UPDATE: The winner is…Jennifer Beyer!
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Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Cindy-Tanner/e/B0746RHQ9N

Lately, I have been giving thought to the concept of fear and how that drives my actions. I have been writing stories since elementary school, but it wasn’t until years later that I gave any thought to publishing anything. Even then, the fear of failing was enough to keep me happy writing for me, alone. It wasn’t until my dad passed away that I got the courage to self-publish because things I feared changed drastically with his death. Suddenly, no one enjoying my books wasn’t so scary. If I failed, I could try again. So, I did. I have made many mistakes along the way but have learned from them. I have found readers that love my voice and others that don’t. It’s okay. The sun still rises.

This past year, my definition of what I fear was challenged and changed again. My mother experienced a small electrical fire and came to live with us for several months. She hadn’t been home, and she had been incredibly lucky. Loved ones were lost during quarantine, the distance broke some relationships, and the farm I had grown up on was getting divided and sold. All of this during a pandemic that brings its own worries and frustrations.

Finding the silver lining when the bad news kept piling on wasn’t easy, but I realized how much I feared change. What have I learned? The sun is still going to rise and set whether or not I accept the changes happening around me. I spent a lot of time in the last eighteen months feeling helpless, frustrated, and powerless. Now I see change as a chance for something new, not just an end. There is a tremendous amount of power in accepting change and deciding how to receive it.

In my writing, I have been pushing boundaries. Ideas I had but thought I couldn’t write, I have been writing. Letting go of the expectations I was putting on myself and what I had to write. One of these stories will be part of the upcoming anthology Boys Behaving Badly: Cowboys.

Failure is an opportunity for growth. Change is an opportunity for something new. For the chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card comment and tell me a fear you have managed or would like to.