CE Wills

    A few weeks ago I had something unusual happen here at my home in the woods. We had been having a cookout and everyone had gone home except for my son. He doesn't live here but he had hung around to chat a while. We were sitting on the deck, my son, my wife and I. A cool breeze had sprung up from the north and the sun had just gone down a few minutes earlier.     We heard a cry from the forest that sounded very much like a child who wanted his mother. There was really no words, just the cry. There was some discussion among us as to whether it was an animal or a child. I know that the hair stood up on the back of my neck. The sound continued on and on.     It bothered me that a child could be in the woods, possibly having wandered away from his home. There are no houses within miles of us in the direction the sound was coming from. I went to the bedroom and retrieved a gun and a flashlight and my son and I set off into the woods in sear...

It's dark here in the woods. I noticed one of our outside lights was out, so I went out to change it. I evidently disturbed a buck, because he started snorting. They show their displeasure by blowing air very forcefully through their nostrils. I couldn't see him because when it's dark in the woods it's really dark. I whistled at him and I could hear his snorting dying away in the distance. We went to the creek today and it was dry. The weather has been extremely hot and almost no rain has fallen for several months. I think that global warming is a reality. We have had some days when the temperature reached triple digits in the area. Here on the mountain we are normally five degrees cooler than the valley, however. When the creek drys up there is normally less wildlife about but just when you start missing them they'll show you they are still around. We were sitting on the deck the other evening and noticed a red fox about 50 feet out in the woods. He was just sitt...

Hey, everyone. I just got back from a trip to Jekyll Island, Ga. It's one of my favorite places and played a prominent role in my novel KGB Retirement Program . I've been going to Jekyll for several decades. This time at the island I indulged in one of my hobbies, which is tracking. I became interested in tracking after I moved to the woods and started observing the critters.  While at the beach I saw where a mouse had ran from his hole under a set of steps that had been built to cross a dune. He had come in and out several times to get food that the tourists had dropped. I studied the tracks of a man who was very overweight and walked with his feet turned outward to give him balance. He didn't do this consciously or because he wanted to. It just happens as a natural result of his condition. Another set of tracks revealed that the man who made them drug the toes of one foot at every step, except for the little toe. I'd know his track among many. A lady's prints s...

Recently I reflected on the E-book industry, the publishers of old and the dreams that reside in ordinary folks. It is said that the person without a dream is the saddest and the poorest of people. When I was in the 3rd, 4th and fifth grade I wanted to write. Every week I would take a sheet of notebook paper, fold it in half and fill it with stories about monsters and dinosaurs and adventures. I'd make a few copies by hand and pass them around school. Of course, in a poor rural area the spirit of the redneck despises anyone different or in the least creative. In fact, the area I grew up in was so tough you could get in a fight for wearing a clean shirt. Obviously, you were putting on airs. Most dreams were never spoken out loud and it was important to be practical. I remember one of the toughest days of my life was on a birthday when I realized that I'd work in a factory the rest of my life and die poor. That's the thing that most observers miss about the e-book industry...

Hey, y'all. I'm back at home tonight. Had a nice, if lengthy, trip. We used the northern route coming back which carved about 500 miles off the trip. We drove across Nebraska, my first visit to that state. It was rather pretty. I was struck by how few bugs and how low the humidity was compared with the southeast. As the elevation decreased after we left Wyoming and Colorado, my inner ear problems got better. We spent one night in Kansas City, which I am very familiar with, and I had something odd happen to me. I was standing outside a hotel and I had the strangest feeling, that I was in Nashville, Tennessee. It must have been that the area reminded me of a similar area in the volunteer state. It was quite pronounced, this feeling, and a little spooky. While I was in Denver I saw a couple of things I'm not used to. Firstly, I went through a tunnel and there was a machine there that monitored your exhaust for emissions. I don't know if violators were issued a ticket or n...

As a writer, anything might strike your interest and inspire a book.I remember being in Key West many years ago and meeting an old time sailor man on the street. He was such a neat character that he later inspired the character named Dunny in my book The Dan Tattoo. At other times a place or a happening may start a book. Recently, I had an experience in a hotel that cries out for a spy novel. I had talked to some people in an elevator. When I left the elevator one of the men tried to unobtrusively follow me and see which room I went into. I noticed it but I was not particularly alarmed. Sometime during the night a note was slid under my door. Intriguing? Yeah, I thought so too. I have another example from this current road trip I'm on. I was in a rest area in Arkansas and a young man came into the rest room and began to wash his left hand. He lathered it up with soap and scrubbed it until it made funny noises. Then he rinsed it with cold water for like a full minute. That's n...

Left Trinidad, Colorado, very early on Monday morning. It was a beautiful day and we drove through southern Colorado with a wonderful view of the mountains on our left as we headed north toward Denver. We saw a coyote run across the road in front of us and we saw some antelope grazing in a meadow with the spectacular, snow covered peaks as a background. When we reached Denver in the afternoon the traffic was intense and we blasted through town, past the Rockies massive stadium and on toward the north. We drove through Estes Park and into Rocky Mountain National Park. Very impressive and very steep with people driving like maniacs along the sides of sheer drops. I experienced some symptoms of altitude sickness as the elevation was about 11,000 feet. We stopped to rent a cottage and the price was a bit steep like the mountain behind it so we cruised through places like Boulder, where folks with dough walk the stores. I didn't see anyone famous but I was never a groupie anyway. Af...