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?