Hello, friends.
This week passed quickly and here we are at the first three-day weekend of 2026. A much-needed rest for some screwed-up times. I’ve been pretty busy with writing-related stuff all week, trying to get bookstore appearances ready for February in a world where publishing with a small- or mid-sized press is increasingly difficult.
That said, I want to wish my amazing wife a happy birthday! How she puts up with me will always be beyond me.
Welcome to the 156th installment of Gauthic Times, the newsletter about my writing, my life, and trusting yourself creatively. 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.
Thank you.
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I worked on revisions of Project: Amusement Park a little bit this week. I got through only about 15 pages, nipping, tucking, and revising. The book still makes me happy and I can’t wait to get it out there.
Four Moons is still chugging along. I added nearly 2,000 words, bringing it up to around 250 pages, or just over 60,000 words. The novel is nearing its end and is still surprising me.
I also added a few more installments of Four Moons to Patreon this week. Patrons at the $5 tier and above have access. It’s the first draft of the book and I’ll likely be releasing more installments more often soon.
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One of the things I was once concerned with was whether my stories were contrived. Had it been done before? I knew that it likely had been in some way, but how could I do it differently? I don’t worry about that much anymore. What I care about is just telling the story.
My first few short story sales were weird stories that felt fresh and original, especially my story “The Growth of Alan Ashley,” published in the terrific Borderlands anthologies (twentyish years later, the editor shit all over his career and the legacy of those anthologies by going full MAGA; a story for another time [or not at all]). I wanted to be the one who wrote those cutting edge stories. My generation’s Harlan Ellison.
I was in my twenties.[1]I was delusional.
Now I’m 48 and I understand that if there’s anything original in my work it’s by way of being a singular personality, special in the way Mister Rogers told my generation we were special. Unique.
The world comes through my eyes and ears, through my touch, and registers in whatever way it registers, leaving its impression on me for use in my fiction. Then I sit down from my unique day, in my unique life, and write using my unique voice, and the story will ultimately be unique. Once I accepted that, I was able to write with more freedom.
Over the years it took me to write Echoes on the Pond, I worried that writing a ghost story would be a fool’s errand. How many of those exist? The thing is, I understood that my version of a ghost story would be mine. And even if there was unintentional overlap with other ghost stories, it was ultimately my ghost story told in my voice.
My upcoming novel The Monster in the Closet also had me a little worried. I was afraid it would read too much like a Stephen King ripoff. I mean, I had the initial idea when I was seventeen! Here we are now and it’s coming out and people seem to like it. The boy who came up with the initial concept and the man who wrote this version of it are connected but are also vastly different.
The werewolf story that I’m currently working on (the first draft of which that I’m serializing over on Patreon), Four Moons, is a traditional werewolf story but it’s my werewolf story. I don’t know if it’s good, but I’m enjoying the hell out of writing it.
The creator is going to bring themself into their work. It’s inevitable. That, alone, will bring a certain amount of uniqueness to your work. That’s not all it takes, but it’s a big part of it. Learning the craft and growing are some of the other things that will make your work more unique.
In the end, it’s really about telling myself a cool story that I’ll enjoy. I feel like if you do that, then you won’t have to worry about whether your work is the most original. Just worry about if your work is good. Let others decide how original the work is.
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That’s this week’s newsletter. Thank you so much for subscribing, reading, and for your support.
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Get my collection Catalysts, my novellas Alice on the Shelf and Shadowed, and my novel Echoes on the Pond, and preorder my novel The Monster in the Closet, which comes out February 24th, 2026!
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[1] I’ve often said, “In our teens, we think we know everything. In our twenties, we know we know everything. In our thirties, we begin to realize we don’t know anything. In our forties, you accept not knowing anything.” So in my twenties, I knew everything and knew it. What an ass….
Gautham: Bill Gauthier.com 
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