Black Friday/Small Business Saturday/Cyber Monday Sale!

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Cyber Monday Update – Sale price now available on BookBaby and Amazon! See the Dance Diaries page for links. PayPal links are still available for those of you who want to buy direct. 

Thank you for supporting this author during this shopping season!

I confess – I’m jumping on the holiday bandwagon. Although many stores are ignoring the calendar and proper order of things, this Friday represents the beginning of a month-long shopping spree in America. Personally, I like to stay home and watch movies all day on Black Friday. A mall packed with eager and/or desperate crowds scrambling to find that perfect gift or best deal is not my idea of a good time.

If you’re like me and would rather shop online than in a crowded mall, I have a solution! The Dance Diaries series is going on sale this weekend, starting on Black Friday and going through Cyber Monday.

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Anywhere you like to shop for digital books (i.e., Amazon, Barnes and Noble, iTunes, etc.), Learning Ballroom Dance and Ballroom Budgeting will be discounted to $2.99 and $3.99, respectively. You can also look for them on my own BookBaby shop pages.

Fun fact: if you buy my books directly through BookBaby, I get a greater percentage of the sale price AND the books are available in any eReader format you need – ePub, mobi and PDF.

If you have someone in your life who has been wanting to try ballroom, give the gift of inside knowledge with Learning Ballroom Dance. 

If you know someone whose passion for ballroom is greater than the size of their wallet, give the gift of Ballroom Budgeting. 

The sale is only during this crazy shopping weekend though!  Friday through Monday, and then the prices go back to their usual amounts.

Please help spread the word, and as always, happy dancing!

Star Dance Tour – Ohio Star Ball!

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Update: Teacher and partner made it into the semifinal round of the Open Pro Smooth event. They WON the audience wildcard vote, so they were still able to perform their show dance! Unfortunately, they just missed winning the final audience vote. Let’s rally and kick it up a notch for the grand finale of the Star Dance Tour at City Lights Open in January 2017!

Hello my lovely readers!

Before I start seriously packing for my cross-country road trip, I wanted to let you know that Teacher and his pro partner will be competing at Ohio Star Ball this Saturday, November 19, and we can watch it livestreamed!

For those who aren’t aware, Ohio Star Ball is a HUGE ballroom competition. For pro-am students, it hosts the final event for the Best of the Best Dancesport Challenge. For Teacher, it is the latest stop on the Star Dance Tour.

I’ll be on the road on Saturday, but should make it to my first hotel in time to watch Teacher dance. If not, you can bet I’ll be sitting at a rest stop livestreaming on my phone! As usual, you can watch the livestream here. Teacher has told me their first round is around 8:30pm EST, but if you want to catch other events happening on the same night, the session starts at 7pm EST according to Ohio Star Ball’s website. If I learn of any schedule changes, I will update this post.

Don’t forget to stick around to vote!  You’ll be able to vote on the livestream website (just refresh the page if the poll doesn’t appear when the MC at the competition announces that it’s time). As usual, there will be a “wildcard” vote and then a final vote. The wildcard vote is for dancing couples in the semifinal round who do not make it to the final round. Whoever gets the most wildcard votes will still get to perform their show dance.

Once the show dances are over, there will be another chance to vote. Just like on Dancing with the Stars, winning the audience vote helps the couples advance in the tour. Teacher and his partner have won the popular vote at EVERY competition they’ve danced at for the Star Dance Tour. That should tell you something about their show dancing abilities (and how awesome their fans are). I happen to know, and I’ll share with you, that they are planning on performing a new show dance at Ohio. So if you’re thinking you’ve already seen their dance and don’t need to watch it again, you ain’t seen nothing yet!

Please join me to watch the livestream on Saturday night. Watch for Kris Suakjian and Briana Haft on the polls when they open, and vote, vote, vote! Also, as usual, I’ll be hanging out on Facebook, so please stop by and say hi!

Ok, time to pack! Happy dancing everyone!

Into the Ballroom Desert

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I’ve mentioned that I am going on a road trip soon. My boys and I will be driving across the country to stay with family in eastern Pennsylvania for a couple months. Three and a half days in a car with only two dogs for company! For some reason, a lot of people think I’m nuts. I say it’ll be an adventure and will probably give me a couple good blog posts.

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The Orange Starburst

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In the last couple weeks, I’ve attempted to alleviate my hunger for ballroom with social dancing. Two weeks ago, Roomie and I attended a Halloween social dance at a local studio. I went to the monthly swing dance, complete with a live band, at another studio this past Saturday. And last night, I went to another social dance after my hip hop class, since the two were at the same place. Last night in particular inspired this post because of some interesting comments people made and because of how I’m feeling post-dancing.

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The Crappy Days Are More Important

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I had an idea for my next post, another one about climbing out of the comparison trap. I wanted to come up with a list of real things that I or anyone else could do that would help stop the comparisons and get back to a more positive mindset. The exercise in gratitude was ok, but I wanted something more practical and more concrete. When I am having trouble with a ballroom step, Teacher can give me very specific things to do to correct the issue. I’ve been stuck in this self-pity state for longer than I’d like to admit. I have plenty of excuses and some good, honest reasons, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m only hurting myself. I actually googled “how to stop comparing” to see what others have written about the subject.

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Book Review – Thinner, Fitter, Happier: Dancing Will Change Your Life! by Marion C. Condon

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Marion is a fellow ballroom student and writer, and we exchanged books to read and review each other’s work. Thinner, Fitter, Happier… is a compilation of Marion’s personal ballroom journey, interviews with ballroom students and teachers, and a wealth of scientific evidence, designed to convince you that you shouldn’t wait another minute to try dance.

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I really enjoyed reading all of the different stories that people shared with Marion, including some from Ballroom Village members! I already knew how life-changing ballroom can be, but these stories of transformation never cease to amaze me.

Marion’s personality comes through in her writing. You can tell she’s highly intelligent and educated even before you learn she is a professor with a PhD, and she gets very excited when she gets to talk (or write) about her ballroom passion. Sometimes her mind seemed to get a little distracted in her excitement, as the writing occasionally went off on tangents. Her sense of humor, often self-deprecating like mine, was also weaved into her writing, which made it feel like you were having a conversation with a really smart friend instead of listening to a lecture.

One unique aspect of the book is it’s interactive! As Marion shares stories of other dancers, she also provides YouTube links so you can actually watch the people perform as you’re learning about them! For those who like hard facts and scientific proof of the benefits before entering into something like ballroom, she also provides references and links to the various studies cited throughout the book.

Despite the slightly disorganized feel of some parts, I was impressed with all of the interviews that Marion collected and shared in Thinner, Fitter, Happier… She didn’t stop at ballroom; she also interviewed teachers and students of west coast swing, hustle, salsa and urban dance like hip hop. The second half of the book’s title says it all. No matter which style of dance you try, dancing will change your life!

You can purchase Marion’s book on Amazon.