I know the title is a little dramatic, but I just liked the sound of it so much when it popped into my head. A neutral alternative title could be “One Thing at a Time.”
I think I got a little overexcited about 2017. 2016 was full of change and delays and detours; I was laser-focused on getting back on track and making up for lost time. We’re one month in and my laser focus has turned into a light show with beams shooting every which way. It’s getting hard to see where I’m going.
Have you experienced a setback and you’re struggling to get back to where you were? Maybe instead of focusing on going back, you should focus on moving forward from where you are now.
I feel like I have been saying ‘I used to…’ a lot lately.
Somewhere in the middle of all of the health struggles I have been dealing with lately, something interesting occurred to me.
In many ways, I have been trying to go back to being the dancer I remember before I got sick. I was faster, sharper, fitter and more grounded. I think my thinking was that if I could get back to that place, then I would be able to move forward again to become the dancer I want to be.
But it is time for that thinking to be put away.
I will never be the dancer I was again. Simply because you can’t go back. The past is the past and while it may seem a bit like the ‘glory’ days, by always wallowing in ‘what used to be’ you will never be able to move…
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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.
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!
Tomorrow is the last day of my cross-country road trip, and I actually made it to my hotel tonight at a decent hour so I wanted to drop in and say hi.
The Dance Diaries virtual book tour is only one week away happening NOW! I have mixed emotions about that fact, but mainly I’m excited.
From September 26 to October 14, Dance Diaries: Learning Ballroom Dance (Dance Diaries #1) and Dance Diaries: Ballroom Budgeting (Dance Diaries #2) will be featured and/or reviewed on a number of websites, most of which are book blogs. Some of them have also requested guest posts or author interviews from me, so their readers can hear from me directly.
I signed up with iReads Book Tours, and they arranged everything for me. Here is the schedule:
Sept 26 – Jaquo Lifestyle Magazine – book spotlight / guest post
Sept 26 – Books, Dreams, Life – book spotlight
Sept 27 – Library of Clean Reads – review of Dance Diaries #1 / author interview / giveaway
Sept 27 – Writers and Authors – book spotlight / author interview
Sept 27 – Books for Books – book spotlight
Sept 28 – The Autistic Gamer – review of Dance Diaries #1
Sept 28 – The Dance Bible – review of Dance Diaries #1 / author interview
Sept 29 – Bound 4 Escape – review of Dance Diaries #1 / giveaway
Sept 29 – Library of Clean Reads – review of Dance Diaries #2 / giveaway
Sept 30 – Northernmsw – review of Dance Diaries #1 / author interview
Sept 30 – T’s Stuff – book spotlight / author interview / giveaway
Oct 3 – The Autistic Gamer – review of Dance Diaries #2
Oct 3 – #redhead.with.book – book spotlight / giveaway
Oct 4 – Bound 4 Escape – review of Dance Diaries #2 / giveaway
Oct 5 – Bookworm for Kids – review of Dance Diaries #1 / giveaway
Oct 5 – Book reviews nature photos – review of Dance Diaries #1
Oct 6 – Book reviews nature photos – review of Dance Diaries #2
Oct 6 – The All Night Library – review of Dance Diaries #1
Oct 6 – The Dance Bible – review of Dance Diaries #2
Oct 7 – Rockin’ Book Reviews – book spotlight / giveaway
Oct 11 – Northernmsw – review of Dance Diaries #2
Oct 11 – Readers Muse – review of Dance Diaries #1
Oct 12 – Bookworm for Kids – review of Dance Diaries #2 / giveaway
Oct 13 – The All Night Library (separate links for review and guest post) – review of Dance Diaries #2 / guest post
Oct 13 – Book Lover in Florida – book spotlight / guest post / giveaway
Oct 14 – Readers Muse – review of Dance Diaries #2
TBD – XoXo Book Blog – book spotlight
TBD – Deal Sharing Aunt – book spotlight / author interview / giveaway
You’ll note some of the scheduled tour stops include a giveaway! You’ll have to visit the sites on the appropriate days to get more details, but there may be a chance to win an Amazon gift card! *hint hint*
You can also access the giveaway link here.
You’ll also note just by the names of the blogs that the majority are not dance-related sites. The point of all this is to reach more readers and hopefully introduce more people to ballroom dancing. It’s also good exposure for me as a writer and author. I’m still not exactly sure where this path is taking me, but I want to find out and the only way to do that is keep moving forward!
The mixed emotions I mentioned in the beginning are courtesy of my demons, of course. I’m excited to reach a broader audience and connect with new readers! But there’s always that lingering doubt/fear that I’ll be rejected or called out as a fraud. Or worse yet, my books will be met with a whole lot of indifference!
I know these feelings are normal, and every writer out there can relate. All I can do is take a deep breath and push forward anyway. I keep reminding myself to glance back and acknowledge how far I’ve come despite being terrified. It’s almost hard to believe.
So I hope you’ll tag along and check out some of the stops on the tour. I’m sure the other bloggers who have been gracious enough to welcome me and my books to their websites will appreciate your visit just as much as I do! I’m going to keep this post on the top of my blog page until the tour ends, so it’ll be easy for you to check the schedule and click over to the other sites.
Cheers!
Hello lovely readers/dancers!
A couple weeks ago, I received an email via Contact the Girl. If you ever debated about sending me a message, please know that I love getting emails from you guys!
This particular one was from Apolos Israel, a film student/photographer from Brooklyn, New York. He had just experienced his very first ballroom competition!
I finally finished reading Patrice Tanaka’s Becoming Ginger Rogers. If you recall, reading her description of her first competition inspired me to come up with this crazy idea of attempting to enter not one, but two(!) competitions before the end of 2016. I’ve since gone through a mental smackdown courtesy of the demons that live in my head, but that post will have to wait. First, I want to share how much I enjoyed reading this book!
An inspirational post for anyone with dreams of finding success with their passion!
My blog is supposedly about self-publishing, although that’s just the current flavor of my personal journey in pursuit of happiness. It has also become a platform through which I’ve “met” other writers and creatives actively pursuing their various original dreams and ideas. It has been a pleasant surprise to discover just how supportive these people […]
Hello everyone!
Just a reminder that Dance Diaries: Learning Ballroom Dance is free to download on Story Cartel’s website for only five more days!
You may as well download it now before you forget.
Another reminder: if you post a review about the book by June 6, you’ll be entered to win an advanced copy of the next one, Dance Diaries: Ballroom Budgeting! This second installment of the Dance Diaries series includes all of my secrets, tips and tricks to how I afford to dance while living paycheck to paycheck AND paying down debt. AND it comes with a bonus, but I’m not going to tell you what it is yet!
You can post a review of Dance Diaries: Learning Ballroom Dance on the website of your choosing. Here are the links to a few possibilities:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Goodreads
Just be sure to copy the URL of your review onto your Story Cartel dashboard so it’s counted in the drawing!
Good luck and happy dancing!
One of the amazing results of this blog is the connections I’ve made with other ballroom dancers and bloggers. Last weekend, I got to make another one and meet Stefanie, the Beautiful Girl in the Ballroom!
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The Girl with the Tree Tattoo 