On Her Own

Birthday giveaway: free book!

For my birthday this year, I’m giving you a free book! Well, I’m going to point you to the Kindle version, which the author is making free for download for five days starting today, and I’m personally going to give out some paper copies. Read on for details…

Long-time followers will know that one of my top recommended reads is Creepology. It’s not really about the kinds of overt violence that many of us envision when it comes to preparing ourselves for self defense, but rather the more subtle threats to our physical and emotional safety. The focus is on the titular creeps who make us uncomfortable in ways we have trouble articulating. In short order, the author gives us tools to describe why and how creeps are creepy, then ways in which to address the threats they present to our mental peace. Spoiler alert: it all has to do with boundaries, and the crossroads between implicit and explicit boundaries.

See, creeps sound annoying but not particularly dangerous. At the same time, how often has the first reaction to a person being outed as an attacker of some sort been “I knew they were kind of off”? In other words, how often does it come out that someone guilty of assault, rape, even murder, was quietly known as a creep? It’s true that some weird people are just weird. Plenty of folks – including some of us – are also socially awkward. The trick is in trying to figure out if someone is the harmless sort of creep, perhaps even the inadvertent creep, or if they’re the kind of creep who is testing the waters before they become intrusive like a stalker, violent like a murderer, or somewhere on the spectrum in between.

Having the ability to make that determination early on in your interaction with an individual might help you turn awkward into friendly, or it might help you head off entanglement with an abuser, a rapist, or some other threat to your mind or body. The very act of recognizing creeps and starting to take action against their creepiness can teach some of them how not to make you so uncomfortable because it’s true, they really didn’t mean to. As for the rest of them…some of them will see that you see them for who and what they are, and decide against making you one of their victims. Others will keep trying, but the same tools you can use to flush them out will also give you your first concrete defenses against them.

It’s win/win/win and you can read more in the ebook, which is free through November 7, the end of this weekend (affiliate link, but did I mention free?).

However, one of the reasons I really like the book is because it includes the kind of advice you can bookmark and go back to without needing to re-read for context. If you, like me, prefer to have your reference works in paper, then you can enter to win one of the three dead tree copies I will be giving away next Wednesday, November 10, 2021.

Here are the rules:
-You may enter for yourself or someone you know, by posting why you or they need a copy as a comment on this post on Facebook (on the On Her Own page, not a share) or on Instagram (@onherownlife).
-Winners will be chosen by random number or on my whim. My selections are final.
-Winners must be in the United States and yes, I will need shipping addresses for winners. Don’t enter if you aren’t comfortable disclosing your address or don’t know the address of the friend you’re nominating. If it helps, I’m not going to use the address for anything but shipping out the books.
-This giveaway is not affiliated with Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, A.R. Banks (the author of the book – you’ll note they changed their name), or anyone else.

Hi, I'm Annette.

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