Hello, friends.
I feel like crap. G had a cold last week and now Pamela and I have it. It started Monday night and, man, it’s taken hold. On top of that, my vocational-technical high school’s Open House is this weekend and it would be deeply frowned upon for me to miss it. If I’m still feeling like crap, I will miss it, but I’m feeling slightly better than yesterday, which in turn felt slightly better than Thursday….
I got a little bit of writing done this week, which I’ll talk about in this week’s essay and updates, but right now I’m just holding on for the magic that is Thanksgiving break. Even if we’re all too sick to partake in the Big Meal, having several days off is more than welcome.
Welcome to the 149th installment of Gauthic Times, the newsletter about my writing, my life, and escaping into art. If you’re a reader who subscribes via Substack, my website, or Patreon, your encouragement helps motivate me. I’m not breaking any records but I’m thankful to have any audience.
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I added about 2,000 words to Project: Moons this week. I didn’t get to work on it Tuesday due to G’s first basketball practice, or Wednesday or Friday because I wasn’t feeling great, but am happy with what got produced. I got to write something I’ve had in my head a long time.
I also emailed with one of the publishers for The Monster in the Closet and heard some TENTATIVE (all caps are theirs) possibly good news. It may be nothing, or it may be something. We’ll find out.
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This past week I got a cold. Not a big deal, right? Except that it seems to be one of those colds that the microbes erupt in long barbs and hold on tight. The typical three-day thing is past that point and Pamela and G are also affected, G having a rebound. I went to work sick for reasons that I should talk to a therapist about and spent most of the day today, Saturday, sleeping. One of the things that’s gotten me through is escaping through art.
I was a mess Wednesday and Thursday. I’d taken Wednesday off from school to take my father to for his physical and it just happened my cold began on Tuesday. I got through Thursday but just barely, but that night found myself sitting here and writing the book I’ve been calling Project: Moons. I was happy to do so.
I was working on a scene that has elements I’ve had in my head for over a decade. Something that had started off as a bullshit example of how to incorporate a little science knowledge to make something unbelievable sound believable, providing no one really looks into it. Finally getting to write it in a story made me happy.
There I sat, nose stuffy, chest filled with blech, sniffling and coughing, but utterly happy and away for the nearly-hour that I spend working on those 400 words. I was distracted by things, sure, 400 words usually takes me less than half an hour to write, but I was there. The healing power of escape through art.
The same is said with TV, movies, and books. I’ve just relaxed with the family and watching Friends, amazed by how well it still holds up and how they managed to capture lightning in a bottle for 11 years. I’ve allowed Joe Hill to sweep me away into the plush story of King Sorrow, whose characters are dealing with horrors far worse than a cold that’s making one’s lungs feel as though they’ve been gone at with a rusty cheese grater. Or taken away into the colorful world of Larry Hama’s G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero comic books that were produced for Marvel back when I was a wee lad and prove to be some really good writing for the time. Not to mention the recent various Star Wars, World’s Finest, and other comic book iterations that help me leave my real world. Or even the app games of Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes or Marvel STRIKE Force. Just sitting and daydreaming about stories yet to be written (or maybe could never be written unless I somehow miraculously was invited to write for the IPs of a number of worlds) all allow the escape that helps get through the day.
That escape is essential. I think humans need the escape that art provides. The modern American world despises this escape in many ways. On the one hand, it makes so much of it possible to act as a salve to the inadequacies of modern life and the distraction of the 99% losing everything to the 1%, but the art can’t make one think too much, or feel too much. When it does, it seems suspicious.
This weekend, the vocational technical high school I teach at has its annual Open House for prospective students and freshmen. Others will come, including former students, etc., but the main reason are those exploratory freshmen to show parents/guardians the shops that’ve turned them on and for prospective students to be enticed by the skills offered. My own program is a creative program that utilizes design and art. In the last few years, the program has seen a decline in interest not just at our school but at others, too. The idea that art and creativity are hobbies instead of something that’s needed has become such a big thing. But that’s how it’s been a long time. Things changed for a while in the early-2000s, but now the tide changes again.
Art and creativity teaches, though. It allows us to wonder What if? and then, maybe, make it happen. Once we ignore the escape of art, we end up destroying what’s around us, and therein lies tragedy. Therein lies the loss of the human being.
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What if the monster in your child’s closet is real?
Tim Beaulieu’s daughter, Cleo, says that the monster is also her invisible friend, whom she blames for innocuous trouble. The whole thing makes Tim uneasy as he tries to remember a part of his childhood that is missing. Surely nothing can be wrong. Can it?
When the boy in the apartment upstairs goes missing after hurting Cleo, horrific memories begin to resurface as Tim finds himself under suspicion for the unthinkable. His daughter and those around him are in danger.
Tim must face his past to save Cleo but can they survive the monster in the closet?
Coming February 24th, 2026, from Macabre Ink, an imprint of Crossroad Press.
Preorder the digital or print editions now!
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Gautham: Bill Gauthier.com 
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