Personal Appearances

I am writing this ahead of time, because I am packing up and getting ready to go out of town on Jan 27, 2024.

I will be attending the Sunshine State Book Festival in Gainsville, FL. For 7 hours (10 am to 5 pm), I and another of MoonPhazes’ authors, John Lars Shoberg, will be talking to potential customers, other authors, and other entrepreneurs about potentially working together in some way. It is free to attend this event. This will be my 2^nd year at this festival, and I have big hopes for it. But it is a little daunting to handle such an appearance on my own, that’s why this time, I’m taking John to help out. We will be at booths 163 and 164.

On February 17^th, 2024, we will have a booth at Syfy Bartow in downtown Bartow, FL. This free-to-attend street festival starts at 11 am and ends at 6 pm. I’m not sure where our booth will be located, but if you go there, keep your eyes open for us. I will be selling books and possibly some cosplay prosthetics. John is planning to go, but he may spend the day with the Klingons. Or possibly he’ll split the time between them and my booth.

We are also planning to be at Necronomicon in Tampa, FL, this fall. It was held in September in 2023, but I can’t find an updated website to get the dates for this’ year’s con. It’s also too early for me to start pestering them for an author’s table yet. I’ll try to keep you informed as the convention gets closer. John is thinking of having some Klingon activities there, and he’s looking for other Klingons to help out.

Right now, that’s all we’ve got scheduled for this year. We did hear that Bartow con was a hit last fall and is planning to do it again in 2024. If they do, I hope I can get a table to sell stuff. They were pretty crowded last year!

We go to conventions and book festivals to meet and talk to people who have read our books, and hopefully sell them more books. If you would like to check out our books, the (trade) paperbacks are available at MoonPhaze.com, and the ebooks are available at MoonPhazeBooks.com

Do You Hear it or Here it?

It’s surprising to me how often I receive a letter or advertisement in the mail with grammar or punctuation mistakes. I sometimes get a manuscript for editing with the same mistakes, so I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised. Not everybody who finds themselves writing some sort of missive managed to test out of Freshman English in college.

Having already tackled the subject of passive verbs, I decided to continue the trend by explaining a pair of homonyms. Homonyms are words that sound the same but have different meanings.

The two words I’m going to pick on today are here and hear. They sound the same, but they aren’t spelled the same and they can’t be used interchangeably.

Here means ‘this spot where I am,’ or ‘the area where I am’. It designates a location.

Hear is the act of perceiving sound by way of the ear. Sometimes a bass instrument or a really loud sound can be felt vibrating through your body, but that’s not hearing. If you truly can’t remember which is which, then notice and remember that the word that relies on ears has the word ‘ear’ in it.

I once received a manuscript that had the town crier shouting, “Here ye, here ye!” I tied my brain in knots trying to figure out if he was really instructing the townspeople to gather around him. It didn’t seem right to me, but maybe I was wrong. So I googled it, and found out that it was supposed to be “Hear ye, hear ye!” Which translates from Medieval English to “Listen you, listen you.” And of course, you can’t listen if you don’t have an ear, so the correct word to use is hear.

Memorize the meanings of these two words, and then substitute that meaning when you use one of them, to see if you used the correct one.

I will build a house here. = I will build a house in this spot. That makes sense.

I will build a house hear. = I will build a house by listening. That doesn’t make sense.

Did you here the doorbell? = Did you in this location the doorbell? No, that doesn’t make sense.

Did you hear the doorbell? = Did you perceive the doorbell? That does make sense.

I hope you enjoyed this mini-lesson. What was the worst use of either here or hear that you’ve noticed? 

Passive Verb? I Think Not

A while past, I asked a fellow author to swap ads in our newsletters for one of each other’s books. She suggested we read each other’s books to see if we were ‘compatible’ with each other’s audience.

So I read her book of short stories and although I didn’t find a lot of grammar or punctuation mistakes, I wasn’t impressed. Most of them seemed to be ‘slices of life’, not actual stories. She was writing a single scene that had no problem to solve, and therefore, had no resolution. I was carefully crafting a soft critique when she emailed me with the news that she didn’t feel my book was fitting for her audience.

Her reason? It had too many ‘passive verbs’ like ‘seemed’.

Years ago, I was told to avoid ‘seemed’ in one of my short stories because it was a passive verb. At that time, I decided to research exactly what was a passive verb so that I could avoid them. (Authors are always being told to ‘avoid passive verbs!’ without any explanation of what a passive verb is.)

A passive verb is when something is acted upon by someone or something.

Found artifacts are studied by archeologists. – Passive

Archeologists study artifacts that have been found. – Not Passive

 

Beach rocks are pounded into sand by recurring waves. - Passive

Recurring waves pound beach rocks into sand. – Not Passive

 

Those holsters were crafted by a novice leathersmith. – Passive

A novice leathersmith crafted those holsters. – Not Passive

 

Mary was kissed by Steve. – Passive

Steve kissed Mary. - Not Passive

 

Another way to think of it is that with an active verb, the subject does something. With a passive verb, the subject is acted upon. When searching for passive verbs, look for a ‘be’ verb (be, am, are, is, been, being, was, were) as part of the verb. In the above examples, we have are studied, are pounded, were crafted, and was kissed. A ‘be’ verb often (but not always) signals a passive verb. Does it have a ‘by’ phrase behind the verb?

Some writers attempt to ‘correct’ passive verbs by eliminating the ‘by’ phrase. It doesn’t work. “Mary was kissed.” is still a passive verb even if you don’t know who kissed her.

‘Seemed’ is not, by itself, a passive verb. “Everything seemed normal” is not a passive verb. How about “Mother seemed distraught by the news”? It’s got a ‘by’ phrase. But it doesn’t have a be verb, so frankly, I’m in a quandary, and would probably rewrite the sentence, possibly the entire scene.

Let’s take a closer look. ‘Mother’ is the subject, ‘seemed’ is the verb, ‘distraught’ is an adjective describing the subject, and ‘by the news’ is a phrase answering the question of why. The news made mother distraught, so the subject has been acted upon, making this a passive verb. That’s how my thinking goes. Does your thinking agree with mine?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this subject, as well as where you get your information on passive verbs.

Our Train Trip to KC - Part 3

 

In and Out of Chicago – Tuesday, Nov 14

I don’t think I got any sleep sitting in that chair. It wasn’t comfortable; it didn’t recline or rotate. The arm of the chair was so far from the window and wall that if you tried to prop a pillow on the armrest, the pillow would slowly slide down in the gap. Hubby didn’t have much better luck; he thought the rocking of the train was too unpredictable and jolting.

We got up about 5:40 AM and were soon off to the café car for breakfast. We were a little early and had to wait for the server to get there. While we were eating, we were the only ones there. Then Hubby remembered Chicago was in Central time zone, so he set his watch back. Now it said we were eating at 5:20 and had plenty of time before we got to Chicago at 8:45.

Back in our room, we watched daylight progress. I thought I saw frost on yards and cornfields but wasn’t sure. Mostly I saw naked trees, something you don’t see in Florida unless the tree is dead.

Hubby wanted to lay back down, but the bed had been put away. He stacked the boxes between the sofa and the sink, I moved back to the uncomfortable seat with the cpaps, and he lay down on the couch and dozed for another couple of hours. During that, the attendant took those stacked boxes downstairs and put them by the door so they were ready to go.

We arrived at the Chicago station on time. A Red Cap loaded our luggage in a cart and took us and another lady to the lounge. The lounge people notified us what train we were on and what time 2 be ready to board (2:20). We put our luggage into temporary storage and looked to see what they had to eat. Again, it was snacks, and not a lot of variety.

Hubby settled in to work on his novel, and I worked with pen and notebook. About noon, he decided he was too tired to work anymore, so he wandered off. I jumped onto that computer to work on the short I’d just started the day before we started this trip. Finally got the word count over 1K! It’s been slow going, but until that, I didn’t know where I was going with it. Should move much faster, now.

At 2, I started shutting down and packing things up. Hubby and I went to the temporary luggage storage and put away all the things we had gotten out, then started collecting our luggage just as they called over the PA for our group to go.

Another Red Cap took us to the train where our attendant greeted us. He had us leave our boxes on luggage storage shelves downstairs. When we got to our roomette, we found this one was even smaller than our first one! At least we wouldn’t have to sleep in it, because the train was due to arrive in KC at 10 PM.

Still, we hadn’t been sleeping well, and KC was still hours away. At first, Hub pulled out the laptop and tried to write, but the train was swaying and jolting so much it kept messing up his file, so he gave up and put that away. Then he went walk about for a while, and I made our dinner reservation for 5 o’clock, because we’d never really gotten anything for lunch.

Eventually, it was time to go for supper. We differed on what appetizers we got, but we both had steak (very good) and the cheesecake (also very good).

After dinner, Hubby tried to get some sleeping done. We had 3-4 hours before we had to get off. We turned off all the lights in our roomette and closed the curtains to the hallway, to make it as dark as possible. Hubby took a pillow and leaned into the corner of his seat, but he just could not doze off while sitting up.

The train was moving slowly. They announced we were behind a congestion of freight trains and could only move slowly until the tracks ahead cleared up. Sometime later, we began to move faster and they announced that due to the delay, we would get to KC about 10:42. About 9:45, we got too nervous for Hubby to try to sleep. This was not a major stop where everybody would get off, like DC or Chicago. This was a scheduled 42-minute stop that they were trying to cut down to 10 minutes. Finally, we headed to the door on the lower level so we’d ready to get off.

The train stopped, the attendant help us off with our luggage and flagged down a red cap for us. The red cap was picking up the checked luggage, too, and one of the suitcases he picked up was Hubby’s carry-on. We couldn’t claim it yet, but as least we knew it was there. Then the Red Cap got stopped to help an older man who could barely walk. After several minutes of looking, the train attendant decided the older man had lost his black piece of luggage, that it possibly got left in Chicago. I don’t know how they decided to handle that.

Then we were off to the Central Terminal. We helped the Red Caps unload their cart, claimed our piece of checked luggage and asked questions like, “Do you have the number for a taxi service?” and “Where should we wait for the taxi?”

Now having more luggage than hands to carry it, we made our way through the lobby and out the front door to a bench, where I tried to call Ztrip at 10:50. The line was no longer in service. I went back inside, asked the same guy, and he corrected the number he’d given me. Then he scrolled through his contacts and also gave me a number Yellow Cab.

I went outside and call Ztrip again. I got through and made arrangements. They never showed. The night was chilly. I called Yellow Cab about 11:10. The night guard let us into the vestibule to wait because it was cold. Nobody showed up to get us!

About midnight, we tried to open a door to get out and couldn’t. Hubby went inside to try to find somebody to let us out. What he found was a door that would let us out, so we carried everything over there and went back outside. I called Yellow Cab again. A Ztrip van showed up about 12:30 and asked if we were headed for Independence. Yes, but where was Yellow Cab? We decided to take this guy. As he drove us to our hotel, he told us that Ztrip and Yellow Cab were the same company. Who knew?

He drove us to our hotel. I registered, we got everything up to our room, set up our cpaps and fell into bed somewhere around 2.

Thus our trip by train was a mixed bag of adventures, not all of them due to Amtrak. I probably should have looked up taxi services in KC before we left Florida, so that's something to keep in mind.