Living By Fear

Not too long ago (five months, actually) I blogged about the middle-grade/YA book I was dying to write for my daughters. In my head this story had to be perfect. It was for my girls and it was my way of empowering kids to think for themselves and harness their imagination to do great things. Very quickly, this story had become more than just a story. It had become a statement, it would serve as a lasting testament of my undying and fierce love for my daughters, it had a message and a point.

It had become important.

At the time I had an outline and half a draft and was chugging along. But because the story had gotten so big in my mind, that not-so-little voice of doubt started to poison my thinking. Who was I to write this book? I hadn't done anything like this before. At that point I'd written paranormal thrillers, comedy shorts, and a zombie short story series. The paranormal books were doing okay, but nothing else had taken off. This book, on the other hand, was for a completely different audience in a new genre and it had a message.

Fear crippled me. Fear made me rationalize putting the book aside "until I was a better writer."

After all, the story was important. And I was, by no means, an important writer. No way did I have the chops.

So I put it away.

I worked on other stories and kept putting out new material, but the book for my daughters was never far from my mind. Soon enough, impatience took over.

When would I be good enough to write this book?

Not yet, I told myself, thinking up more excuses, more rationalizations, and more reasons to do something else.

***

I was in the bookstore a couple months ago, just browsing the YA section for inspiration. Every book I picked up sounded great, all these authors had put out stories with fresh premises and interesting characters and...again, I couldn't write a book like that.

Could I?

I probably spent two hours in the store that day, wandering the aisles and reading the cover copy on literally dozens of books. I love to see what other authors are doing, not to copy them, but to get inspired to do my own thing.

I left the store with a bunch of books that day and many more ideas for stories, but one thing I noticed was that nobody else had written a book like the one that was floating around in my head.

But I wasn't good enough to write that book.

***

We've evolved to live by fear. I get why. For probably 98% of our existence as a species we had to worry about our literal survival on a daily basis. Compared to the rest of the animal kingdom, we're slow and not very strong. It's only natural that our evolution would be linked somewhat to fear.

I've lived by fear more than I care to admit. Fear is good when you're lost in a bad neighborhood and it tells you not to go down that dark alley. Fear isn't so good, though, in many other situations. It absolutely sucks when you have a passion to do something that few make a living at.

Like writing.

Fear made me go to graduate school so I could get a good job. You know, the kind of job that would lead to a well-paying career in a respected field. Didn't matter I had no interest in doing that kind of work. I let fear talk me right into doing the "sensible" thing.

Three months into the job, I was miserable.

But fear made me stay for another two years.

***

It's hard not to live by fear. We're wired to. The safe and the known and the comfortable all conspire to keep us in the status quo. Because it's easier and everything is under control. Right?

Wrong.

Control is a complete and utter illusion. That job you love? It might be gone in six months. Your company could merge with another organization and voila, you're redundant. Your boss, who you got along with so well for many years, could leave and be replaced by somebody that just doesn't like you. The laws governing the work you're doing might change, making your job unnecessary. New technology might be developed that makes your work obsolete.

And on and on.

Said another way, we're at risk no matter what we do so living by fear does not necessarily put us in a better place.

***

That's a lesson that I have relearn from time to time: living by fear does not insulate us from risk.

And I realized, after that day at the bookstore, that fear was keeping me from writing this book. All the other stories I'd written or were working on, I'd been thinking of those as safe. But like I said, there is no such thing as safe. Paranormal thrillers could fall out of fashion tomorrow and my modest sales on The Unearthed series could take a nosedive. And if that was the case, why the hell not try something new?

So I picked up where I left off on the book for my daughters.

***

Fast-forward two months and I'm stoked to say I finished it.

OtherWorld is available for PREORDER ON AMAZON right now. I'll continue to polish the manuscript up until the big release, but I can say that I'm really happy with how it turned out. If I had waited another few years so I could grow as a writer, would it have been better? Maybe. Or maybe I would have never written it. I'll never know ;-) Like they say, the best time to do anything is right now, so rather than wait around and see, I just said what the hell and got to writing.

OtherWorld is totally unlike anything else I've done and, since it's YA, there's none of the cynicism that's usually present in my other stuff. It made me feel like a kid again writing it. It was a joy to work on. And to think, fear had almost robbed me of that experience.

To be clear, I'm not saying I'm a courageous person for having written a book. There are many braver acts in this world and much more important things people do. The wider point is: we let fear infect our lives, sometimes without even realizing it. I'd done that with this book. Fear has a way of disguising itself and pretending to be your friend. Fear put on a smile and told me to wait, wait to write this one, wait till you're better, just wait...

Will readers like the book? I have no idea. I've talked before about how authors are the worst judges of their own work. What I think is my strong suit (dialogue), some readers have pointed to as my weakness.

C'est la vie.

I'm okay with not knowing what to expect in terms of sales for two reasons. First, I stopped letting fear get in the way and just wrote the d***ed book. Some might not see that as a victory, but to me that's a win. Because next time I stretch myself to write outside my usual genres, it'll be a little easier. And second, we always live with uncertainty whether we realize it or not. Living by fear doesn't protect you from risk, it only gives you an inflated sense of security. Like the man says, if you're not failing, you're not trying. I'll be okay with failing here.

I'll also be happy if I succeed too ;-)

OtherWorld will be released on August 14th.

My Middle Grade WIP...

No title yet, but this one's about a ten year old girl named Nina who likes to ask that most daunting question: why.

As a matter of fact, she asks it so many times she actually exhausts her limited supply of whys. When that happens, time freezes and her fantastic journey begins. She meets Badger, one of the Askers that no longer exists in reality, who prepares her for the ominous Measurers...a strange race of half-men that keep an accounting of everything to ensure people do enough. To them she must answer. From them she must take back humanity's sense of wonder.

***

Right now the plan is to write this middle grade fantasy and my other one, OtherWorld, under my name. But I've been toying with the idea of a pen name to avoid brand confusion. I don't want my paranormal thriller readers buying this book thinking it's going to be like the other ones. I also don't want potential middle-grade readers to avoid this book because I write what sound like horror stories (they aren't, not really, but that's another story). When I finish we shall see. Like so many other things, it will probably be a so-called game-time decision ;-)

The Book I'm Dying To Write

I have wonderful daughters and ever since they came into this world I've longed to write a book that was for them. Something they could pick up in a few years and read and know that Daddy had been thinking about them, maybe only about them, when he wrote it. Maybe it wouldn't be any good, but it would be theirs and they could always have it, even after I was dead and buried I could tell them this story, which was really their story.

But there was a problem, namely, I have to actually write the damned thing.

First world problems, here we go:

When I was a young reader, I skipped straight from Encyclopedia Brown to Tom Clancy and John D. MacDonald. (How's that for a jump?) Eager to read what Dad was reading, I left the middle-grade world, where I hadn't spent too much time anyway, and skipped right over the YA universe. Looking back now, I feel like I cheated myself out of experiencing a lot of the same books my friends were reading and that I missed out on part of the collective experience happening around me.

It wasn't until I took a course in YA writing a few years ago that I even went back to the genre. I'd signed up on a lark because it was being taught by a successful author and I hadn't taken a formal class in awhile. Through that class I was exposed to many of the stories I'd passed right by, which was great. But when I actually sat down and tried my hand at writing a YA story, the gobbledygook that spewed out of me was a complete disaster.

Because I hadn't spent much time with these kinds of books. In my youth I stayed up late to read Lawrence Sanders, or see what Travis McGee was up to, or inhale the next Dean Koontz novel. I've said here and elsewhere that a good story is a good story, no matter the genre or subgenre, or theme, or mood, or style. And while that's true, every genre has its own set of rules, for lack of a better term. And I just hadn't learned them for YA yet.

So I can't write that book yet for my daughters, though I'm dying to. Because I haven't done my homework. Not enough of it, anyway. Ever since that YA writing class, I've read in the genre here and there, slowly building up my understanding of the mechanics behind these books. And one day I hope to write this book for my girls, which will be a testament to their uniqueness, creativity, and general awesomeness.

Here's the blurb:

Aoife Finley is bursting at the seams with ideas. She draws, paints, reads, sings, and tells stories better than any one. Her imagination knows no bounds.

Mr. Peterson is old, his best days long behind him. He yearns for the past, mistrusts the present, and fears the future. But he's just figured out how to recapture his past:

By stealing children's imaginations.

Now Aoife must journey into the imaginary world of her own creation, Paxsum, to stop Mr. Peterson. Before the real world as she knows it--and as it could be--disappears forever.