Friday, December 1, 2023: Recommendations
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.
Daily Diary, Day 1186: Friday,
Brief check-in: Despite yesterday being a busy day, as most Thursdays are, I actually got over 1200 words written. For whatever reason, I have been doing a better job of concentrating and getting writing done, even when there hasn’t been a lot of time. Obviously, I hope I can maintain this, but I am about to start an entirely new chapter, which often slows things down. However, my word count today meant that at the end of November (National Novel Writing Month) I had written 20,916 words, and since my goal was 30,000 words, I can say at least I got 2/3 of the way to my goal.
And now on to what I’ve been doing to entertain myself these past two weeks:
TV watching:
First of all, we did a better job of finding something to watch on TV than the previous two weeks. We were still watching shows we had watched before, but at least they have been ones that both of us enjoyed more.
The first show was the Mentalist. In this show the protagonist is someone who made a living being a pretend clairvoyant until his wife and daughter were killed by a serial killer. He then joins a fictional police unit (California Bureau of Investigation) as a consultant. I don’t particularly like the episodes that are too heavily focused on his search for his family’s killer, but we do like the four other members of the police unit. In addition, the protagonist’s use of his ability to “read” people to figure things out, of course, resonates. For those of you who haven’t read my Victorian mysteries, my main protagonist, Annie, starts the series as a pretend clairvoyant in 1879 San Francisco (actually a pretty popular job for women in that city at that time) and she then uses some of those skills to investigate crimes.
The second show we have been watching is Life about a police detective who was framed for a murder and spent years in prison before being exonerated (and given a huge monetary settlement.) Very good chemistry between him and his partner, a young woman fighting her own demons, and his accountant (who was an inside trader who he met in prison.) While overall arc is him trying to find out who framed him, each episode is its own crime to solve. Again, I highly recommend.
We also watched the first episode of the new season of Shetland and liked the new character they introduced, and we are looking forward to new season of Midsomer Murders, and Slough Horses that are starting.
Listening
I am still listening to the podcast, A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs. Pretty soon I am going to get to where he is now recording, which will mean I need to find a different podcast to listen to, since he only is doing new episodes every couple of week. I also finished the audio book of Dick Francis’ second Sid Halley mystery, and I just completed listening to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It has been so long since I actually read that book, and I was blown away how close to the book, the BBC mini series (which I have watched repeatedly) was. This was so much fun listening to as an audiobook that, since the rest of Austen is on sale for $2.99 on Chirp, I bought the rest for future listening.
Reading:
I got behind in my magazine reading again, but I am trying to catch up. As I hoped, I did finish the newest C. J. Cherryh novel, Defiance, reading most of it on Thanksgiving, and I am now reading the holiday series of short stories that Kris Rusch puts together (this is the fifth year). She sends out one story a day between Thanksgiving and New Year, just perfect for reading before bedtime. So, I am set for the rest of the month!
And that’s about it in terms of entertainment. As usual, I would love any suggestions from you all.
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