Remember the good old days when you navigated to an important website to get information, accessed your accounts, or even checked up on the latest gossip? In my opinion, those days are long gone.

Today, when you’re surfing the web, hopping from favorite site to site, how many of us can actually say it’s a relaxing experience? When you’re bombarded with several ad videos playing at once, animated advertisements popping out at you from everywhere, and a multitude of other nuisances, the first thing on your mind might be, Get me out of here!!!

In the old days, I used to love sitting in front of my laptop with a cup of coffee on a Saturday morning. It really was relaxing, going to my favorite sites and catching up on news and gossip. It was my chance to finally use my computer for something other than work. I don’t do that anymore because I find it annoying, sometimes stressful.

Unless you have a new laptop with cutting edge software, the web has become a hostile place. Rather than sailing smooth seas, navigation from site to site is filled with gale force winds, treacherous shoals, and 30 foot waves breaking over the deck. Yes, it’s because of all that junk—most of it in the form of ads—that causes these feelings in web surfers.

It slows down your computer. When you access a website, all that cutesy garbage is loaded into your laptop. Heaven help you if your machine happens to be an older model. Even if it’s not, do you really want all that invasive stuff attacking your computer; perhaps even staying memory resident long after you’ve left the site, spying on your activity and logging your preferences? Not me, nosiree.

What I don’t understand are the organizations that advertise on these websites. Do they visit and see how annoying these sites really are, and how a visitor to the site their ad is on may associate their bad experience with their product? If there are any metrics on this, I suggest their marketing departments take a long, hard look at them.

My blog here has ads on it. However, let it be known that I did not put those ads there. I have no control over that since this is a free blog. WordPress, the site that hosts my blog put those ads there, but even so, these are simple ads like we had in the old days. When it comes down to it, WordPress is great at not putting any invasive ads onto your blog, and I highly recommend them.

If I want a completely ad-free blog, all I have to do is take the paid option. The ads WordPress puts on my blog would be completely removed for a low, yearly fee. I plan on doing that soon, but first I wanted to make sure this blog was feasible and beneficial as an author’s blog. Now that I see it is, I will be taking the paid option very soon so you won’t see any ads at all.

When it comes down to it, I just want you to enjoy coming to my blog, getting any book release news you’re looking for without any hassles, have a laugh or two at my sometimes off the wall personal observations, and have an all-around good experience.

G.C. Riley

Hi friends. It’s a sunny South Florida day today. Exactly what you’d imagine when you think of the Sunshine State. As you can see by the picture, the ocean is as flat as glass and crystal clear. Just the way I like it.

So why am I not down there on the beach right now? Because I have work to do. Writing books takes a lot of time and effort, but for some reason, all my friends and family who live in the northeast think I’m sitting on the beach, sipping a margarita day-after-day. It’s actually funny, if you think about it.

People don’t realize you still have to work, even though you live in Florida. It’s not that bad, though. At least I really enjoy what I do, and I can always take a look out the window and see the people having fun down on the beach every time I take a break. 🙂

All kidding aside, I really enjoy living here. The night life is incredible. The restaurants are awesome and numerous. The tropical scenery is out of this world. And you get to meet all sorts of people from every corner of the country.

However, if you’re seriously considering moving down here, you need to take everything into consideration. Yes, even the cat-5 hurricanes that bear down on you every once-in-a-while.

G.C. Riley

Hello friends. As many of you know, I visit a dear friend of mine in Europe from time to time. Greece, to be exact. The food in Athens is incredible—cheap and tasty. One of my favorites is a Greek fast food known as souvlaki. It’s meat (pork or chicken), tomatoes, onions, smothered in a sauce known as tzatziki (yogurt and cucumber), all wrapped in a pita bread.

Souvlaki is Greece’s version of our burgers here in the United States. When you’re about to go out on a Friday night, you might stop someplace and get a souvlaki before experiencing the incredible nightlife of Athens. And you can find them anywhere, on practically any street corner.

So naturally, when I’m back here at home in South Florida, and I have a craving for souvlaki, there are two things I can do. Go out to a Greek restaurant, of which there are many here in the Miami area, or I can try making it myself. When I decide on the latter, it’s usually on the spur of the moment and I don’t have all the ingredients at hand.

The two ingredients that are an absolute must for making a good souvlaki are pita bread and tzatziki. Everything else is readily available in my refrigerator. Tzatziki is not a problem either. I love the creamy white sauce and usually have a container in my fridge I get from the grocery store. The pita bread is another story, however. I don’t usually buy it, but recently when the souvlaki craving has hit me, I’ve been forced to improvise.

If you’re really desperate, a good substitute for pita bread are tortillas, which is always available in my home. Now, I know what you’re thinking. Making souvlaki with tortillas instead of pita may seem like sacrilege. An act so heinous, it would make King Leonidas spin in his grave. (Which I’ve actually visited when I went to Sparta, by the way.)

However, I still maintain that tortilla souvlaki tastes great. Not exactly authentic, but yummy nevertheless. When I get the craving, that’s exactly what I use to make this delicious Greek food, but there is a funny twist to this story.

When I was in Greece a few months ago, my friend, her daughter, and I were going to stream a movie one night and decided to order some souvlaki before we settled in to watch. My friend’s daughter was doing the ordering and she asked if I wanted my souvlaki with pita or tortilla…

I almost fell off my chair. Who would have thought what I was doing back home had become chic in Greece. Apparently, a lot of health conscious Greeks are doing it too now since a tortilla is thinner, therefore less bread than a pita, and tastes great when used for a souvlaki. Just goes to show you, when it comes to good food, there shouldn’t be any limits.

G.C. Riley