Being a fan at RT

Yesterday, I got a notice from the RT organizers that I still wasn't off the waitlist for the book signing on Saturday. I'm actually really okay with that. Last year, I got pulled off the waitlist at close to the last minute, which meant I was scrambling for promo, and I do not want to go through that again. In all honesty, if they let me know at any point before now and the convention that I've somehow made it off the list, I'll say no thank you. I want that Saturday off from being an author at the convention. On that day, I want to be a fangirl.

Like most authors, I was a reader first. I'm still a reader. Maybe not at the same voracious rate I used to devour books, but that's got as much to do with the fact that I'm also the mom of two very busy teenagers as it is about my writing. I sneak in pages of a book on my Kindle while I'm waiting to pick my son up from middle school, or when my daughter's softball practice runs long. I have a book to read before I go to bed, and another to read on days I bother to curl my hair. (Trust me. My hair takes forever to curl. I decided that was a solid twenty minutes I could use to get some reading in.)

In past years, I've had to sneak off for a couple minutes at a time if there was an author I wanted to see. It's a pain. Last year was an even bigger pain because authors were in two separate rooms. The one I was most passionate about seeing was one that had been introduced to me in a workshop earlier in the convention. I didn't get to see him until after we were all done, when I had to race to the other room and hope that he was still at his table. Luckily, he was, but damn, I do not want to go through that again.

Another plus to being a fangirl on that day? Less promo to worry about. That gives me more room for books to bring home. Much to my husband's chagrin, of course, but that's my problem to worry about, not his.

So a week or so before the convention, I'm going to go through the list and prepare who I want to see. I'm the anal type who creates the alphabetized list, complete with titles that interest me, so that nothing gets missed. Hopefully, everybody is in the same room this year. That certainly makes it easier for me. Books, credit card, list. Yep, that's all I need to be a happy fangirl.