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So, school is back in next week and I’ve been at work already for a week. Amazing how energy-draining the day job can be. However, it’s the weekend now and the day I’ve been waiting for. Back to the novel!

Still, it makes me think . . . how much money does a person really need to live on? A friend who is a highly successful Tor author quite deliberately works during the day at a job that is NOT energy-draining. She is very careful with how she spends her money. And, I am continually amazed at how inexpensively my daughter, a university student, lives. True, when her room and board are free (she lives with me) it helps a lot. Still, she is dedicated to travel to certain cons and to maintain her motorcycle; but clothing, entertainment expenses — she doesn’t have a cell or any of the electronic devices to which most young people are tied — she very simply does without.

So, just got back from Denvention yesterday and my next con starts Friday, here in Calgary: Conversion. Actually, I will miss most of it because I’ll be to flying to Toronto for my father-in-law’s 80th birthday!! That will be fun. Of course, I will miss the short story judging which will be too bad because my daughter has an awesome story in it. However, I will be there Friday night for IFWA Players’ Armageddon Idol. last year, as you may know, I directed The Phantom of the Space Opera, which was a ton of fun and turned out really well (we got invited to Vulcan for their con, where we performed for Eugene Roddenberry, who suggested we might like to bring the show to Las Vegas). This year, though, I get to act: I am one of 3 judges of the singing competition between Heaven and Hell for all the souls at the end of the world. The judges sing a really funny song filked from “Why Can’t the English Learn to Speak” from the musical, My Fair Lady. Our song is called, “Why Can’t Celestials Learn to Sing?” If you’re in Calgary, you have to come to the show. It’s free as long as you are a member of the con.

Next weekend marks the 2007 Calgary Young Writers’ Conference. I’ll join approximately fifty other professionals connected with writing for young people, to offer sessions to youths aged ten to fourteen. Topics on writing fiction, non-fiction, poetry and drama as well as on illustration will be offered, as well as a keynote session by Deborah Ellis. A book store and author signings will also be included for the 1200 attendees.

A friend passed this on to me–watch! It’s good.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo1XFz0kac0&w=425&h=350]

Tangent Short Fiction Review had this to say:

“Paid in Full” by Susan Forest tells of two um…bug farmers on another world, and the giant gnats which, depending on their kind (Dark/good or White/bad), lay eggs which are nourished by the aphids and then sold, or are the rogue and deadly variety which appear at dark and kill everything they can in their feeding frenzy. One of the farmers has hit hard times and asks a favor of the other, who is forever repaying the former for a long ago debt. But now the debt has been repaid in full, and the first farmer is still extremely ungrateful (his friend has just saved his life). The story is a lesson in learning when to let go of a debt repaid when one learns that one is being taken advantage of. The gnat/aphid symbiosis, and how the eventual product is processed for profit is entertaining, as is the scene of the night terror a swarm of the deadly, blood-sucking White gnats wreaks on the terrified farmers.