What Scares You?

I have been thinking of checking out your books but was wondering if they are stand alone or should they be read in order. Seems like now might be a good time to buy.

Hi, Linda. They're all written so they can stand alone. You can pick up any book without reading the others and feel satisfied. But they do "march along" in time, moving the family ahead. Any way you prefer is okay! And thanks for asking. ;o)

I am scared by Oboma and all the money he is giving to Pakestan and other countries that do not like
Americans.

Understood, Dawn. I often imagine how horrible it would be to see a line of enemies coming through my woods. Would I react with the bravery I hope I have? Would I kill to protect my family? Yes, I would. But damn, that's scary!

Something happening to my wife or my daughter...and spiders. I didn't used to be afraid of spiders until Uncle Sam made me do a LOT of camping in a nice little Southeast Asian country. Since then NO SPIDERS! Other than that, things don't bother me very much. Oh! This is kind of interesting...as pretty much a life long Sport Parachutist I have a fear of tall buildings and really high carnival rides. I've been told that my lack of fear in jumping from planes is because I have no reference point while in the airplane, unlike on a tall building. Hence, you will NEVER catch me BASE Jumping off of anything! :-)

Spartan! How great to hear from you. Long time, man. Thanks for sharing your fears. It's kind of fun to get to know people this way. Since I wrote this article, I thought of a ton more. I guess that's for another day!

There are few things I identify as fears in myself, Aaron, but I still love every book you have written.

Aww, Deb. You're such a sweetie. Thank you! (and Gus thanks you!) Hugs to you and Tonia.

Your #1 and mine are the same, and many of the rest of your fears are very similar to mine. I enjoyed reading this, and it is presently featured in the Gather Writing Essential.

Thanks, Kim! Yeah, I'm sure the fears I listed are shared by many. ;o) Here's hoping you don't have to face them!

My novels have shown me I'm afraid of losing control of my mind. Keep in mind, I write paranormal thrillers. The threat of someone taking over another's mind, displacing the original mind's owner, appears in various ways in several of my novels. Sometimes it's very direct: a spirit is possessing people and making them do bad things. Other times it's more subtle: supernatural power is corrupting someone to the point of making them into someone else. But loss of mental control or losing control of what makes someone the person they've always been is something I find scary and something that often appears in my brand of horror with heart.

And spiders, like Spartan.

I didn't mean to say Spartan is a spider. I meant, like Spartan, spiders spook me a little.

Oh, and alligators and crocodiles. Wow. Scary beasts with dead eyes, huge and powerful jaws, and blazing speed. And they lurk. Lurking is scary. Add lurking to my "I'm scared of" list.

Oh, God, yes. Lurking creepy crawlers in the deep lagoon. Super scary. I wonder if fear of Alzheimer's would relate to your fear of losing control? I have that, too. Especially having seen folks suffer from it. Damn, I'm positively neurotic!

Yeah, I think that's part of it, Aaron.

Ditto, Aaron and Kimberly. I don't want to see even a picture of a snake. I almost drowned as a child and consequently can't swim, etc. So maybe we are all more alike than different.

Aaron, I'm ashamed to admit I've misplaced your address etc. Would you mind re-submitting it and I'll send you a check for Mazurka. I hadn't forgotten. (Rest assured, I have no desire to read Upstaged after your remark about snakes!

Thanks.

LOL! Marie, you made me chuckle. Me, too, about pictures of snakes.

Funny, but spiders never scared me. I suppose if it were a tarantula, I'd change my mind!

I'll send you the address off line. Thanks!

Well, I can add one more thing to my list of things that go bump in the night, but it this case it was a peacock. I had to go outside to turn the well off, and there is a lo-quat tree just to the right of the box...I knew there were two chickens that from time to time roost in this tree, but I did not know that our one and only peacock had taken up with the chickens, or rather booted them out of the tree....a loud, crekkaakaaaa came from the tree and I nearly fell over, almost cracking my skull on the concrete planter. Liquid Crap!!!!!
I am not sure if it had been two before Thanksgiving that instead of a turkey, it would be a choked peacock in the oven! My husband laughed so hard he almost had to roost with the peacock the next night. Not funny.

You have nothing to fear but fear itself! LOL. My dad always said that. But my biggest fear is getting a serious disease (I am a hypochondriac) and dying alone.

Steven. I hear you. That's a real scary thought.

(1)...hearing a knock on the door, looking through the peep hole, and no one is there.
(2)...hearing a thump in the night, and knowing your cats are right there with you, yikes!
(3)...having taken one to two bites out of a sandwich, look down, and see half of a bug, yikes 2!
(4)...always... waiting for the results of my mammogram every year (five years of remission)
(5)...a phone call very late at night, it has always been something bad.
(6)...spiders, yikes x 3.
(7)...power outages during hurricane related weather.
(8)...feeling something crawl on me, and I can't see what it is, yikes x 4!

Ha, Jeni, you really have some good ones. All would scare me except the power outage. We are on a well, so losing power isn't good, but now I have a nice woodstove that we can cook on, plenty of wood, and a little above ground pool I can scoop water out of to flush the toilets. LOL. I don't like the idea of losing our food in the fridge/freezer. We did have a hell of a time in 1991 during the worst ice storm of the century - ten days without power and all three kids had the chicken pox!!!

I love your post, I'm learning that many of my stories are fear related as well. My biggest fear is of drowning...or suffocating, that's always been a big one. I am terrified of losing my mind or intelligence...yes alzheimers is a fear. I have lots of other ones but try not to thin k about them much but you have given me some great advice in writing them down and using them :) I would really love to read your books, where can I get them? Can you email me with the info?

Of course, Janice. I'll find your Gather mail if that worksl Or you can email me at aaron.lazar@yahoo.com and I'll give you all the info. You can get all the books from me (autographed and cheaper) or you can find them all on Amazon, Barnes&Noble, or order them at any book store. The descriptions of the books are at www.legardemysteries.com. If you click on "read excerpt" beneath each book cover at the top of the first web page, you can see more details about them. Thanks for the interest!

Yeah, those things are pretty scary.
What makes me fearful is having a liar in my circle. Want to get everyone suspicious of everyone else's motive? Just throw a liar in the mix.

Now, that's SCARY! Ha!

Ooo, P.W., that's a GOOD one. Reminds me a little of Patry Francis's book, The Liar's Diary. (highly recommended, super read!) Now you've got me thinking about the possibilities!

Ha! [big gaffaw]. Yep, my friend!

Losing family, natural disasters, etc...

Sounds like some of the top ones, Kath. We're lucky up here in the Finger Lakes region of Western NY, we don't have forest fires, tornadoes, mud slides, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc. Well, occasionally little ones, but no biggie. We do get the snow, but it's not bad. Last season I only called the snow plow guy three times. But when we get an ice storm like '91, it's a doozy!

I was always afraid of losing a limb. When I was a kid, my great aunt had a best friend who had only one arm. I practiced doing everything with one hand for years, just in case.

Interesting, Stirling. That's a very legitimate fear, especially if you knew someone as a child. I remember being petrified of that as a kid.

Illness in family or friends, drowning and burning to death.

Looks like you used that burning fear in your front cover, Kelly! Tell us about your book!

spiders & snakes
nuclear war
fire
losing a child
breast cancer
the passage onf one of my siblings
the passage of cindy (photo to left)
fire
being hit in the face
kids shooting rubber bands

Aunt Boni. Oh, yeah. Good list. I forgot the fear of the Big C. That one is predominant, since I know so many people who've died from it. (shudder)

Hi Aaron. I don't fear much in life, not being resistant to change or to ceding control.

<> But I fear the water, especially deep, wide bodies of stationary water. I love water, delight in it, will even splash around on the fringe of an ocean , but ... thus far and no further. Part of a childhood trauma, when I was nearly done to death, deliberately - I never learnt to swim.

<> Waking up one morning and finding all the kids in this world have vanished. A world without kids - a world without innocence. Very scary, for me.

<> Ditto above for birds and the gentler animals.

<> Strangely enough, I don't fear losing people , despite my genuine love for all humanity. (Or maybe because of it - I have a huge family, you see. :) )

What I truly fear is being betrayed - by one I've [loved/given my all to]. It's happened a couple of times , and Life being Life, it will happen again. Ive a lot of the crab in me, I guess - being a Gemini-Cancer cusp and with a lot of my planets in Cancer. I trust easily - too easily, my friends always scold me - and have often ended up trusting the worst kind of people.

<> Here comes the biggie, which, as you will notice, I've saved for the very last. Sweetest last, as the Brits like to say. :)

Discovering I've lost the ability to sing/play. Music has meant the world to me - it's been my single biggest passion ever since I can remember. Some of my worst nightmares are centred around this fear.

(Strangely enough, I don't fear the same with writing - which is why I'll always remain a man who writes ... but will never be a writer. Oh well)

Muchas Gracias for starting this very interesting thread. For a writer like you, it can open the floodgates.

Wow, that last one is very intense. My daughter is a singer and I imagine she shares your fear as well. Thanks for coming along for the ride, Arman.

Intense? Suppose you could call it that. Aaron. Oh wow, so your daughter is of of the same ilk as m!. Is she an opera singer, or like me, a rock-and-roller, Aaron?

And oh, BTW, it's "Aman" - meaning peace/tranquiltiy/serenity . "Armaan " is another word/name completely, meaning "Desire". As the Eastern traditions will tell you, the latter is often the cause of the former's lack!

Oops, sorry, Aman! My daughter loves to sing anything but was trained in opera. Now she's going for a music therapy degree and will be done in the spring. It's an amazing field - fascinating, actually!

Oh wow, that's the most fascinating thing in music, ever! I've dabbled in music healing , but as an untrained, insensitive amateur without a formal training. It's immensely fulfilling, as your kiddo will be discovering for herself not too long into the future, Aaron. Thanks for letting me know!

Not in any particular order - or maybe there is -
Losing my husband.
Husband getting sicker.
Dementia.
Nervous breakdown.
Blindness.
More pain or pain meds stop helping.
Being at the mercy of government "helpfulness." (And we are.)
Ever getting a disease that cost too much money to deal with.
Big expenses that need to be dealt with.
Losing our house or not being able to afford keeping up with it.
Bugs, slugs, and heights.
Being computerless.
Not being able to sleep at all.
Getting older.
Not getting older.
Doing something new.
Not ever learning how to do something new.
Being scammed - again.
Home invasion.
Neighborhood going downhill and we can't afford to get out.
Starving to death.
Reaching "retirement age." (Already on social security disability and know, once we hit "retirement age" finances even become less.)
Rats attacking me.
Mice walking on me.
Paralysis.
Relying on others.

Nope. Apparently 11 wasn't enough things to fear. ;)

Oops - forgot one - popping balloons. lol

LOL! Lynn, you really have a great list. Your "mice walking on me" reminds me of a childhood experience that I actually detailed in Tremolo: cry of the loon. I was breaking the law for the first time in my life (and if I think about it, maybe that was the last time, too...). Stealing blueberries from a local farm at night. Shame on me! Someone came to the entrance, drove down to where we were picking, and we had to hightail it to the woods. We lay in the wet grass, and held our breath. Lots of little feet starting walking over me. I almost passed out from fear, but couldn't move for fear of being exposed. I think it was racoons. ;o)

I enjoyed your article--and the comments that followed.

Well, my biggest fear is--ironically--becoming a "real" writer, and in doing so, I might neglect my family, my friends, and other life ambitions. So--how does one juggle daily life when the plot of a novel invades your every thought? (My first novel comes out in two weeks, and I'm working on my second now. Any advice for a newbie? :)

Kimberly - congrats on your debut novel! Tell us about it if you've time, with links.

It's never easy to balance the family and being a writer. But it can be done, trust me. You just have to be sure the family comes first, always, then after that, it's your writing. Be sure to carve out some time every day for yourself and for promotion, if you can. Your family will be proud as peacocks over your launch!

Thank you for your encouraging response, and I agree with you, but find it very hard to juggle promoting the first while writing the second--since either one could be a full-time job! My genre is young adult fiction, and here's a link to my book: http://www.twoharborspress.com/kimberly-blackadar.asp

Thanks, Kim. I'll go check it out.

It is very tough to do that juggle - sometimes you have to take a few months to promote the heck out of the first book, but you need to stop at some point to allow yourself creating time for the second! It's always a struggle, but it can be done. Just try not to let it drive you too crazy!

Yes, I have heard that writing a book is the easy part and that promoting it is the hard part. Thanks for your advice and encouragement, and I look forward to reading your future posts. (Maybe one about promoting your first book...hint, hint!)

Kim, come on over to www.murderby4.blogspot.com and do a search on internet promotion. One of my cohosts, Marta Stephens, has posted a bunch of great articles on promotion. Hers are the best! See what you think?

Thank you so much, Aaron! I appreciate all your tips and wish you well with promoting your series as well!

I fear

* messing up my kids with rotten parenting
* rats
* telling some of my secrets
* excessive speeding in a car
* the consequences if I ingested street drugs (so I never have)
* suffocation--childhood trauma
* others' anger

Good list, Susan. Oh, yeah. Rats. I forgot that one. Yuck. But I'm more intrigued with your "telling some of my secrets." Good food for thought, that one!

What frightens me is a headless zombies chasing me in my dreams..nite after nite.

How horrible, Janet!! Wow.

But that was when I was living at home with my parents !! I was around 17

Dying does not scare me , but how I die scares the beezs out of me.
Suffocation, burning, falling, drowning or a slow death.

I hear ya. I believe in Heaven, and know I'll reconnect with all those I've lost in this life, but I want to die in my garden. I want to fall over into the dirt, and be gone. They can just bury me there. LOL.

Oh Yeah ! I can t wait to see all my loved ones.
I would love to pass away in my sleep!! Dreaming of good things!

I have a fear of heights, bees and irrational people. I hope I don't die alone but not afraid to do so, but growing old alone is scary.

Hmmm. Good point, Sue. I can't think about it for too long, but I don't want my wife to go first from a selfish point of view. If I'm being altruistic, I'd want to be the survivor so she didn't have to deal with making ends without me.

Good list, Aaron as well as comments from others........

My list and in no particular order:

Losing my family
Losing my mind
Becoming a bag lady
Dying alone
Losing the ability to see the fuller glass
Terminal illnesses
Drowing

I've lost my home and business to a fire...and know first-hand the trauma of rebuilding our lives....It scares me, but I've faced it and came out on the other side, so know I can do it again

Wow, I remember you telling us about losing your home and business to a fire. God, that's scary. But it's wonderful that you survived and recovered just fine. I so admire you, Sonia!

What scares me the worst of all has happened to me this summer ONE week after my 60th birthday we lost our four year old grandson, our heart and sunshine of the family he climbed and fell to his death. It was sudden, unexpected and so hurtful and I will never heal from this.
1) Losing my wife,children, grandkids, or other family members MISS you so much little MAN love you.
2) Spiders terrified of them goes back to being bitten and getting sick as a young child
3) Drowning
4) Satan and his demons who go about like roaring lions devouring and destroying families.
5) The corrupt Government we now have that does not abide by our forefather's laws; More worries than scares me
6) A tree falling on my house when we are sleeping
7) Being in a fatal car crash
8) Floods (and a subsequent drowning)
9) Losing my Salvation to Eternal life by messing up my walk with God
10) My husband dying of a heart attack he has heart problems
11) Becoming homeless due to financial inability to pay mortgage
12) Losing my eyesight so I cannot enjoy beauty or read and write
13) becoming sick or in horrible accident because we have no medical for any emergency
14) Being put into a rest home or assisted living in the city, I hate city and town life.
15) Losing more family members. I could not take that, Losing Gerrin is the worst fear and nightmare that has ever happened and we miss him so much that bright blue eyed sweet little boy with a loving heart. We want him back. Someday is not soon enough, heaven is too far away and arms and hearts ache and break and hurt.

and being alone in my old age with no one to care or share life with.

Oh, Jen. My heart goes out to you. I always am afraid my grandsons (ages 6&7) will come to harm. I'm so scared I wrote about little Johnny disappearing in Double Forte, but he was okay, safe and sound but locked in the cold cellar. I wish the same had happened to your little guy, it just tears my heart out to hear this story. God Bless...

I am scared of nothing,anything or what jumps out from the black corners .
Lets take your list.
!. My family has nothing to do with me..so it solves that one.
2. Drowning...I have spent over thirty years surfing..and Naui quaified diving.
3. Fire....Just do what we were taught..stay low..oh, every situation is different so this would be hard to answer...NOT !
4. Tornadoes..I worked the oil field seeing many water tornadoes and devil dusters..I have stayed through 4 hurriacanes..last one being KATRINA....that one came up my main street.
5. Snakes...I have been bitten by a water moccasin..large one coming out of hibernation.
6. Flood..drowning again...see answer number 2...lived my whole life around water.
7. Snow storms...I went through survival training in Adak Alaska...winter and summer..22 hours of daylight and 22 hours of darkness.
8. heights... I have a picture in my profile..climbing over 400 ft.. I climb a mountain once 14600 ft. I have fallen 22 ft to a concrete slab..breaking my hip and shattering my elbow.
9. Ice..falling in...Ok..sumerge yourself completely under..let your body feel the shock completely. then force your way upward from under the water flopping like a seal. You should be able to land on your belly..move slowly away ,sliding. ...If you are weak.place your arms out the hole resting on the ice ,it will freeze allowing you to stay up..it is quicker to drown than to freeze...
10...Bad guys...I know bad guys...I AM ONE.

Here is the straight skinny...when you are faced in a horrible situation..you will summon all you know to survive....no use on dwelling on the fear or you will die. If it is going to happen then it does...let your mind travel to where everything is at peace.

PEOPLE DIE BECAUSE OF FEAR.
Fear is a man killer.
A slow death to total obliteration.
I will allow my fear to pass through me and around me.
I will let my inner self see the path it has taken.
I will see that it has done no harm.

well, maybe you !

LOL. Korak, good tips. Of course, I don't live my life around these fears, I just build on them and take advantage of them to create heart pumping fiction! LOL.

yes , i know...i was just stating these things. I would like to be scared because I am not alone in these fears. But after this reading thus making me think...I found a big one inside me . A hospital to have hoses pushed and shoved everywhere. One to have no control over the situation at hand. One trying to secure faith in the Doctors hoping for atleast a B average in their schooling . Their are D student /doctors out there with someone Monday morning with an appointment. Yes ,I do get scared !.....Just letting you know their are some who do not fear these average things you wrote of.
Thank You for the nice read....

Please feel free to come write me ..if you want a way out of a bad situation.

"Fear is a man killer.
A slow death to total obliteration.
I will allow my fear to pass through me and around me.
I will let my inner self see the path it has taken.
I will see that it has done no harm."


Is this from Dune, Korak? If not, it is very similar to "Fear is the Mindkiller"...

I love it... love Dune, really.

It is all the same...I love dune also...but there's are different but close. I have used this so many times...but it came from way back..I added some of the ideas from there but it is the same concept... DUNE....i will permitt My inner eye to see the path ...or something to that effect. BUT ,I can honestly say,,I USE it in times of being worried.
One being the picture i have posted with me on top 400 ft.
The head man on the job told one worker to climb this cable tray 6 inches wide (i could barely put my foot in it to climb) This cable tray went from the bottom to the 400 ft level , Straight up, 90 degrees to the earth. This man was married with children having to go only half way up with me to finish the rest of the way. He was over weight not looking very strong . I did not want him not to feel like a true man in the construction world saying that I would climb the complete 400 ft upward. WOW, what did I do thinking boy did I really mess up. He smiled handing me the 80lb beacon attach to electrical cable run from a large spool. This was a few years back so the safty man had no power in anything if the boss said it ,It was done. This is not the case now in construction. There I was with no safty harness climbing with this 80 lb beacon with the weight of s.o. cord pulling me downward.My foot could barely stick in the rungs of the 6 inch wide cable tray, climbing,climbing,climbing until I looked down to see everyone was little, real super tiny. I used most the strength in my arms with my forearms starting to cramp up. I had just passed the cable tray I was climbing held by a COME ALONG equipment...meaning held by nothing hardly. I started to pray after the prayer wanting to give up...''thats it guys I did my share .''
One of the rungs broke making me grab for dear life earlier but on a 60 ft level but that stayed in the back of my mind...so I said that fear thing..DUNE , over and over..I say mankiller though ,girl...Before i knew it there I was on top. Oh by the way, I was a foreman on that job so I could have pushed it off. Now I am glad because it took everything i had inside to do it full of FEAR....And I won !

WOW, Korak... amazing!

I need to quit jumping around about my life and write from the begining. It is also a sad story.

Great post, Aaron! Your fears are all pretty rational...that's a good thing.

Hey, Diana. Nice to see you here! And as I said above, they are great ways to pump up your action and help your readers' hearts get to fluttering!

Wow. OK, mine in no order.

Heights
Spiders
rats
dementia (reasonable fear, as I'd be the third in my family to have it)
blindness
anything happening to my husband and son, or cats
being alone
nobody caring
any creepy buggy thing that gets on me or I think is on me.
watching our aunt die.
seeing any child being mistreated
never having insurance

I'm sure there's more, but these are a few.

Marilyn

Seeing a child mistreated - that's a very good one, Marilyn. In Double Forte', I have Gus rescue a child who he finds shackled to a bedpost in a remote cabin. Another theme I use a lot is the horror of seeing anyone abused. Camille (Gus's new love) was abused in a past life, and it takes him a long, long time to break through her defenses to get her to love him.

I can see how listing your fears, could work extremely well in writing your story~~~That is so cool, I had never thought about that!!!

Your fears sound totally natural, and the comments by others, well, some of them had me rolling!!!! Mice walking on me, anything buggy crawling on me, LOL!!!!!!

LOL. I know. And all of them sound pretty creepy to experience, don't they?! I can see why in the cartoons they have people jumping on chairs when a mouse is in the house!

"mice walking on me..."


hehehe... that sounds funny... hehehe...

I am going to have to take that one, "mice walking on me" and use it in something!!!

Imagine your readers now - all creeped out!! LOL.

*smiling wickedly*

What scares you?


I don't want to write about what scares me! :)

You wouldn't want to read about it either... trust me.

LOL! Sandi, now you're probably piqued everyone's curiosity!

MWahahaHA!

I fear getting hurt in a car accident....not dying though. I hurt just hearing ambulance sirens.

Great post !!

Great shot of the Tour D'Eiffel, Hella. Yeah, hearing sirens is pretty scary sometimes.

The unknown scares me as well as being powerless and the possibility of evil spirits and demonic possession,not very original, but yes, those things terrify me as well as bloody mary lol!

Neat, Amy. Do you write about them?

About my fears, not those ones, I guess, no I have never actually thought about that.

I share many of your fears, Aaron. Being buried alive or trapped in a small place would also be on my list.

Argggh, yeah. Jan, those are two good ones. I haven't written about that yet, I don't know if I could stand describing it. LOL.

Nothing tops the fear of losing a loved one - nothing. For me, that goes without saying - so -

Being on long stretches of highway where there are no exits for what seems like hundreds of miles.
Home Invasion.
Going blind like my mother and dying of the depression it caused.
Darkness. I have to have a night light.
Eating something from a restaurant and then finding out it was rancid or
poisoned (ridiculous, I know - but you can't explain something irrational in a
rational way).
Abduction
I have a great back yard and love to look out the glass doors while
I'm working at my desk. My fear is looking up and seeing something
supernatural staring at me.
The present government

A valid list, Linda. That bit about seeing something supernatural staring in your glass doors is a good one!

The chemicals I work with every day.
Dogs
Snakes
Horses
Men I don't know
Christians
My lousy pay and how to stretch it out
My job
Losing the ability or interest in writing

Ha, Franklin. I used to be afraid of losing my job, but now that's already happened so I had to face it and survive. Still looking, by the way. But Horses? That's unusual. Did you have a bad experience as a kid?

Too much power in horses.

Ah ha. Now see, I grew up with a horse and rode him all over town bareback where I played cowboys and Indians with my pals. It was a natural affinity, but I can certainly see if a bad horse went wild that the power would be scary.

Wow! Love this insight...
Rattlesnakes
Predatory animals - Both the two-legged & four-legged kind
Having my truck slide off an icy road
Being caught unprepared in a blizzard
Being thrown from a horse if I'm out by myself
I don't like ticks or spiders either.

Thanks for bringing up this topic as a way to introduce dramatic tension into a story. We love your helpful articles at Home Comfort and are featuring this one this week!

Thanks, Natalie. You're most welcome. You know, when folks sometimes tell me they don't know what to write about, I'm sometimes surprised. I can't find enough hours in the day to write about all the subjects that intrigue me. And as you state so eloquently, fears can introduce wonderful dramatic tension into a story. Look at all the potential great scenes we've devised in these comments! ;o)

I am afraid of losing my husband (lots of loss already in my life), so I married a man 5 years younger than me and made him promise to let me go first. Now I don't worry about anything. No true fears, just temporary things that give me pause, very brief pause.

Suzie, me, too. I lost 8 people in five years in my forties, and it was a whalloping rotten time. But I'm a little younger than my wife, so she may be the "lucky" one when the time comes. Love your cat!

Goodness, Aaron, you have a whole lot of fears. I have relatively few....heights and flying... and both I force myself to do. Never had a fear of fire until my house burnt down (All four of us made it out) in the middle of the night.

Well, Bob. You know I don't live my life around these things. I cherish every single moment on this lovely earth. I just like exploring the darker side a little to get my creative juices flowing! Glad you've faced your fears. Funny, I can't stand too close to an edge of a cliff, but flying doesn't bother me and I love looking out the windows of a plane. Weird, huh?

Good lord, Aaron! I wish I had the time to read all the great comments on this thread. (I'm saving your email so I can come back for more.) One of my own favorite quotes is: Man fears that which he does not know. Very often, that is where my own ideas come from... fear of loss, fear of failure, fear of the unknown. Of course, I must credit Dan Zadra for one of my favorite mantras: Worry is a misuse of imagination. It's so very true. I'd rather put the imagination to use on my writing.

Hi, Landen. Great quotes, thank you! Hope all is well with you and yours. ;o)

Keepin' head above water, but I may need a longer snorkel!

What I really fear is such talks about fear 'cos the more I talk and read about this the more I am into the fears, and I don't want this. That's why I try to avoid talking about this and telling someone about my fears....
I'm sorry I haven't yet read your books, but is it difficult to write about your fears? Doesn't it multiply your fears when you are writing about them?

Leah, don't be silly. You sure don't have to read my books! LOL. We can still talk about life and reading and writing without having that background.

Is it difficult to write about my fears? Actually, no. Because I'm removed from the "actual" scene, and because I'm "in control," it's actually a blast. And a bit therapeutic, I imagine. ;o) I love describing the tastes/scents/feelings of the moment, however, and usually get my own blood pumping pretty fast!! Ha.

There is this video a friend of mine showed me today. It freaked me out. I just saw it over a minute ago and I'm still shaking.
Here's the link if anyone else wants to view it: MichealJacksonlives

Ha! Angela, this made me jump out of my skin! LOL.

Angela!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaiiiiiiiiEEEEEEEEEEE! You got me.

Gasp... ok, still shaking.

LMAO!

Finger Lakes region has ..... ummm mini tornadoes. I slide down the mud...
and we get ICE storms which are scary....
However to add to your list Aaron .. I agree with what you started which basically equals my complete list which is
Fear of the unknown.
Fear (being a parent) of letting your child go out into the world HOPING you taught them all they need to know and not having that protective wing around them anymore

Hey, Lynda. Yeah, we do get those mini tornadoes. Did you ever see one? Once in a blue moon I hear about a barn roof that got damaged. Scary, for sure. But your last one is REALLY scary. I've been there, done that, and realize that all you can do is teach them really well and hope it "takes." If it doesn't, you didn't necessarily fail.

I'm scared of loosing any member of my family. Unemployment, war, snakes, crime, and many things you all are scared of.

Yeah, Elaine. Unemployment stinks, but actually there are a number of "silver linings" that evolve from it. All things happen for a reason? I pray so!

I'm not afraid of much at this time, as your number one has happened to me over and over, including husband and child and all my siblings and parents. Don't want to do any of this one over again.

True, Elsie. The older we get, the more of our family and friends "move on" to the next place. It's really hard, especially when you think of a question you want to ask about your past, and suddenly it occurs to you, "Wait a minute. There's no one left to ask."

I don't like to dwell on my fears because I fear attracting that which I fear. This post reminds me of a line to a song written by a family member years ago, "I ain't scared of dyin', but I sure am scared of bears" which doesn't make any more sense now than when I first heard it. Things "bother" me that didn't use to, like lightening and wind.

Hi, GayLynn. Oh, you are so right. Never dwell on fears. I just dabbled a little until I have my next great plot and go with it! LOL.

Hi Aaron!
What a great thread. As I grow older, I find my fears change or diminish. Honestly, I don't think I have too many physical things I truly fear, although GayLynn has reminded me I do have a healthy fear of bears when out hiking. I do not like heights but I'm not phobic about it and I used to be afraid of flying but as I did it more and more it has disappeared.

I have had some tramatic events happen that have lessened my fears, I think.
I would have to say that other than losing my famliy, any fear I have is directly related to losing control but I would imagine that is what most fears really are anyway.
- Bobbi

Excellent point, Bobbi. Losing control is what fears stem from for sure. That's why it's SO nice to be able to "control a parallel universe" with my books. Especially when nothing else is in control! ;o)

Aaron, sorry I am late coming to the queue. It doesn't happen to me often because I am pretty proactive in creating my own safe zone but when I feel trapped in a room where there is only one way out and there is someone in the door being big and in my face...well that scares the holy heck out me. I can get pretty taken apart. I will shake for hours after that. Like I said, I am pretty careful to always know my exit.