Latest Posts: "Gratitude" and "Every Tribe has a 'Bogeyman.'"

Click here to read author’s notes on the hurricane that starts Chapter 1 in A Good Place. Gratitude: Two stories about a wonderful word. Gratitude: It’s a word that rolls off the tongue.  To read more No matter where you go, every culture has bogeymen stories to scare their children. In the following scene from A Good Place,  Eliza Moore tells her children of the...

Excerpt from A Good Place

Landmark Longleaf Pine on Longville Gravel Pit Road. See below for more A good word:  “Compel” A short story from Hearts across the Water by Curt Iles Then there is the story of my friend Tom Dunville.  I’ve known Tom for seven years. He is a wonderful artist and the nicest guy I know… when he is sober.  Tom has fought a life long battle with alcohol.  Sometimes...

A special tree and a special couple

Thanksgiving for my parents, Clayton and Mary Iles This old beech tree still stands on our family land on the bank of Crooked Bayou.  It bears the initials of my mom and dad,  CI (Clayton Iles) and MP (Mary Plott.)  Today (November 25) is their 56th anniversary, so the tree pre-dates 1953. Even though my dad has been dead six years, the marriage my parents exhibited still impacts my life...

My favorite scene in "A Good Place"

A Good Place by Curt Iles Chapter 21 Author’s notes: Our narrator, twelve year old Mayo Moore, is on a log raft trip down the Calcasieu River.  He relates an incident on the River as they near the sawmills on Lake Charles. This scene is my current favorite.  Special thanks to my friend Joe Chaney for sharing a similar family story with me. They let their lead raft drift close to the...

Snake-popping: A Country Skill

"Sure enough she appeared with a four or five foot long chicken snake in her hand, grandpa hurriedly backing up as she came out the door."