Dearest Readers and Followers of the Small Town Slashers Series,
 
I sincerely hope that this post finds you well. I know it has been several months since I last added anything to this blog, and for that I am truly sorry. In truth, I am sad to say that I have not been mentally fit to post or engage with any of you. I wish to be clear that I am extremely grateful to anybody who has purchased my book, whether it be recently or before I went dark. It means the world to me that people are enjoying my writing and it is my sincere hope to find somebody to publish the second book in my series during 2023. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for continuing to support and share my work with one another.
 
          In the past few months, I have struggled greatly with my depression. In part, this has been caused by my continued hope to return to teaching, or perhaps my unwillingness to accept that I am just not able to do it any longer. I dearly miss working with students, teaching them new things and watching them become inspired to find their own passions gave my life meaning in a way little else has. I have also been suffering from a severe case of home sickness, as I have not been back to Ontario to visit my family in close to 2 years. Fortunately, I have some exciting news to share with you later in this post regarding both these fronts.
          However, the main reason that I stepped away, is that I have been struggling with a life-changing decision for some time now. I have been addicted to smoking for several years and, despite being well aware of the literature regarding how this can impact my mood and body, I have surrendered my perception to the addict’s mentality that it helped me more than it hurt me. I know that I also struggle with my emotions, as a result of my social anxiety, and have considered my smoking to be an acceptable way to cope with this. Recently, however, it has become increasingly obvious to me that these are all lies. It is clear, in the moments when I am sober, that I am both addicted and that this is not truly helping me. Thus, in the next few days, I intend to finally quit smoking, for the second and final time in my life. It is my sincere hope that doing so will help me to be more committed to my audience, both in contact and with financial input towards doing some small book events.
 
          Speaking of which, I have some very exciting news to share with you all. I will be going back home in about a week and a half from now and, while I am there, I will be taking part in my first book related events ever. I am so very happy to share with you that on December 15, 2022, I will be returning to my old high school to give a presentation to the students about my journey to becoming an author. I will also be fielding questions and signing the copies of my book that are housed in their library. This has helped me to realize that I can still inspire youth and give them something to hold on to as well, even though my book has more of an adult audience. I have also been inspired to consider writing children’s books in addition to my Small Town Slashers Series.
          I will also be taking part in a small book signing and public meet & greet at the local library. Although I have signed a few copies, and each of those times has been a really meaningful experience for me, I have never taken part in an official event of this size. I will admit that I am a bit nervous about this, but I feel that starting in my old hometown with familiar faces will be the perfect icebreaker for me to ease into the role of making public appearances for fans of my work. If you are interested in meeting me, and having your copy of The Drifter signed, I will be in Cayuga, ON, on December 17, 2022 (see the ad posted below)
 
          Finally, I am also thrilled to share with you that I am officially ready to launch my poetry service online. I have added a new tab to this page, The Phantom Poet’s Lane, where I will be offering to provide personalized poems as gifts, as well as help people to write their own with the support of an author and poet at their side. With the holidays fast approaching, if you’d like to get a gift that cannot be found anywhere else, please consider looking into one of the 4 packages that I am offering.
 
          I think that’s it for now. I will be attempting to do my absolute best to post to this blog at least once every two weeks from here on out. I will also slowly be returning to Twitter and Facebook, so feel free to reach me there or through my email should you wish to know more about my work and upcoming events.
Wishing you and yours all the best,
Sincerely,
Jeremy Gernhaelder

Today was not a good day for me (still at work also). Fortunately for me, the worst days often inspire my best poems. I hope you will enjoy this dark poem.


Life, Money, Death
By Jeremy Gernhaelder


First comes Life,
So full of promise; so full of wonder,
Free from the limitations that come later,
We encourage our children to explore,
To find themselves; be themselves,
To figure out how they wish to spend this Life,
And how to become valued members of our society.


Innocent Life knows nothing of Money,
They have simple desires,
They seek to have these desires fulfilled,
And dutiful and loving adults oblige.
They know not of restrictions and pain,
For the adults long to shelter them from this,
Until their time comes.


Then comes Money,
Money is cruel; Money is heartless,
It cares not for circumstance or difference,
It seeks only to establish its reign,
To take away Life's wonder and promise,
And bind it in chains,
Serving its true master.


Money dictates how Life is lived,
It tells us when to rise; when to eat,
Sets out the limitations of what we are capable of achieving,
It tells us where to go; who to be seen with,
An ever steady presence,
Money watches over Life's every move,
Certain to punish should it stray from its master's will.


Money is more cruel than any Life could be,
It divides us; pits us against one another,
It chooses some of us to give the gift of comfort,
Knowing we won't complain for the sake of the others,
Too afraid to lose what we have
Too afraid of what happens when there is no Money,
And Death comes for us.


Crueler still, Money chooses a select few,
To give the gift of the Life we were promised as children,
Free from worry; free from the fear of loss,
Setting them upon golden pedestal,
And encouraging us to worship them
While it starves the rest of us to pay the cost,
And leaves Death to settle the accounts owing.


Then comes Death,
Caring not for Life or the false god, Money,
It is the great equalizer,
Those who have, fear it,
Clinging desperately to their Money as it pulls them under.
Those who have not, embrace it,
For Death is a friend who has at last come to relieve them from the pain of Life.

Good day to you all. I wish to start this blog post off by offering my sincere thanks to all of the people who took the time since my post on Sunday to read and give me feedback on my poem about Queen Elizabeth II. Learning of her passing, especially right before I had to go into work Thursday afternoon, has been really challenging for me to cope with. Taking the time to sit down and write out those emotions helped me a lot, and I hope that reading my thoughts will have helped any of you who were struggling with this as well.

With that said, the reason you are all here is for my super special surprise that I have been promising to put out for the past couple of weeks. I wanted to make sure I gave you something really special, so I was torn between possibly leaking a small piece of text from the next book or perhaps creating a biography for/interview with my main character, Jenny Maysure, from the Drifter. Ultimately though, I thought what might be really special for you is if I were to give you a sneak peek into the writing process that I use to create the stories for the Small Town Slashers Series.

I joined Twitter a couple of months back, as part of my efforts to market my series of books (click the link for direct access to my account). One topic that often seems to come up amongst the authors I am following are questions concerning other authors writing needs and processes. I have seen everything from "Do you plan your stories or just write?" to "Do you write your chapters sequentially or start with the end?" All of this had me thinking about similar questions that I often wondered about as a reader when diving into the works of my favourite authors. It is my hope that people who have read my first book might have similar questions about the sources of my creativity and the process by which I developed my story. As such, I thought it would be a nice treat for you all, if I shared with you a blank copy of my writing organizer. It is my hope that published and aspiring authors alike will make use of this tool in their own creative process. I likewise hope that sharing this with you will allow you to feel closer to me. I want to get to know the fans of my work and build a community of followers who are excited to discuss serial killers (both fictional and true crime oriented), thrillers/suspense (my books, others work, films, etc.) and mental wellness and neural divergence in society as well. I am slowly saving up to create a newsletter and fan group for my Small Town Slashers Series, and it is my sincere dream that you will all wish to be a part of this. So, with all of this said, and without further adieu, please feel free to click on the document I have embedded into this post, so that you can get your copy of my writing planner for your own creative needs.

I hope you all have a wonderful week. Peace and love to you and yours.

I wish to first apologize to all of you for not posting a blog last week. I will be making another post, in addition to this one, on Tuesday. The special surprise I mentioned last time will be in that post. For now, I wanted to share something personal with my readers. I had a lot of respect, love and admiration for Queen Elizabeth II. Learning of her death this week has hit me a lot harder than I expected it to. As such, whenever my emotions become too much for me, I decided to take a step back this morning, reflect on my thoughts of Her, and to write the following poem. I hope you will all enjoy it. With Peace and Love.

P.S. I took the two photos out of this beautiful article from the New York Times.
​

​For Thy Country
Written, with love, for Queen Elizabeth II
By Jeremy Gernhaelder


In your homeland they say,
"For God, For Queen, and For Country",
A heavy burden for any individual,
And one you were not destined to bear,
But you did so with a smile.


Born to privilege and to duty,
Part of a noble heritage,
One regarded with reverence and distain alike,
Yet I cannot help to wonder,
Is this what you really wanted?


I see photos of your youth,
Innocent pictures with your pets
Family stills of a different time,
A different life,
One not yet bound to the crown.


So easy it would be,
For many to scorn you,
To look upon your life with envious and bitter eyes,
But I wonder how many could have stepped into your shoes?
How many people could have shoulder such a heavy burden?


You alone had to strength and courage,
To wear the crown,
To honour your people,
To lead them through joy and strife,
And now you are gone.


Will the world ever know of your fortitude?
Will there ever be another to rule as you did?
To show compassion for the people,
To navigate them through the journey to this modern world and beyond it,
Will we ever know another Queen with the greatness of Elizabeth II?


In your homeland they said,
"For God, For Queen, and For Country",
You have served your people faithfully,
You have honoured your God,
And now it is time for you to rest and for your people to mourn.


May God bless and protect the Queen.
And may all hail Elizabeth II one final time,
For long has she reigned.
A burden she accepted with a smile,
For a country and a world that she loved.

Good day to all of my readers. This post is going to be a shout out specifically to all of the authors in the Small Town Slashers fan base. As I mentioned in my previous post, I have been incredibly impressed with how supportive and welcoming the #writerscommunity of Twitter has been. As a new author, with serious self-doubts about whether or not I could make this a viable career, it would have been so easy for me to give up at this point. Although I have made several sales through online marketing efforts, I am nowhere near the goal I had hoped/been led to expect I could achieve out of the gate with The Drifter. With that said, I cannot help but to continue to express my eternal gratitude to everyone who has purchased a copy of my book so far. However, as this post is targeted to authors specifically, feel free to leave this one and come back next week. For those who do, I am planning to share something special...but you will have to wait to see what that is.

Now, to my dear friends and allies in this struggle to share our stories with the world, I wish to propose an idea that I recently had. Before I do, I need to be clear that this idea is not new (it may even have been proposed exactly in this fashion somewhere that I haven't found), so I'd like to take a moment to recognize some awesome people and ideas that already exist in our community. First, and foremost, one has to recognize Dave Westfall (@dkwestfall1) for being the leader amongst us in shouting out new and exciting authors to follow. Then there are those who are already out there buying books from Indie authors. I would like to believe that most of us do this, but to shout out just a few, I encourage you to reach out to Sean Michael (@TheGiftOfLife19), B. L. Allen (@BLAllenBooks), and Mark-Jonathon (@AuthorMarkRunte). Finally, I wish to recognize those who have actually created groups (something I do not yet know how to do myself) dedicated to buying, reading, sharing and reviewing Indie books as a collective effort to give authors a larger boost. Being that I am part of one such group now, and that it was the inspiration for my hashtag, I must give a huge thanks to my friend Jodie Renée (@writinghub2) for both creating and inviting me to it.

Now then, I am sure you are curious as to what my idea is, so I won't keep you in the dark (*chuckles*) any longer. I have been seeing a lot of tweets lately about three things in particular:
1) The struggle to query our work to publishers/agents
2) The struggle to find reach a greater audience once it is published
3) The struggle to find sales in the current market drought

I wish to propose an author support program. I believe that if we are all capable of devoting ourselves to the following ideas below, it will make a world of difference to all of us going forward:
1) Try our best to purchase 1-2 books from Indie authors each month. Review them, hype them, and wait for it to be paid forward in kind.
2) We form an Author Buddy system where we can:
      a) share each other's work before seeking beta readers for the sake of offering suggestions and improvements to attract
            our audience and publishers/agents.
     b) practice pitch our work to each other so that we can give tips to improve before we send it off to agents/publishers
     c) support each other through both success and failure alike; after all, we are all going towards the same goal.

I realize that it may be naive of me to believe that such a commitment to one another is possible, but I have a Utopian outlook on life. So I am throwing out this idea and this hashtag, #authorsforauthors, out into the world, with the sincere hope that you will join me in a promise to ourselves and each other to make all of our lives a little bit better. Peace and love to you all and have a wonderful week.

This week, I am going to let the wonderful people with Feed My Reads deliver to you all a spectacular profile about me.

timetofeedmyreads.blogspot.com/2022/08/jeremy-gernhaelder-interview.html?m=1

After you read it, I encourage you to follow @feed_my_reads on Twitter
You can also follow me there as well...have a wonderful week : )

So, I have been sitting here for about 15 minutes now trying to decide how to give this first blog post a title that will catch somebody's attention. Given how much I want to share in this first post about my life before writing the first stories in the Small Town Slashers Series, I hope I have settled on a good one.

As the title suggests, a career (hopefully) in writing was not part of the original plan. I have always enjoyed writing and considered the idea of publishing something in the later stages of my life, but my calling in life was teaching. I have so many fond memories of teachers who went the extra mile to show us the wonders of the world that can be unlocked with the lockpick of knowledge. Their dedication to both their craft and their students really inspired me and I cannot recall a time I did not at least consider teaching to be one of the two paths my life would surely take (the other was that of a lawyer, but we can discuss that at a later point). However, the thing that made teaching my first choice, was the manner in which some of those extra special teachers went above and beyond to help me with my special needs (antiquated term, I know, but it's the one I prefer for describing myself).

I was born nearly a month late and, as a result, my fine motor skills were weakened. I required the assistance of a speech pathologist and a special counsellor for developing my ability to use my hands for basic things like eating, writing and tying my shoes (which I hate doing still to this day). In addition to these struggles, I have had AD/HD most of my life, though it wasn't diagnosed until the late stages of elementary school. I have also struggled with my mental wellness since I was 8 years old, leading to a diagnosis of stress-induced acid reflux at age 12 and severe headaches (like migraines but that medication does not work for me) starting at age 15.

I was always fortunate to be very bright and got bit by the bookworm at a very young age. Started writing/drawing with crayon my family adventure books before I was 8. However, the struggles I have had to face in spite of my intelligence are what helped me to learn to empathize with any person who faces a difficulty to learn. It is for this reason, alongside my desire to see that every child feels like they belong at school (another post at a later date), that I became a teacher.

However, even after succeeding at University, getting bachelor's degrees in the Arts (Sociology, with math as a minor) and Education, my mental wellness prevented me from pursuing my career straightaway. My grandmother became ill with Alzheimer's during my time away and, watching her fall apart destroyed something inside me for several years.

Eventually, I managed to recover and found my way back to the world of education. I spent a couple of years working as a tutor and lunch supervisor. I cherish these years, as I was able to do the kind of work supporting students with learning difficulties to find ways to adapt to their classroom environments and make the space work for themselves. Seeing those kids apply the skills I taught them to improve their ability to focus on and retain the things they were learning gave me a great sense of fulfillment, and a part of me wishes I had remained doing this sort of work.

Yet the dream was to have a classroom of my own and, when the opportunity presented itself, I could not refuse. For two wonderful years I worked in the northern wilderness as a grade 6 teacher in a remote location. Having grown up in a small town, I had no problem adapting to the isolated area and thoroughly enjoyed the hiking trails surrounding the community. Speaking of which, they say that the people make the community and truer words have never been spoken of a place like that of Chisasibi. Though I am not of Indigenous Heritage, I was welcomed and embraced by the community like a member of the family.

Then I made the worst decision of my career and tried to move to the high school system. That year, I learned a few things about myself that I had not realized. First, the high school system for education is not one that meshes well with my special needs. Second, my specific approach to teaching and classroom management requires more meaningful development with the students than what I could achieve with them in a 50-70 minute period daily. Finally, I was still easily triggered by the setting itself, reminded of my past bullying, and thus was never able to feel comfortable in my skin while teaching there.

Ultimately, this led to my first large burn out. I foolishly tried to push through my feelings (DON'T DO THIS!) and keep teaching until my suicidal ideations began to creep back in and bring thoughts I hadn't considered since I removed myself from Ritalin permanently at age of 23 (after using it on and off since 14). Thankfully, I had my beautiful wife with me and she was able to help me choose to seek help instead of harm (THIS! FOR THE LOVE OF THOSE WHO NEED YOU...THIS!).

I managed to get counseling and onto some anti-depressants. These helped immensely, though it took time, and I was forced to remain off work on a medical as result for pretty much the remainder of that year. It was during this time that, encouraged by Anick, I was able to write the first two novellas in the Small Town Slashers Series (yes there is another story waiting to be published).

At the end of that year, we tried to relocate and start fresh in a new place. Sadly, I continued to struggle to find the support I needed for my special needs in this new place and, as a result, I left the teaching profession. I do miss the children and the experience deeply, but if I have learned anything through all of these experiences, it is that self-care has to come before you can help others. Right now, I need to take time for self-care. Maybe I might return to teaching some day, or perhaps I will be lucky and make it full-time as an author.

However, what I would like most, is to end this blog post with these 3 things:
1) A super huge thank you to anybody who reads through this post. It means a lot to me that you are here.
2) If you are struggling with your mental wellness also, I would love to hear your stories. While it is true that I want to build a community of thriller lovers and newer writers here, I also want it to be one that is supportive of Neural Divergence, Mental Wellness and all those interested in learning about these. Please reach out if you want to talk. As Red Green liked to say, "We're all in this together."
3) Finally, in a pinch, when I am hurting and feel like giving up, I read a poem called "Don't Quit". My parents gave me a copy of it for my first birthday after I had expressed a desire to end my life, and it has been the difference in many instances where I had nobody else to turn to. If you need something concrete, you can find a copy of it by clicking the link below:
​
www.yourdailypoem.com/listpoem.jsp?poem_id=1820

With Peace and Love 💕,
Jeremy Gernhaelder

P.S. here is a picture of Kaiba the Pug, the Head of our Marketing Division 😍💖