Latest
Walter Koenig: A TributeAI Has Paid Off Outside Tech. Apollo Is Reading the Wrong Scoreboard.I Don’t Post Bad ARC Reviews. I Send the Author a Note.The Little Red Book of Stuff That Works!Your Kids Are Your Own FaultGrow a PairYou’re Broke Because You Want to BeIt’s Called Work for a Reason!No Time for TactShut Up, Stop Whining, and Get a LifeWilliam Bessette: AI Enablement and Child Welfare TechnologyFree Book Planning ToolsWhat’s New at The Writing King: Week of October 18, 2026Ghostwriting by the Numbers: Timelines, Word Counts and the First CallPromising Young Woman (2020) ReviewBillions for AI, Pennies for the Plumbing: AI Companies Should Pay to Keep PHP AlivePHP2Shell: AI Found a 22-Year-Old Crack Under Your Website in Two DaysPetrov Day: The Officer Who Didn’t Believe the ComputerKindle Unlimited Is Now Kindle+. AI Audiobooks Just Joined the BuffetMo Gawdat Says the AI Dystopia Starts in 2027. Read the List, Skip the DatesChina Is Using Bots to Fan the Data Center Backlash. The Backlash Is Still Real.When to Quit Writing a Book: I’ve Abandoned Dozens, and I’d Do It AgainThe Society of Authors Signed an Ethical AI Charter, Then Ran From It in Eight DaysGetty Images Filed for Bankruptcy. Can You Prove You Licensed Your Book’s Images?Fluff Words: Cut Them From Your Prose, Keep Them in Your DialogueWhere Can Writers Learn Storytelling From Movies? Richard Lowe Publishes 1,226 Film and TV Reviews With Writing Craft NotesWhere Are the Independent Bookstores and Public Libraries Worth Visiting in Tampa Bay? Author Richard Lowe Profiles 44 of ThemWhat Should You Know Before Hiring a Ghostwriter? The Writing King Publishes 57 New Answers, Including What to Do When It Goes WrongWhere Can You Hear Founders and Executives Tell Their Own Stories? Richard Lowe’s Leaders and Their Stories Publishes Every Unscripted Interview With a Full TranscriptAuthor Richard Lowe Publishes Eight Volumes of Enemies of You, a Researched Series on the Forces Working Against Ordinary AmericansThe Jackal (1997) ReviewThe Day of the Jackal (2024) ReviewYour First Novel Is an Apprentice Piece: What Beta Readers and Editors Can’t FixWhen the Cloud Gets Bombed: What the AWS Data Center Strikes Teach About BackupsHuman-Written Book Labels Are Gatekeeping With a FeeThe Enshittification of Microsoft Office: Why I Switched to a Free CloneGlobal Encryption Day: The Padlock Every Writer Depends OnWriting Your Worst Moments in a Memoir: Show the Evidence, Skip the VerdictHow to Register a Copyright for Your Book (and What Doesn’t Count)Your AI Chats Aren’t Private: Deleted ChatGPT Logs in CourtThe Board Seat Scam: A 419 Letter in a Business SuitI Joined the Science Fiction Book Club 30 TimesCitations in a Memoir: Endnotes, Footnotes and Fair UseThe Stores That Still Care: Publix, Walmart, Aldi, Best Buy and the RestThe Grocery Store Plan: Why Every Store Starts With FlowersWinnie-the-Pooh’s 100th Birthday: A Century in the Hundred Acre WoodWhat’s New at The Writing King: Week of October 11, 2026Free With a Fill-Up: How America Stopped Giving Things AwayAI’s Black Box Is Getting a Window. Somebody Still Has to Look Through It“It Stars C. Thomas Howell. No.” Why AI Gets Stuck in a Loop
The Writing King Your Ethical Ghostwriter. Your Story, Done Right.

Prepared, Not Paranoid

Don’t Live in Fear

The Walls You Built and How to Get Past Them

I lost a job I wanted because I was too chicken to talk to people

Let me say it again, because by the end of that chapter it’s about you, not me. I had the skills. I had the experience. I ran the entire technical department at a store you’d recognize if I named it, and I’m not naming it.

The top job opened. CIO. On paper I was the obvious pick. They gave it to somebody else. Somebody who talked to people.

Everybody in that building knew my work and not one of them knew me. No allies. Nobody in the room going to bat for me when it counted, because I’d never bothered to make a single one. The promotion goes to the person people know. They knew my code. That was nobody’s fault but mine.

Why the CIO job went to someone elseA comparison from the opening of Don't Live in Fear. On one side is what Richard Lowe brought to the CIO opening: the skills, the experience and the whole technical department. On the other is what he lacked: nobody in the building knew him, he had no allies, and nobody went to bat for him.Why the CIO job went to someone elseWhat I hadThe skillsThe experienceThe whole technical departmentWork everybody knewWhat I lackedNot one person knew meNo alliesNobody going to bat for meAny relationship I had bothered to make
Why the CIO job went to someone elseA comparison from the opening of Don't Live in Fear. On one side is what Richard Lowe brought to the CIO opening: the skills, the experience and the whole technical department. On the other is what he lacked: nobody in the building knew him, he had no allies, and nobody went to bat for him.Why the CIO job went to someone elseWhat I hadThe skillsThe experienceThe whole technical departmentWork everybody knewWhat I lackedNot one person knew meNo alliesNobody going to bat for meAny relationship I had bothered to make

The promotion goes to the person people know. They knew his code.

I’m an introvert, not a hermit. Get me talking and I’m fine. It’s the walking up to somebody that kills me, and every time I backed off I felt relief and called that relief good judgment. It wasn’t judgment. It was a wall, and I laid every brick myself.

What is inside Don’t Live in Fear?

Different walls, different advice
Your situation What the book says
A wall you built yourself Name it. The relief you feel when you back off is the wall, not good judgment
You can’t get out The staircase: smaller moves between suffering and the exit
Someone else holds the wall Not find the nerve. Get help, make a plan, get out safely
You think it’s too late The author started writing at fifty-three; that chapter is the shortest
After the big leap What happens next, including how the fear rebuilds

Who should read Don’t Live in Fear?

Why did I write Don’t Live in Fear?

Richard Lowe, the Writing King

I lost the CIO job to somebody who talked to people, after twenty years running technology at a company you’d recognize. Thirty-three years in enterprise IT and I built every wall in this book personally, then spent the years afterward taking them down. None of this is theoretical and none of it is flattering.

► Behind the Book: Don’t Live in Fear
How this one got written, what went wrong, and what got cut.

► I Spent Thirty-Three Years in a Box and Called It a Career
One story from behind this book.

What do people ask about Don’t Live in Fear?

Is Don’t Live in Fear just another tough-love motivation book?
No. It’s blunt, but it’s blunt the way a friend is blunt, someone on your side who cares too much to coddle you. The author never pretends the fear isn’t real. The shock that built your wall really happened. The book’s argument is that the current has been off for years, and it proves it with the author’s own failures, not with hype. It also does the thing motivation books refuse to do: it’s whole chapters for the people who can’t leave, the walls other people build around you, and what happens after the big leap, including how the fear rebuilds.
What if you can’t get out of a bad situation?
There’s a chapter for exactly that, and it’s the heart of the book. The author spent years as caregiver to his chronically ill wife, where leaving was never an option and shouldn’t have been. The answer isn’t “leave anyway” and it isn’t “suffer nobly.” It’s the staircase: the whole range of smaller moves between suffering and the exit that trapped people skip because fear tells them the only two options are stay or detonate. When you can’t get out, a few hours of air isn’t nothing. Some days it’s everything.
Does Don’t Live in Fear cover controlling relationships and gaslighting?
Yes, carefully. Two full chapters cover the walls other people build around you on purpose and the covert control that makes you doubt your own eyes, drawn from the author’s own experience with a manipulative marriage, false medical death sentences, and a church that told a fourteen-year-old he didn’t see what he saw. These chapters change the advice completely: for walls someone else is holding shut, the answer isn’t “find the nerve.” It’s get help, make a plan, and get out safely, and the book says so plainly, with resources.
Who is Don’t Live in Fear for?
Anyone who has ever felt the flinch and called it good judgment. The person in the job they’ve hated out loud for years. The one who won’t ask for the raise, won’t approach anyone, won’t start the thing, won’t say the sentence. The one who thinks it’s too late. The author started writing at fifty-three and published more than a hundred books, so that excuse gets a whole chapter, and it’s the shortest one in the book, on purpose. Every chapter ends with something to do, today.

Also in Prepared, Not Paranoid

The relief you feel when you back off is the wall

It’s never once been good judgment.

BUY FROM INGRAMSPARKAMAZONKOBOREAD A CHAPTERTABLE OF CONTENTS

Paperback and ebook.

Filed underPersonal GrowthCareersSelf ImprovementMental Health

A chapter

Don’t Live in Fear

I lost a job I wanted because I was too chicken to talk to people.

Let me say that again so it sinks in, because by the end of this chapter it’s going to be about you, not me.

I had the skills. I had the experience. I ran the whole technical department at a store you’d recognize if I named it, and I’m not naming it, so quit guessing.

The top job opened up. CIO. I was the obvious pick on paper.

They gave it to somebody else. Somebody who talked to people.

Why? Because everybody in that building knew my work and not one of them knew me. No allies.

Nobody in the room going to bat for me when it counted, because I’d never bothered to make a single one.

The promotion goes to the person people know. They knew my code. They didn’t know me.

Look at the wall that did it, because you’ve got one just like it.

Table of contents

Don’t Live in Fear

  • Why I Wrote This
  • Everybody Lives in a Box
  • The Cave Is Empty
  • Quit the Damn Job Already
  • You’re Worth More Than You Ask For
  • Stop Marrying Your Fear
  • The Quiet You’re Afraid Of
  • Nobody’s Watching You
  • Three Men at the Same Fence
  • Get Off the Couch
  • Say the Thing
  • You Could Leave Tomorrow
  • Walk Out of the Bad Movie
  • Pick a Door
  • It’s Not Too Late, You’re Just Scared
  • Why Are You Afraid to Win?
  • When You Can’t Get Out
  • Four Walls, One Loose Brick
  • When Someone Else Holds the Wall
  • Chains That Bind
  • Is It Faith, or Is It Fear?
  • The Morning After You Get Out
  • You Can’t Drag Anyone Out
  • The Wall With Your Name On It
Categories and tags
CategoriesCareersPersonal Growth
TagsFearMental HealthPersonal GrowthReading LifeWriting Craft
Tagged , , , ,
0 comments

No comments yet. Yours can be the first.

Was this useful?
The Writing King

Professional ghostwriting for executives, founders, coaches, and authors who want to get the book done right. 113+ books authored. 54+ ghostwritten for clients.

Books & Reviews

Services

Resources

Get In Touch

Ready to discuss your book?

BOOK YOUR PRIVATE CONSULTATION

No pitch. No pressure.

Or follow Richard's work

© 2026 Richard Lowe. The Writing King. All rights reserved.

PrivacyTermsRefund PolicySitemapContact