OK, here's yesterday's chapter

Early up, near-empty run to Chatton, refuel, and off again this time with a load of passengers. That puts a cramp in Roth's plan for "detecting" along the line.

New installment here

Cumulative word count: 11452

This would have been posted three hours ago, but Verizon's internet service was malfunctioning at home. Hopefully they'll get their act together before the day's out.

Don't look now but...

The railroad detective is a stinker. He sees everything in black and white. Roth prepares to deal with him anyway.

Next installment is here

Cumulative word count: 13563

Got home in the dark, and I do mean dark. Gary forgot to leave any lights on when he went off to school. I had a hard time finding the doorknob, let alone the keyhole. And it was only 5:25 pm. Going into the darkest time of the year, obviously. Had to use the floodlights on the barns to see while I finished up outdoor chores and put the animals to bed with their suppers. First time for that since last March.

It was a productive day for writing, though. I finished one chapter early this morning, before work, and then got over a thousand words down on my 30 minute lunch break, and finished up the second chapter just a few minutes ago. Just about all the pieces are in place, so you can start to see about figuring out the mystery before the characters do. I've been dropping lots of clues around. XD

The day's mail was mostly junk ads, but included a letter from Chase Bank trying to get me to open a savings account. They've sent one of these every other week for a while now. It starts by promising you a $100 "bonus" for opening a new savings account. If you read on, you find out that the opening deposit must be at least $10K and the funds must remain on deposit for at least 90 days before they will make good on the promised $100. Also, if you withdraw any of the initial deposit before 90 days are up, they will charge you $25 instead of paying out the $100. I had to turn the letter over and hunt through the fine print on the back to find out what the interest rate being offered on the new account would come to. Get ready for this. The APR is a grandiose and generous 0.01% No, that's not one percent, it is one one-hundredth of a percent. My credit union statement came yesterday, so I pulled it out to check. Simple savings there are earning a minimum of 0.25%, and my certificates of deposit are earning between 1.25 and 1.6% APR. Even that is pretty poor in my opinion, but compared to 0.01% it is largesse. The difference? A credit union doesn't give out multi-million dollar bonuses to its executives, for one thing. For another, its 'shareholders' are the depositors themselves, so no dividends are paid out to parasitic stockholders.

Time to get your money away from the robber barons and invest it in an honest institution, folks. In case you didn't do the math up there, your $10K deposit would earn $1 in interest after a year at that rate. Inflation, despite the lies from the Federal Reserve about it, is running about 4% or more a year at the moment. So the money you deposit into a bank savings account will shrink in buying power at a much faster rate than it will grow by earning interest.

Time for pie and bed, I think.