Happy Valentine’s Day

Happy Valentine’s Day to all of you lovers, young and old, and especially to my own sweetheart, Miss Terry. I’ve said it a million times before and I’ll say it a million times again, I love you. There’s nothing better than being married to your best friend.

Do you have plans for Valentine’s Day? Are you going out for a romantic dinner, or maybe an evening spent dancing? We are old fuddy-duddies, so we’re just going to have a quiet dinner at home. We don’t need a special day to express our love for one another. We do it every hour of every day.

I spent much of yesterday working on my new Tinder Street book. As I’ve said before, books in this family saga take longer to write than either of my mystery series books because of all the research required for the different time periods the books cover. But since I love history and love learning new things about it, I enjoy it very much. This one is about the early years of the Great Depression, and I was diving into the timeline for those days.

Part of that research was on the Airmail Act of 1930, which changed the way in which the United States Post Office awarded mail contracts, putting an end to the days when fearless pilots in open-cockpit biplanes ferried the mail across the country and paving the way for the big airlines that carried not only mail and other cargo, but passengers as well. On the surface, this seems like progress, and it was. But as so often happens with progress, it came at a price. Due to favoritism and greed, the way it was done was far from fair, and a lot of hard-working small businessmen lost their livelihood in the process. Even with all of the research, I still managed to knock out about 5,000 words by the end of the day.

Never a slacker herself, Terry was busy doing all of the things she does every day to keep our home and our publishing business running smoothly. She also found time to make a loaf of multigrain rye hearth bread. Tell me that doesn’t look delicious.

I will be back at it again today, chronicling the lives of the people of Tinder Street as they make their way through the dark and dreary days after Wall Street fell. There’s a lot going on in this book already, and it certainly deserves the title of The Hard Years. But knowing the McNally family as I do, there will be some good times, too.

And finally, especially for Valentine’s Day, here’s a chuckle to start your day from the collection of funny signs we see in our travels and that our readers share with us.

Congratulations Gail Reitz, winner of our drawing for an audiobook of Gone The Next, the first book in my friend Ben Rehder’s Roy Ballard mystery series. Ben is one of my favorite authors, and if you aren’t a fan yet, you will be after reading any of his books.  We had 33 entries this time around. Stay tuned, a new contest starts soon. Note: Due to the high shipping cost of printed books and Amazon restrictions on e-books to foreign countries, only entries with US addresses and e-mail addresses are allowed.

Thought For The Day – Tell me and I may forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I will learn – Benjamin Franklin