Hello, friends.
Well, this has been a week. Covid, man. Amiright? I’m feeling human again. Human again to have gone to work-school Friday. I had a few coughing fits but made it through the day.
G tested positive Monday night and was pretty sick most of the week. Fainting may have been involved early Thursday morning. She’s good now. Has a cough and is eager to get to school, having missed her first week of middle school classes. It broke her heart, which broke our hearts, but she’s sunshine.
Pamela also has it and it’s knocked her on her butt. Right now, she feels worse than me or G.
This whole thing has had me run through emotions. Anger. Sadness. Fear. Many others, too. The anger is partly directed inwardly but mostly directed toward a society that decided that money and business was more important than people. We knew they’d always believed that but now we see it on a global scale where the things that should’ve been done since 2020 (and, actually, since 2016). But onward we go, I guess.
Let’s get into the updates.
Welcome to the 86th installment of Gauthic Times, the newsletter about my writing, my life, and books I’ve read and/or am reading.
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.
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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!
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On Monday I decided to remove more from Project: Monster. I basically went through the POVs that weren’t the two main characters and took them out. I actually did very little rewriting. We’ll see how it works. I ended up deleting a total of 87 pages between draft three and draft five, which means I fell into the 50-100 pages that was recommended to lose.
And last night, I began editing Project: Amusement Park.
I also set some goals for them.
I’m using the 10% formula: 2nd draft = 1st draft – 10%.
As a reader, I love big books. Give me a fat 800- to 1,000-page opus and I’m happy. There’s always a sense, though, right at the beginning, of wonder. How did the author write this much? How am I going to get through this? I had the same reaction as I started reading Project: Amusement Park. My biggest novel in a long time, I wonder how the hell am I going to get through this? But I know I will because it’s just another story. I wrote the fucking thing so I can edit it.
Anyway, one chapter has been read and edited, roughly around seven pages. 675 more pages left!
Maybe now is a good time to start drinking…?
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A few weeks back I posted a short story called “The Death Museum” for paid-Patrons as a thank you. This week Patreon began allowing creators the chance to sell individual posts or collections of posts through our shops. As a result, I’m selling “The Death Museum” to anyone who wants to read it.
The price through the Patreon website is $3. The price through the Patreon Apple App is $4.50. Because of recent changes that Apple has made with its commerce stuff, subscribing and buying through the app actually costs more because Apple is charging Patreon (and its creators) more. I will see the same amount of money no matter how you pay for it.
This is a story that I really like so I’m hoping people will read it.
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Speaking of reading, let’s talk a little about some books I’ve been reading and just finished.
I can’t remember if I posted about this already (and I’m not feeling well enough to check) but I finally finished reading Brian Keene’s End of the Road, his nonfiction collection of a book tour he went on in 2016. I’ve been reading it for about two years or so because it was on my phone and I’d read it in waiting rooms, in line, and I’d also read other things. His voice was always a welcoming when I’d return. It’s a book where Keene ruminates and life, loss, the world, politics, publishing, and writing.
I finished reading Stephen King’s You Like it Darker, a collection of stories and novellas. This is a truly engaging collection with stories that will stick with me for a long time. I think my favorite story of the bunch was “Rattlesnakes,” which acts as a kinda-sequel to King’s classic Cujo, though not entirely. “The Answer Man” is also a terrific story as is “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream,” a novella that made me so tense. I really don’t think there’s a bad story in this collection.
I’m still reading The Reformatory by Tananarive Due. I’m a slow reader and the story is so tense that sometimes I have to work myself up to picking the book up again. Once I’m in, I have trouble putting it down. The Reformatory has won a number of awards this year and it deserves every single one of them. A story that takes place in 1950 in Jim Crow Florida where a Black boy is punished for a silly reason would be tense enough, but then add the supernatural horror element and you’ve got something that turns the screws to nearly unbearable pressures. I’m closing in on the end of the book and I’m torn between wanting to finish and see how everything works out and wanting it not to end because Due’s writing is so damn good.
I’m also currently reading Pay the Piper, the newest posthumously-published novel by George A. Romero that was completed by Daniel Kraus. I loved The Living Dead when it came out in 2020 and so far, I’m really digging Pay the Piper. I was fortunate enough to get an advanced digital copy through NetGalley though the book has since been released. Well worth checking out.
Lastly, I’m reading a slew of comic books. Many Star Wars titles through the Marvel Unlimited app and a bunch of DC titles through the DC Infinite app.
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I think this is it for today. Thank you for reading.
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Gautham: Bill Gauthier.com 
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