Hello, friends.
Part of the title of this update is, of course, referencing the famous meme with the dog sitting in the burning house, saying, “Everything’s fine,” because that’s what it feels like. I have some Thoughts and I’m not sure I should share them. I probably will eventually because I feel like I must take a page from Harlan Ellison’s playbook and be honest, but I’m not sure I want to deal with the @’s that will surely come. We’ll see. Maybe I’ll test it here on Patreon to my Patrons first and see what you think. At any rate, this week has been busy.
But first, I’m going to start posting this weekly newsletter over on Patreon for my free followers. I’m still posting the newsletter here and on my website. The newsletter is pretty much the same thing paid Patrons get, only with a few changes.
Paid Patrons get the names of works-in-progress while the newsletter and socials get codenames. So the adult horror novel I’m currently editing is Project: Monster over there and the middle-grade space adventure novel I’ve written about is Project: MG Space Adventure I. Paid Patrons also see artwork and hear about the comic book I’m playing around with. Lastly, Paid Patrons get exclusives like the chapbook I did last year. I’m also planning on posting some stories in the nearish future. Maybe another chapbook, too, although the cost was actually more than I’d expected.
I’m truly grateful to have anyone be interested in what I’m doing. Free or paid. If I can get more paid Patrons (or subscribers here), then I’ll be able to do more, I hope.
Anyway, with that out of the way, let’s get into the update!
Welcome to the 79th installment of Gauthic Times, the newsletter about my writing, my life, and panic attacks at things I should have fun at.
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!
***
Project: Monster only just passed the 2/3 mark. A small sub-chapter or two have been excised and more tightening has happened. I’ve been keeping track as I go like this:
Very old school and silly but it works. Right now I’m actually on page 297, so even further along than when that picture was taken 23 pages ago. With only 136 pages left, I realized last night that when I’m done with Project: Monster, I have to pretty much jump right into editing Project: Amusement Park, the adult horror novel I wrote most of last year and into this one. I won’t be fucking around with PDFs for that. I’ll print it double-sided like I did with this draft of Project: Monster. I’ll probably print it out and start the editing immediately after finishing the edits on Project: Monster. Project: Amusement Park’s edits by hand, Project: Monster’s revisions on the computer.
I was asked once what I meant when I differentiated editing and revising. In my mind–and I don’t know if any other writer thinks of it like this–edits are when I’m going through the manuscript, crossing things out, adding lines, tightening, etc. Revisions are when I take those edits and actually apply them to a clean manuscript to create the next draft. Is it a wonky differentiation? Probably. But it works for me.
Anyway, I’m hoping to finish the edits on Project: Monster soon.
***
This weekend is Necon weekend. Camp Necon is a conference for horror writers, artists, and readers. It’s a smallish event where many writers and artists in the horror and dark fiction genres meet up. I’ve been aware of it for years. Every year I think that this year will be the year I go. Every year I’m wrong.
Except 2010.
I decided I would do the day passes for one or two days of the weekend back in 2010. The original version of Catalysts had come out in 2007, I had Alice on the Shelf coming at some point (which ended up being early-2011), and I’d been in Borderlands 5. So I decided to go. I couldn’t afford the whole weekend, overnight, but I could manage a day pass, which I believe meant I could go all three days of the conference, I would just have to drive there. Since they were at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island back then, and I live about 30-to-40 minutes away, the drive wouldn’t be terrible.
So I got dressed and went. The first mistake I made was trying to look cool. I wore boots, jeans, and a black tee shirt. In July. Parking was difficult to find and far from any happenings.
I finally parked and got out into the humid July air and began my trek toward where things were happening. The first person I saw was Douglas Clegg.
I’d read and enjoyed a few of Clegg’s back in the early-2000s and had even chatted with him online a time or two. He said hi and I mumbled a greeting that may or may not have been articulate because suddenly my heart was lodged in my throat and ramming so hard I couldn’t hear myself.
Not far away was a table with a kindly older man who greeted me warmly. I told him who I was, got my name badge, a bag of swag, and met Bob Booth, founder of Necon. He’d pass away a few years later but I remember how kind and warm he was that day.
I walked up the hill toward wherever the conference stuff was happening. A gym, I think. Did I mention it was July? Did I mention I was wearing boots? Jeans? A black tee shirt? Did I mention it was July? Humid? Sun?
By the time I got to the gym, I was soaked. I went in and soon found myself in the area of a panel setup, an art show, and a book sale. I like books. It was why I was there. So that’s where I headed. (I may have actually stopped in the bathroom first to grab paper towels to wipe the sweat off. I would be in the presence of greatness, after all!).
At the book sale, a nice, bearded man stood behind the table and greeted me. His name tag said John McIlveen. I recognized the name. We shared a table of contents for Borderlands 5, aka, From the Borderlands. I introduced myself (I think) and we made a tiny bit of small talk. This would be the first of two times meeting John this way. The following year, nearly the same thing happened at Rock ‘n Shock, a horror convention that used to happen in Worcester, Massachusetts.
The thing was, I was freaking out so bad that I couldn’t think of much to say and probably looked like a deer in the headlights (or a Derry kid in the Deadlights, whichever). As I mentioned last week, I’m not a social person by nature.
I walked through the art show, which was cool, and a panel was about to begin. I can’t remember what it was about. I think Linda Addison sat on it. I sat down as I waited, others began to come in. It was a Friday afternoon and I suspect that it wasn’t very busy that day. I saw people I’d conversed with online like Matt Schwartz. Then a small group of people came and sat in the row in front of me. Brian Keene, Yvonne Navarro, and Weston Ochse. I think Mary SanGiovanni was there, too. It’s been fourteen years so my memory is a little vague. Douglas Clegg walked in and sat somewhere.
I was acutely aware that some of my bookcase sat around me, listening. Reacting. And my heart started racing.
And I started to have trouble breathing.
I held off the panic attack for a bit. Sat through one, maybe two panels. Nothing else was going to be happening until later when, I assumed, more people would be around. I’d get to see Christopher Golden again. We’d done a book signing at Pandemonium Books in Cambridge and he’d been generous and kind and I really looked forward to meeting him again. I’d meet Tom Monteleone, who’d bought “The Growth of Alan Ashley” for Borderlands 5, which was my first big break (a break squandered; a story for another time) before I knew how off the rails Tom was (though I suspected; again, a story for another time). I’d get to meet, speak with, all these writers I’ve mentioned thus far and more, perhaps even surprise writers would show up.
I went into the bathroom because my stomach felt bad. Crohn’s disease, amiright?
And the panic attack came like a freight train.
One of the worst panic attacks I’d ever had walloped me at that moment. My heart raced, sweat poured off of me, and I almost began weeping.
I booked.
I left the bathroom and made my way down the hill do my car and then drove away from Roger Williams University and Necon.
I was suddenly starving so I stopped at a McDonald’s and went to a parking lot somewhere to eat. I texted Pamela and my best friend Toby (who drew the comic book page in Echoes on the Pond) and told them what happened, told them how embarrassed I was, how sad I was. And I went home.
It’s hard to believe that was fourteen years ago. Some of the people who were there are no longer with us now. Some have fallen from grace for bad behavior or being rather ridiculous. I wish I’d stayed but I didn’t.
I haven’t been back to Necon for a lot of reasons, none of them the conference’s fault. Fear of another panic attack, my youngest daughter’s birth, my wife working, and money have all been reasons. Every year, though, I wish I could go and redeem myself. Every year I wish I could go to meet some of these people I admire and have become, in a small way, colleagues with.
And every year, this year is no exception, I think the same thing:
Maybe next year.
***
That’s all I’ve got for you today. Thank you for reading!
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Gautham: Bill Gauthier.com 
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