Fighting against my anxiety (with a book signing)

For those that know me, they know that thanks to my anxiety I’ve never been able to go to any kind of event on my own. I’m talking book signings, comic cons, cinema, concerts - you get where I’m coming from. Because of this I’ve missed out on more than I can count; friends who would usually come with me to these things don’t always necessarily have the money or time (which is obvious as they have their own lives and can't always babysit a 20 something). 

Usually I just miss the event and then spend weeks hating myself for not just dealing with it and going anyway (which is a lot harder than it sounds). But when I heard that Victoria Aveyard was doing a signing/talk for War Storm I knew I had to go, especially seeing as I had previously missed one of her signings because I had no one to go with. Before I decided to go on my own, I did see if there was anyone who could go with me, but the few people I did know going, were going to one of the other dates on the book tour and I just couldn’t afford the travel, or time off work, to go outside London. When it was pretty obvious that my only two options were to either not go, or go alone, I did actually consider just missing it (like always). Unfortunately for my anxiety I’ve been getting quite stubborn with it and more determined to not let it rule my life, so I bought a ticket and spent the next month leading up to the day trying not to think about it. When the day came I actually did almost have a panic attack, but thanks to my amazing girls in the Book Box Club Whatsapp chat, without them even realising they managed to calm me down and although my heart was racing (which I know from my new pulse rate monitor watch), there was no attack.

So on to the event itself; first off I just want to say that I love how much of a nerd Victoria is. She kept veering off from the question to talk about Pokemon or Star Wars and I love that because that's the sort of thing I do. As I had been waiting for the event to get my copy of War Storm (with all it's blue sprayed page glory, plus the poster and bookmark) I hadn't read it yet, so I was really hoping we'd get a talk with no spoilers from book four. What we actually got was a talk with no spoilers from ANY of the four books in the Red Queen series. Victoria told us how she has spoken to a few people that have been waiting for the final book to come out so they can start the series, and as Victoria said, that's willpower!

I also even managed to get talking to the person sat next to me and while we waited for the talk, and then the signing, we got talking about the sprayed pages, books in general and book signings. So overall I'm so happy I managed to overcome my anxiety on this occasion, and fingers crossed my anxiety isn't the reason to miss any book signings from this point forward, because now I've done it once, I feel like I can do it again. Next up we'll try something a little less daunting, like going to the cinema on my own. Now look at how stunning this book (and author) is.