Welcome, I’m Mary Louisa Locke, the author of the USA Today best-selling Victorian San Francisco Mystery series and the Caelestis Science Fiction series. In this daily newsletter, I reflect on my life as an indie author trying to age gracefully, including my struggles to maintain a balanced life, what I listen to, read, and watch for entertainment, and occasional bits of information I’ve gleaned from doing the research for my novels.
In addition, now and again I will provide some of my fiction to read, for free, on this newsletter. Everything is available to anyone who subscribes, but I am always pleased when someone shows their appreciation for the newsletter by upgrading to paid.
Daily Diary, , Day 1468:
When we got up this morning, despite having windows open all night, it had only cooled down to 79° or may be the better way to say is it once we open the windows and turned off the air conditioning last evening the temperature in the house went up to 79° and never got any cooler. In any event, we ended up turning the air conditioning on at 7:30 which is really early for us.
The peak temperature yesterday in our neighborhood was 97°, which was actually 5° higher than the peak the day before, and the backyard thermometer hit 100 degrees, which probably explains why it didn’t go down as much overnight. Currently the forecast is for High of 89 and tomorrow a high of 80 which is even cooler, and as I’ve mentioned by Wednesday, we are supposed to go into a cooling trend bringing us down to the low to mid-seventies for the peak. Definitely will be helpful over all, although unfortunately, there eight fires have broken out in the state in the past week, including a very large fire east of LA, which is spreading quickly. Fortunately, the two small fires in our own county have been swiftly contained. Even with cooling, with so much dry vegetation, we will definitely be in fire season for some time to come.
Needless to say, given the heat, I got in my first walk very early, and again, won’t be taking a second walk. But since I came down this morning and found a full-sized ant attack in the kitchen I need to be extra vigilant with sweeping up, keeping counters clean etc. This happens every year at this time, I have perfected my modes of attack, and I know it will pass as soon as the heat ebbs.
I do have a phone call scheduled for this afternoon, but otherwise…editing, editing, editing.
Last week, I edited nine chapters and ended up cutting nearly 6000 words. This is going to be helpful in keeping the final manuscript to a reasonable length because I know there are some upcoming sections where I need to add material to set the scene for the climax, but also because I still have a number of chapters to write once I am done editing the current incomplete draft. The other books in the series range between 86,000 and 106,000 words, and I really would be happy if I ended somewhere in that same range.
I ran into this very tiny lizard this morning, the second photo gives some perspective of how small it was, barely showing up on the curb. Final photo was of an odd light pattern on a driveway, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was causing it.
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UFO! Haha.
Now that's a great explanation!