Happy Labor Day, everyone!

Today we celebrate workers and honor the sweat, sacrifice, and energy it takes to make this country great. As writers, I think we deserve to pat ourselves on the back, too, for all the countless hours we put into our craft.

Work is one of the things that defines us. In many ways, we identify ourselves by what we do—and that’s especially true for writers.

I grew up working poor. There were six boys in my family, which meant a lot of mouths to feed. My father sometimes worked two or three jobs just to pay the mortgage and put food on the table. And every once in a while, he made me his accomplice.

As the oldest of six boys, I was often recruited to help him make ends meet. He did it in some pretty unconventional ways.

For a while, my father decided to start a little side business. He’d get me up around four in the morning, and together we’d make a huge batch of meatballs and sauce in a giant steel pot. When they were finished, I’d wrap the meatball sandwiches in tinfoil and pack them into a cooler. Then Dad would head to a construction site and sell them to the workers for cash.

He never got a license. He never got a permit. He just went out and worked.

And worked me, too.

A few years later, Dad became a life insurance agent, cold-calling people and traveling all over trying to sell policies. He had lost his job as a barber after The Beatles made long hair fashionable. (He eventually returned to barbering and opened another shop.)

Because he was traveling so much, he taught me how to do his bookkeeping. I was about twelve years old and not exactly thrilled about sitting in a room crunching numbers for hours. But that’s what I did.

And if I was off by a few pennies, Dad made me do it again until the books balanced.

I mention all this because I think hard work comes naturally to writers.

We labor at our craft because we love it.

I’ve made some pretty good money during my career as a writer, but I’ve also experienced plenty of ups and downs. If you averaged out all the hours we writers put into our craft against the money we’ve made, I suspect many of us would be earning considerably less than minimum wage.

And yet we keep doing it.

We spend hours alone at our desks, typing, rewriting, deleting, starting over, and wondering if anyone will ever read what we’ve written. We do it because we love the work.

We’re independent. We’re small businesses. We’re entrepreneurs. And in our own little way, we’re part of the backbone of this country.

Our labor is born out of love.

They say, “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” But in our case—especially those of us who write crime—busy typing hands might be the devil’s workshop.

Think about all the readers we’ve entertained, frightened, moved, and made happy. Think about the stories we’ve created and the books that have become part of people’s lives. Think about the enormous canon of American literature that has made countless lives richer and more meaningful.

So, Labor Day is for writers, too.

Dear readers, when you raise a toast today, think of the writers who spent months or years at their desks creating the books you love.

And to all you writers out there: pat yourselves on the back. You’ve put in the hours. You’ve sacrificed. You’ve sweated over every word. You’ve probably questioned your sanity more than once.

But you kept going.

And that’s what labor—and writing—is all about.

Happy Labor Day, everyone!

Joe