Somewhere around book five or six, the doubt showed up. And it brought friends.
Who do you think you are? it asked. You just left your job. You have no business calling yourself a writer. You're supposed to be managing this crisis, not writing about romance. You're supposed to have it all figured out by now. You're supposed to be a certain version of yourself, and this isn't it.
The doubt was louder than my certainty. It had more evidence. It had the whole first half of my life as proof that I was a corporate woman, not a creative one. It had my age. It had my situation. It had everything.
I remember sitting with it on the back porch in the Texas heat, not trying to argue it into silence. Cairo crossed the yard with the unhurried confidence of a dog who knew the property belonged to him, while Odin and Frey investigated every blade of grass as though it contained breaking news. I watched them and finally said to the doubt: I know you are here. I am doing it anyway.
Because my daughter was watching. Because these heroines still had stories that needed telling. And because beneath all that doubt was a deeper truth: I was frightened, and I was moving forward anyway. Courage, I learned, does not always enter loudly. Sometimes it arrives with good posture, a steady hand, and the quiet refusal to abandon what matters.
The doubt didn't go away. But it became smaller. More like background noise. And I kept writing.