling. I hope the next event, in August, will be as good. Thank you to everyone who came to see me and bought a book. If you missed it, more info on the August event will be forthcoming.
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Over on Patreon, I wrote about a comic book that I’m playing with creating. Become a Patron to find out more.
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I am not a social person. I have friends who I hold dear to me. I think I’m friendly enough when I meet people and I try to be funny, but when at the end of the day, being social is difficult. For instance, I stopped having birthday parties at the age of six. I hated them. They upset me. This is funny because I love getting presents. I know that’s not necessarily great to admit, most people see giving is nobler than receiving, and they are absolutely correct. Giving a good gift is a great thing and enjoying giving in also great. I enjoy giving gifts. But I enjoy getting gifts even more. So for me to stop having parties where people had to give gifts to me to get in shows you how much I hated parties.
This made the book signing interesting.
I enjoyed meeting prospective readers, answering questions, and talking about my books, which I love and believe in wholeheartedly, but it was a lot. As I left the store at the end, I was trembling. I felt overwhelmed. I was exhausted. It took a little bit to realize what it was. My social battery was depleted.
I was asked by a friend at the end of the signing how it was. She knows me very well. I admitted it was fun but also not.
“It was like Open House,” I said. “In some ways worse than Open House, in some ways much better.”
She immediately got it.
Anyone who has read my newsletters/updates for longer than a year will know that Open House is my least favorite day of teaching. Take a person with social anxiety, put them in a room, and have strangers come in all day is Not Fun and exhausting.
The way that the book signing was worse than Open House is that in the latter, you’re deflecting the whole time. It’s about the students, it’s about the career technical program, it’s about the school, it’s almost never about me. The book signing is about me. Or rather, books that I’ve written. On the table next to me was nearly twenty-five years of work between the stories in Catalysts and the novel Echoes on the Pond.
My first short story publication was in 1999 in Greg Gifune’s Burning Sky, Tales of Science Fiction Terror magazine. It was written in the summer of 1998. Echoes on the Pond had its final edit sometime last year or the year before, just before publication. People are asking questions about me, about my work…it’s tough.
The way that it was better than Open House, though is that I was able to talk about my books. I frickin’ love Echoes on the Pond. I think it’s a really good story that is weird and scary and heartwarming and all the things that I am. I want people to read the thing. I also want to continue writing and continue publishing. So in that way, doing the book signing was fun.
That that’s where I am on the next day. It was horrible and wonderful in equal measures and I’m looking forward to doing it again.
Oh, and at 12:14pm, I became a true author, as opposed to writer, as a man asked me, as I sat a table with a sign that had my face on it, with stacks of books and a pen in my hand, if the store carried newspapers.
It was at that moment that I knew I’d made it. I could tell that story.
I really am looking forward to doing it again.
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I think I’ve run out of steam for today. Thank you for reading!
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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!
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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.
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Gautham: Bill Gauthier.com 
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