Geez, can you believe it’s October already? The year is practically over! Christmas is just a Halloween away! It doesn’t seem possible.

To be fair to my sense of time, it doesn’t help that I’m in California at the moment. Back home we’d be settled into autumn, where the rain gets colder and the nights longer. People here say that the temperature has gone down, but I’m still happy in t-shirts so it doesn’t seem like it to me.

What it DOES mean though, is that…ho boy, October is a busy month for Tam. My next novel Every Other Weekend is out on October 23, the anthology I am in, Devil Take Me, is out on October 16, and GRL is just next week!

This is my first GRL, and I’m going to be there as a Featured Author, so it is all a little nerve-wracking. What if no-one speaks to me?! What if everyone wants to speak to me?! What if I melt down and hide under one of the tables? What if I get lost and miss all my scheduled things?

Some of these are more likely to happen than others.

However, I thought I’d share with you my ‘surviving a con’ checklist. I’ve had it for a few years and it covers the basic necessities.

1: Comfortable clothes. Seriously, unless you are one and down for a talk bring comfortable clothes to a convention. Shoes are the most important. I usually have my Doc’s, because nothing is more comfortable or likely to protect my tootsies in case someone drops a table on them, but they have to be flats, worn at least a dozen times, and secure (if you need to run somewhere in a hurry, you don’t want a shoe to fly off on the stairs).

2: Nibbles. Some people I know have little bars of bitter black chocolate that they suck appreciatively when they need a boost. I have a bag of sour worms. The choice is up to you, heck, fruit! If you’re at an all day thing, though, you will probably have some sort of slump and need a pick me up. Plus if you rock back to your room at midnight and there’s no food on the go? A nice bag of jelly beans can hit the spot.

3: Pack everything that you are meant to take with you a week before. You want to have time to remember that shirt/credit card reader/book that you absolutely promised someone you would bring with you. Or find the posters–that you could swear you’d packed up in the car–under your bed.

4: Check everything you packed up last week the night before you go. You will have probably forgotten something.

5: Set your alarm the morning you have to go. I overslept once and missed my flight to a one-day event. Simultaneously disappointed and mortified. It was waking up, babies do that.

6: Sometimes people are dicks. Sometimes people who are tired/over-excited come across as dicks. Sometimes YOU are a dick. In the last case, try and wind it back in. Otherwise try and give people the benefit of the doubt, they’re probably just frazzled and realised they forgot step 4 and their credit card reader is back in Wisconsin.

7: OH! I should probably have mentioned this earlier. Ignore people who tell you ‘there’s plenty of time’. If there’s anything you need to order or get done, do it early. Trust me, having something stuck under your bed for a few months is a lot less nerve-wracking than the thing you need being delivered the day after you leave the house. Oh, and never deliver it to somewhere if you’re not SURE you will have time to get it. The reason I mention the card reader is that I was at a convention where someone ordered the card reader at the last moment, and forgot to have it delivered to the company’s new address. It arrived on the Wednesday, the receptionist in the old office didn’t tell us until Friday, and the office closed at three thirty that day. On the dot…or actually fifteen minutes before, as it turned out. Nightmare. Learn from it!

8: Technological accoutrements always sound cool. You’re going to have a hot spot! You’ll do email sign ups via q-code readers for people. And, don’t get me wrong, that is all neat. However, something will go wrong. It always does. If it is a catastrophic something, have a mundane back up to cover your butt.

9: People complain. They do. Don’t make excuses, don’t make promises, just take note of what they said and you can access it later when you aren’t exhausted and have another panel to get to in ten minutes.

10: Do everything in moderation, particularly drink. Everyone wants to have a bit of fun, but if you’ve been running around all day you’re going to be tired, dehydrated, and a little manic. Be mindful when someone cracks open the whiskey.

11: Good make up wipes. Well, if you wear make-up (I am just going to come out and say right now that concealer is my friend). The last thing you’ll wanna do is spend an hour trying to get your eye-liner off on a flannel. Good make-up wipes can really help keep you a bit less…pasty looking.

12: It’s a convention. If something goes wrong…even if you’re an author or an organiser…it’s not the end of the world. Fix it if you can, but…no-one is going to lose an eye.