What's your first thought of a time your heart was racing and you wondered, "Should I really be doing this?"

Hello !

I'm thinking about the times I've made a conscious decision to do something that scared me since I'll be doing my first truly public reading from one of my romance novels tomorrow.

My nature is to avoid being the center of attention, not to wave a mic and yell into it, "Hey look over here!"

As I typed out the question to ask you about a time you made a decision to feel vulnerable, two experiences of my own popped into my head. The first was hitting 'Publish' on my first novel back in 2016. The book had been done and ready to upload to Amazon for two full years but fear stopped me from sharing that book.

What pushed me past the fear was a milestone birthday. On my 40th birthday, I'd promised myself that I'd be a published author before I hit my next decade marker. So two weeks before I turned 50, I swallowed my fear and achieved that goal.

And then I went back into hiding as the good little introvert that I am!

But in 2019, I published another book (it's non-fiction, under a different name) and then in 2020, I wrote and published my first three romance novels. Hitting 'Publish' is no longer scary, but promoting those books? That's the fear I'm fighting now!

It's easy enough to mention my books in emails to you every now and then, but I've never done a public reading so that's the big step I'm taking this weekend to be brave.

If there's something you've been afraid to do or try, I'd love for you to join me tomorrow. It will be 30 minutes all in, with some reading time, some chatting time, and then me giving everyone a free copy of my book as thanks for supporting me and being there as I put myself out in the world in a new, scary-to-me way.

Click the picture to get into the room at Go Time

Brave writers who put their words in the world

Did you know that you can 'taste test' the first few chapters of any of the titles that appeal to you, using Amazon's 'Look Inside' feature? And, if you use Amazon to get your romance fix, you'll be happy to know that several of these books are free to read on Kindle Unlimited.

Valentine's Day love = free book fairs

Love for you and love for the indie authors who find new readers in these fairs. They give you a book and hope you love it enough to buy the next one they write. Every fair has different books (there is a little cross-over).

Clicking the links below is kind of like shopping at Costco during the busy hour when the staff have their free sample carts at the end of every aisle!

Final words...

Actually, I hope these aren't my final words! I don't expect I'll die tomorrow—not literally, at least. Reminds me of the time my son gave me a gift I'd mentioned was on my bucket list: sky diving.

I had it there since it felt like something I'd never get around to spending the money on.... gotta love a teenager with a weekend job who not only listens to his mom, but loves her enough to call her on her crazy ideas.

Free falling from an airplane? Yeah, that's an entirely different kind of fear than standing (or sitting) in front of a room of adults and reading to them!

love & Valentine'sDaystuff,

Danika

PS— Here's the link to join my reading of FIRST IN on Valentine's Day: https://geni.us/DanikaReading.

If you click the link to save it to your calendar, it will launch the event page. Don't panic! But when you save the link, go to the very, very end and REMOVE the #success, otherwise, when you click it again at the right time, it won't open.

Like this:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88392266035?pwd=MVNCWHhGM0R5OVF1MEZEaUJWRURIdz09#success

And, if for some reason you're asked for a password, it's feb14. You shouldn't be asked since it's embedded in the link... but this technology and it loves surprises!

I hope to see you on Sunday, Feb 14 at 1pm Pacific / 4pm Eastern.