Ah, the crushing, persistent fear of failure!

Yeah, I have a new novel out in three days...

Fear of failure. It’s always there. I can handle it most of the time. When I’m working hard on a bunch of stuff and reading and writing as much as I can, keeping it under control s is easy. Sometimes, everything fails and that damn fear take center stage. With House of Bone and Rain hitting shelves in three days, the fear of failure is at an all-time high.

Listen, we should talk about this shit. I’m serious. Are we supposed to always play it cool and just share our victories? Nah, I can’t do that. I always have to keep it honest, and I want people to know that the fear is real. Making a living is a writer is a dream come true for me and I’m always working to make sure that I can keep doing it for as long as possible. Sadly, there are no guarantees in this business, and while writing is art and the thing that changed my life, publishing is most definitely a business. You see, when I’m writing, I feel more or less in control. Sure, I’m a pantser and sometimes have no clue where the writing is taking me, but I can get control back the second I start editing. With publishing, I’m not in control. I don’t know what will happen when the novel comes out. I can’t control sales or events or how people will talk—or not even mention it!—on social media. I can’t control reviews or TikTok attention or book clubs picking the book or anything else. That sucks. That lack of control makes me nervous.

To be honest, I thought the fear was going to get smaller and easier to ignore with each book. The opposite is true. Every book has to be bigger and better than the previous one. That’s what the voices say, what they whisper in my ear day and night. My first few books all felt the same in the sense that I was building an audience and wanted to see what my writing could accomplish. For four books, I had no agent, no advance, no marketing budget, no tour, no galleys, no distribution other than Amazon, and no reviews in big venues. Sure, I was afraid of those books tanking, but if they did, that was on me. I carried everything for each book. That changed with The Devil Takes You Home. Now there’s a group of people who have worked hard for me and I want the book to do well for them. My agent, my editor, the readers who championed The Devil Takes You Home, every friend who believed in me, every fellow writer who had a kind word or a morsel of advice; I want to do well for them, to show them that their vote of confidence wasn’t misplaced, to prove to them that I saw their belief in me and my work and I busted my ass to write the best book that I could.

So yeah, it’s 1:02pm on a Saturday and I can’t write because the fear is there. I have a hard time concentrating because the fear of failure is there. I don’t want to be broke and desperate again. I don’t want to go back to a cubicle and work the phones at an insurance place or work construction again or teach high school again. I want to do this thing I’ve been doing for a couple years now. I want to write and travel for book stuff and pay my bills with my words and go to France because my writing took me there. I don’t want to fail, and I think it’s okay to be open about it, to be vulnerable and show others where my mind is three days away from having a new novel out in the world. Anyway, there you have it. Now I’m gonna get some food and think of creative ways to convince folks to preorder and then to keep the book out there until the next one is here. Stay awesome and have a wonderful weekend. Much love.