It’s funny what fright­ens us. This evening, crime fic­tion con­fer­ence Killer Nashville starts here in my city and runs through the week­end, and I’m on my first-ever author pan­els. Although I’m not quite shak­ing in my boots at the prospect, I am a lit­tle ner­vous. OK, more than a lit­tle. I’ve been pon­der­ing my chicken-hearted response. Sure, stud­ies have shown that most peo­ple fear pub­lic speak­ing more than death, but it’s not as though I’ll be alone up there. Sev­eral other authors are on each of my panels.

In my time, I’ve done some pretty daunt­ing things and lived to tell the tale. When USAID first sent me to the field to write about agency projects, I found myself in Bolivia’s infa­mous Cha­pare Val­ley, then one of the world’s major coca-producing regions, inter­view­ing farm­ers about the U.S. crop-substitution pro­gram. My con­trol offi­cer from the La Paz mis­sion (USAID field offices are called mis­sions), the head of the crop pro­gram, and two Sub­ur­bans full of Uzi-toting body­guards accom­pa­nied me, but I was the only female in the group.

In Egypt, I clam­bered all the way to the top of the Great Pyra­mid. Inside. Not an under­tak­ing for the claus­tro­pho­bic. I trav­eled to Guatemala and Sri Lanka when they had active rebel insur­gen­cies. And I ate a ham­burger in Venezuela, which some hours later did prove not to have been at all a good thing.

I’m not say­ing I wasn’t appre­hen­sive each time, but that wasn’t about to stop me. Each time, the task at hand fas­ci­nated me, and I was so com­pletely in flow that worry became a low back­ground hum. I’ve pre­pared for my Killer Nashville pan­els, and after all, they’re about the infor­ma­tion I’ll pro­vide, not about me. So, tomor­row morn­ing on my first panel, I’m hop­ing flow kicks in right away. After all, I couldn’t let fear stop me.