Greetings mortals! I’ve ironically reached a crossroads in my life. If you’ve been following along from the crypts, you know I’ve embarked on a second website and various platform presences called Brent’s Crossroads. This endeavor focuses on my love of travel, cruising, and Disney to keep it separate from what I do here. The drawback has been less time to write and focus on Our Darkest Fears. I honestly believed that when I quit my job for family and health reasons, I’d have more time to work on my fiction and the demanding upkeep of the Crossroads.

That brings me to where I sit now, wondering if I can keep all the balls in the air. I fear I’m failing in everything. When that fear of failure settles in, it’s hard for me to dig out of my feeling that the sky is falling. I’m scared I’m cutting off my nose to spite my face. Do I keep the Crossroads’ slow growth while not giving the fiction the time it deserves? Do I focus on the fiction and let the Crossroads slowly rot or live on? My fear is that whatever I choose, it’ll be the wrong thing.

And fear is the name of the game here, right?

So, I’m standing at my personal crossroads, looking at the forks in the road and the road signs. I know we’ve all been there before. We’ve all stood before the decisions we must make at our crossroads and wondered if what we’re doing is right. How did you react to the fear you felt swelling up inside? Did you stand tall and own your choices, or did you hide from your choices?

I fear I’m not doing the fiction work and its fans any justice. I’m almost finished with the final book in my trilogy set in Armand Rosamilia’s Dying Days world. It took me a while to get comfortable with it after a good friend who is a character in it passed away last year. I’ve gotten a few chapters into Twelve Souls (a stand-alone novel), flirted with the opening to the second Death, Inc. novel, and have a rather large part of the next White Creek novel complete. I fear I’m not doing the work justice. I fear sometimes that I’ve lost the mojo to push through and get into working on the fiction again. I fear I’ve failed at being a writer.

In a couple of weeks, I will try to shove the fear and doubts out of my twisted head and throw myself back into the literary world again. I will be an Attending Professional at the huge Dragon Con convention in Atlanta over Labor Day weekend. I will be on six panels covering horror genre fiction writing, Lon Chaney, Blumhouse, and other horror topics. I will also have a table at The Gather, a huge book event where I will be in front of thousands of readers looking for their new TBR books. This is the biggest thing I’ve participated in, and I fear it.

Will they like me? Will they care? Will anybody buy anything? Why do I always feel like an imposter?

Can I be honest with you right now? My biggest fear isn’t failure. It’s seizing the moment and making the most of the opportunities coming my way. So, I will turn it on and soak up all the positive energy. I think I’ve let my fear of failing drag both parts of my creative endeavors down.

This is the moment I’ve waited for. This is the moment I’ve feared. This is the moment to make it all count. Thirteen years of slogging away on my fiction have led me down this road.

The road may fork, but I’m walking straight up the middle with both feet in my two lives. I will not fear my choices but push to not fail. Right now, failure is not an option.

I’ll revisit you in the crypts soon to publish my Dragon Con schedule and give you the rundown of how things are changing here on Our Darkest Fears. This site will be ported over to Substack, and I will run the site/newsletter there along with the Crossroads. I’m also debating a second YouTube channel to give Our Darkest Fears its own cursed ground to play with. A lot of things hinge on how things grow, so fingers crossed.

Thanks for visiting my graveyard, and I’ll see you later. The ghosts expect me for a swinging wake (who loves the Haunted Mansion?).

Brent