CE Wills

    Hey, everyone. It's hot in the green retreat the last few days. It's about 90 degrees here and 95 in the valley.     Today I want to talk about 'the country', which is a term that Americans use to describe the areas remote from big towns. Country singer Travis Tritt is one of my favorites, because of that great sounding guitar he has and also because I love the words to his songs. One of his songs is called Country Ain't Country  No More . It deals with the changes that overtake the areas where we live. All over America, and probably most of the world, people are moving into the rural areas, cutting down forests, building homes. In the song Travis bemoans the fact that the areas to hunt are being turned into strip malls and the old Sunday drive has turned into a chore. Wow, how long ago was that, when the family would go out and cruise around, for fun, just to look at stuff? Do you remember when deals were sealed with a handshake? It was just as s...

    Hey, everyone. The e-book industry is in its infancy and we are all feeling our way along a dark hallway. Hoping, of course, that it's a hallway and not a ballroom. (Walls are harder to find in the latter.)      I have my books on a bunch of sites. Most of them travel through Smashwords to get where they are going, with the exception of Amazon. The other day I went on Smashwords to check my stuff and I had a message that one of my short stories had 'failed an e-pub check'. This was a freebie named Scary Beast . Apple doesn't keep stuff on their site if it fails e-pub check, I guess, so it would be good if this could be resolved. Not a big deal, really, because the book was free, anyway.   I clicked on a link provided to try to resolve the issue and uploaded a copy of the story to the folks that approve these things. (An independent group) Of course, it's automated. It will refuse your manuscript and not give you a reason. So, then you start ...

     Hey, everyone. Another day is drawing to a close. I've been working a lot today. Part of the day I was at this house we are renovating in the valley. We worked hard and I have a stiff neck. When we returned to the green retreat we ate massive quantities of food. I grilled cheeseburgers and we ate them with a bunch of stuff that was 0 calories. Let's see if I can remember it all. I thought as long as I have the grill fired up, I'll throw a few hot dogs on there. Then I decided to throw a few hot wings on which we had left over from carry-out. Carley made a salad and we even had a couple of boiled eggs. The salad was particularly good. She loaded it up with cranberries, onions, chopped boiled eggs and other things like pieces of marshmallow. There was even some lettuce and traditional salad things. We had a couple of beers with our dinner and listened to music.     The hot shower felt good after all the dirty work. We took a nap and then got up t...

    Hey, everyone. This is an old logging road that crosses my property. In my book entitled Karina's Journal , Miller gets attacked by a mountain lion at a place inspired by this locale. Just over that little crest there is where my wife and I had the showdown with a real mountain lion. Trust me, I'd rather write about them than face them. Every time I walk by the area, I think about the aggressive kitty. I find it interesting that I wrote the story before we knew there were any mountain lions within 1000 miles of here. Wild, huh?     I did almost nothing today. I had lots of stuff I needed to do. That's okay, I'll try to get a bunch done tomorrow.      We have a game on our I-Pads called Fragger and it's a good game. We bought the game and tonight my wife had just beat a level and got this commercial urging her to download a game. She's played Fragger for a year, I guess. How is it that greed talks people into this kind of thing? I...

    Hey, everyone. Glad to be back with you tonight and thanks for reading the blog.     The good news is this: Baggage starts their new season of TV shows on June 6th. I'll look forward to that.     The Memorial Day weekend is zooming in fast. I haven't checked the movies that are opening but I do know that The Hangover 2 premiers. The first one was really funny but a bit crude in places, even for me. I was hoping for a blockbuster film this weekend but usually there are two weeks, at least, between the big films. I know that X-Men, First Class comes out a week from today, Friday. I'm looking forward to that and to Green Lantern, which comes out a couple of weeks after X-Men. When we were kids, reading these comics, who among us would have believed they'd go mainstream and be the subject of flicks that cost 150 million dollars to make? It looks like the guy playing Hal Jordan, (Green Lantern) is going to do a great job and be funny. ...

    I've often heard the old expression, "the school of hard knocks". In fact, I've been a student at that robust academy. What I didn't know until recently was that Louis Armstrong attended a franchise of that huge school, down in New Orleans.     Louis Armstrong's mother worked at a house of ill repute in New Orleans. In fact, Louis' first job was to use his bicycle to haul clean towels and linens to such establishments in that city.    Our tough early lives certainly have a part in forming our character, personality and traits both good and bad. It is easy to see how the entertainer coped well with playing to rowdy crowds.      One of my favorite songs to play on keyboard is What A Wonderful World.          I see trees of green          Red roses too          I see them bloom         For me and ...

    Hey, everyone. As you know, I'm an observer of animals and have always been fascinated by them. One thing that's neat about animals in general is their ability to surprise you.     A case in point is an old buddy of mine who has some baggage. He is a skunk, in the truest sense of the word. You know, with the white stripe down his back and the whole enchalada. Don't get me wrong, Bugs and I were never really close. In fact, I don't suppose you could call us friends. We just tolerated each other with a healthy respect for each others' capabilities. At the time I met Bugs, I was working a night-shift job at a plant that supplied river water to a power plant. The water was used to cool the steam which had just passed through the turbo-generator blades and turn it back into water for recycling.     Out at the river was a lonely place to work at night. On summer evenings I would sit out on the pump deck and enjoy the cool breeze and maybe wat...