Please welcome our guest, Peggy Herring and have some fun with words. English is rife with words that can easily be confused with other words. For example: There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row. They were too close to the door to close it. The buck does funny things when the does are present. To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow. The wind was too strong to wind the sail. After a number of Novocain injections, my jaw got number. Upon seeing the tear in the painting, I shed a tear. I had to subject the subject to a series of tests. How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend? I spent last evening evening out a pile of dirt. Our melting pot language keeps growing, and readers must become more and more sophisticated to glean meaning from context. Many words have multiple definitions and even pronunciations. We communicate more and more by impersonal means like texting and email, which don’t allow for helpful cues like facial expression,...

One of the tried and true methods of marketing our books is the book signing, and some years ago a writer friend shared her successes with venues other than the bookstores. She did lots of small-town festivals, coffee-shops, and even senior centers.  I thought that was a good idea and had a mini-tour planned for the upper Midwest that year. I made arrangements to speak at the senior center where my mother lived, as well as the nursing home where my mother-in-law lived. The talk at the senior center went well. About 20 folks who had gathered in the community room for lunch all stayed to meet Evelyn's daughter who had written a book. Two days later I was scheduled to talk at the nursing home. When I had called to see if this was something the residents would enjoy, the activities director had assured me that there were lots of avid readers among the residents and they would love to meet an author. I was scheduled to follow the late-afternoon Bingo game when folks would al...