Hello, friends.
Have you ever noticed that when you’re having a string of bad nights with strange dreams and hard-fought sleep, others you know are also experiencing the same issues? Is it because whatever’s affecting you is affecting them? This week was one of those weeks. I had three or four nights of weird dreams and broken sleep and it seemed others around me had the same. I think it culminated today when I basically passed out and slept around four hours.
And there went Saturday.
But here we are for another newsletter, so let’s get into it.
Welcome to the 164th installment of Gauthic Times, the newsletter about my writing, my life, and women who’ve impacted me. 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 did a little more researching into agents this week and began working on the synopsis and query for Project: Amusement Park. I don’t love the synopsis but will rework it until I hate it a little less.
I revised a short story the other night and will look for a home for it and submit it. I think I’ll be focusing on working on some short stories I have in various stages of completion as I try to market Project: Amusement Park. I have a backlog of stories that have been submitted to one or two places and many more that have been living in a purgatory as I focused on Echoes on the Pond, The Monster in the Closet, and the other books I’ve written. I feel like this might be a good time to focus on them while I try to do what’s right by Project: Amusement Park.
I’m also thinking that some of these stories may end up being Patreon exclusives, like I did with my short story “The Death Museum.” Maybe even chapbooks. We’ll see. For now, I feel like it’s time to focus on the short work, revising, submitting, and even writing new stories.
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It always amazes me when there are so-called “fans” of some of the same fantasy worlds that I love who seem so misogynistic and fascist. I know online memes point this out all the time but it really does baffle me how kids who grew up championing Luke Skywalker are actively rooting for an empire. Being a child in the early-1980s, I was fortunate enough to have many women in my life who were strong, but there were two onscreen who were just as strong: Carrie Fisher and Margot Kidder.
When Carrie Fisher died in December 2016, my heart broke. She died the day after I’d seen a digital version of her at the end of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Her appearance onscreen (even the digitized younger version) collected a gasp from the audience and a cheer. And giving the character Princess Leia Organa the last line of the movie, “Hope,” felt very important. After all, we were over a month past the 2016 Presidential elections and fear was beginning to take hold. Many of us saw the incoming T—p presidency as a majorly tragic fate, Carrie Fisher was among those who believed that. With her death, a voice that would have been so welcome in the Resistance that followed was silenced.
Beyond that, though, Fisher brought life to a character that didn’t take any bullshit. Yeah, she was a princess who “needed” rescuing but then turned around and rescued her rescuers. Afterward, she didn’t stand around giving hugs and kisses, she kicked ass. Even when Leia is captured and forced to wear a misogynistic outfit by a gross being, she still ends up killing the motherfucker and helping to save the day.
This was huge to me. At four years old seeing Leia taking charge of her rescue—“Into the garbage shoot, flyboy!”—and proceeding to sass her “rescuers”—“You came in that thing? You’re braver than I thought”—was taken for granted. I didn’t know just how amazing that was. In my mind, my mother was one of the most important people in my world and Princess Leia could stand beside her as a woman who didn’t take any guff. It was only as I grew up that I saw how important that was to the children of that time, boys as well as girls.
In 2018, when Margot Kidder died, I felt the same heartbreak. Unlike Fisher, Kidder didn’t seem to be on the verge of a career renaissance but her work as Lois Lane in Superman: The Movie and Superman II stand the test of time. Lois Lane is a woman of that time period who wasn’t going to put up with the bullshit that the male-dominated world of journalism would sling at her. She was smart, beautiful, and courageous. Yes, she needed Superman to save her a few times when she got in over her head, but even then I would think that she may have still found a way out.
Both actresses brought a spunk to their characters that transcended the roles. As a little boy, this was huge. It demonstrated to me what my mother would always say, which is that girls could do anything that boys could do, which meant women could do anything that men could do. An easy message to say but not an easy one to have examples of. My mother didn’t seek out the characters of Princess Leia and Lois Lane from the late-1970s movies to influence me, but the characters emerged at a time when that was happening. The blowback of which we still see today (SAVE Act, anyone?).
The deaths of Carrie Fisher and Margot Kidder only highlighted to me the influence their characters—and the women—had on me. Neither woman had an easy life after their huge star moments. Both had declining careers, mental health problems, and addictions that would eventually lead to their deaths. But even as they faced these challenges, both women would lend their voices to causes they believed in, oftentimes in the hopes of helping amplify voices of those who needed amplification.
They say death comes in threes. With two actresses who portrayed such important characters to my childhood gone, it didn’t help that my own mother, my true, real life hero, would pass in 2019. My mother wasn’t an educated woman but she was very intelligent and had a wicked sense of humor. She and my father were partners, equals, and she made sure of it. She’d do the cooking as long as he did the dishes. They would take turns with the housework but he’d do the laundry.
The meant a lot to me growing up. As a man, I see it’s influences. Most of the important people in my life have been women, and this includes my daughters.
As we traverse some dark times on this International Women’s Month, my mind goes to those women—fictional and real, those I know only through images on a screen and those whom I knew in real life, whose presence I was allowed to bask in—and how the fight must continue. For them, for ourselves, for everyone.
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That’s this week’s newsletter. Thank you so much for subscribing, reading, and for your support. Be safe out there, friends.
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Gautham: Bill Gauthier.com 
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