Sharks instead of Shingles, Plus The Pre-Order Map Quest in its Final Hours!

Thanks for showing up! Here's my plan to travel to the farthest ends of the earth just before the lead-up to Jan 6, when my next novel, WHAT BOYS LEARN, launches

Raja Ampat: 1500 islands, possibly the highest marine biodiversity in the world, off the coast of Western Papua—but where the heck is that? If you’re like me, you may not have heard of it.

About two years ago, I decided this was my once-in-a-lifetime ultimate dream trip. First, because I am a recent convert to long-distance swimming. Second, because I want to see natural wonders while they’re still around, and both the pace of climate change and the pace of my own aging have convinced me that one shouldn’t put off seeing special places and pursuing challenging experiences.

In three days, I’ll be setting off with my husband Brian to spend a week on a liveaboard boat with another twelve or so like-minded people, doing two guided long-distance swims per day, each about 1.2 miles long, which adds up to a lot more swimming than I’ve ever done, despite training for and completing an Ironman.

Neither of us are particularly talented swimmers, but Brian and I spent all summer training in the ocean, doing swims of up to ninety minutes, and we did our best with pool training and some weightlifting this fall, and we will see if that preparation was sufficient. I’m both excited and a little uncertain about the heat and the overall fatigue.

Plus: this time, there will be sharks!

And turtles, and pgymy seahorses, and maybe some stinging jellyfish. (It’s been a busy month and I bought a rash guard shirt at the very last minute; you’d think I would have been studying the SwimTrek packing list but instead I was writing, promoting, teaching, and coaching.)

In truth, I’m slightly terrified of the ocean, much as I love it. You may doubt this is true, given that I do lots of open water swimming now, and I once wrote a guidebook to sea kayaking. (Plus my first of three Master’s degrees was fisheries related—imagine that.)

But ask Brian. I am still trying to live down the fact that we went to a tiny Belize island for our honeymoon 33 years ago (yes, that long) and after seeing a barracuda, I got so scared I spent the rest of our vacation on land instead of snorkeling, even though we had chosen the location specifically to be in the water.

Even now, I get freaked out pretty quickly, like when we are swimming around our island and a seal head pops up nearby. Brian will often put off telling me until later if he sees something in the water that might send me into a panic.

And yet, what better treatment for profound discomfort than exposure therapy?

However this trip turns out—and I think it’s going to be WONDERFUL—it will be better than how I spent my last lead-up to launch day, when I got shingles, probably brought on by stress.

Sharks versus shingles. For some reason, I can’t get that phrase out of my head.

I really did plan this not only as a way to experience wonder and level up as an ocean swimmer, but also as a way to get away from screens. Pre-book launch is a time I get obsessive about being online and being on a small boat in a remote corner of the Coral Sea is going to make being online difficult. I simply WON’T be able to read Goodreads reviews. (2026 Resolution: Stop Impulsive Visits To Goodreads.) Hooray!

Before I go, please let me update you on the Map Project.

There is still time to pre-order a copy and get special rewards from me, but only if you fill out the form in the next 48 hours, by Sunday afternoon. Please do! There are still lots of white spaces to fill up!

So far, I can track 22 pre-orders in the U.S. and another 7 in the Canadian city closest to where I live.

Have I achieved my goal?

Getting there!!! I was hoping for 30 US hardcover pre-orders from local bookshops. I wasn’t really expecting a lot of Canadian pre-orders. A big surprise there.

I’d be really happy to get another dozen or so pre-orders.

There’s still time!

By the way, let me admit that I don’t find self-promotion easy. Few people do. In Overcoming the Fear of Self-Promotion, business coach and writer C.J. Hayden points out the seven fears that hold people back: fear of rejection, ridicule, embarrassment, the unknown, failure, success (yes, some people fear success, for reasons explained in the book), and disapproval.

(Thanks to C.J. Hayden, whom I had the great pleasure of meeting last summer on the QM2; I look forward to reading your next memoir, C.J., in addition to your works on marketing!)

Purple bookshops = more than one pre-order. I love this map! Instead of making me anxious about sales, it fills me with the desire to visit bookstores all across the country. Someday?

I’m actually pretty good when it comes to initiating direct asks or small “help me please” campaigns—probably because I get excited about the experiment itself and can’t wait to find out what will happen.

In other words, I lead with curiosity.

What I’m less good at is riding the discomfort that follows, when I think, “What if this fails?” or “Does this make me look silly/desperate/less successful because I need help or came up with an idea that exposes me in some way?” (In C.J. Hayden’s framework, this is fear of embarrassment—a fear which makes a person believe that her “dignity or competence is at stake.”)

Emotions are important, but I’m also interested in feedback, research, and raw data. As promised, I will share the practical results and full reasoning behind this experiment in late January, when it’s all wrapped up.

For now, I have learned a lot and practiced both cultivating allies and embracing discomfort.

Do you see a theme here?

Doing uncomfortable things on purpose. Exposure therapy. Challenging my introvert/landlubber personality. Trying new things!

On top of all that, I have bought a bunch of bikinis and I plan to wear them. In my thirties and forties, I stayed much more covered-up—one of my favorite things about living in Alaska was the excuse to never wear shorts!—but I’ve embraced my fifties as the time to enjoy being in my own skin and soaking up the sun whenever I can. (While wearing sunscreen, of course.)

Over ten years ago, I swam with whale sharks in the Philippines (while researching locations for my 2018 speculative and historical novel PLUM RAINS). Oddly enough, this wasn’t too overwhelming—maybe because there was a whole group of us in the water. Or maybe my fuses were blown so fast by the shock of it all that I couldn’t produce any more adrenaline. But wow, any marine animal this big is something to see!

I hope to check in with you one more time before the end of 2025, but I hope you’re already thinking of plans for 2016.

My advice for you: DO THE SCARY THING.

(And then tell me about it.)