Come… Share the Joy

Here it is… The page for From This Day Forward, book ten in the Operation Quickline series of romantic spy novels. And this one is really romantic. It’s about 300 pages long, and costs $15.99 ffor the paperback, and $3.99 for the ebook, at the below fine retailers.

From This Day Forward Synopsis

It’s The Big Day. Sid Hackbirn and Lisa Wycherly are getting married. But in the days and weeks before the wedding, the pair discover that there is something very strange going on with their work as ultra-top-secret counter-espionage agents. Courier drops are coming in without the usual processing. The bad guys tailing them are unusually persistent.

Then Sid and Lisa take off for their honeymoon only to find that the nice, relaxing vacation in England that they had planned will be anything but. They’re being trained for their new job and will be touring the European continent, instead. Skiing in Gstaad, Switzerland, touring Venice, Italy, doesn’t sound so bad, except that the two get sucked into a dangerous plot, with bad guys trying to kill them. Still, trying to figure out what the potential killers are planning might actually be easier than trying to figure out how to be married.

How I wrote From This Day Forward

As I have often pointed out, I wrote most of the Operation Quickline series in the early 1980s. In fact, while I finished that rough draft of From This Forward on January 31, 1984, the story takes place in March of 1986.

That’s important is because a lot happened in 1986. I needed to update my plot to reflect what I didn’t know was going to happen. Or maybe just didn’t pay attention to. Hey, I was producing and writing my master’s thesis at the same time and needed to relax.

Then Operation Quickline, itself, changed as I did the re-writes. I developed a more clear sense of how the system worked. And I’d gotten to know Sid and Lisa a lot better, too.

Oddly enough, much of the plot of From This Day Forward remained the same. I purposely set up a trip with a lot of stops to reflect Stopleak, book two in the series. That’s when Lisa and Sid fell in love with each other – never mind that they weren’t admitting it. Because getting married makes such a huge difference in a relationship, it made sense to reflect the other major change. Now, I lived in Belgium for eighteen months as a child, and the original manuscript contained a lot of my memories. I’ve been back to England and Belgium twice since I did the re-write, once during those pivotal 1980s. That helped a lot, too.

Where’s Nick?

You’ll note that Nick’s voice only shows up at the beginning and the end of the story. I made that choice consciously. The book focuses on Lisa and Sid’s relationship with each other and with their business as operatives. But I couldn’t leave Nick out entirely. So, his reflections bookend the story, and yep, it’s his big day, too. What a perfect set up.

Oh, and be aware – Chapter One is really, really long. Sorry about that. It’s broken up into some fun scenes of the stuff leading up to the big day. I did that in the original draft, too. That way I had an excuse to feature the wedding and some of the pre-wedding fun, while mixing in some good spy action so it didn’t get too boring. I love that a lot of this book looks back, and the title is about looking ahead.