Friday, February 23, 2024: Recommendations
Daily Diary, Day 1270:
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.
Brief check-in: As anticipated, only about 300 words written yesterday, and I didn’t have time for Pilates, although I got in my two full walks. I was pleased with the good level of response to the polls I included in the monthly promotional newsletter that came out yesterday. While the answers pretty much confirmed what I expected, I was very surprised that nearly 300 people took the time to answer the questions. In addition, for some reason this issue of the newsletter sent a good number of people over to subscribe to my daily newsletter. If you are one of these new subscribers, welcome!
I’m posting this early because beloved niece and her husband are coming over to visit the morning, so I am going to try to get a little written before then. And now on to what I’ve been doing to entertain myself these past two weeks:
TV watching:
My husband and I finished True Detective, quite liking the ending, and finished Monsieur Spade, which we again generally enjoyed. And, we really liked the finale of this new season of True Detective. Death and Other Details still has a good number of episodes to come, I think it is actually becoming more intriguing as it goes along. We also started watching the new season of Death in Paradise last night. And we are still enjoying Will Trent and I am glad to see there is another season for us to watch. We watched the last episode of season 3 of Astrid last night, and once again, left me a bit teary. This has definitely been my favorite new show this spring.. There is a season 4 but it doesn’t seem to be available yet. We also continued to rewatch Foyle’s War, completing the first season.
Looking at this list, it appears that except for rewatching the Big Bang Theory over dinner, the Graham Norton talk show (also over dinner) and then watching two short comedies, Fisk and
and Loudermilk, before bed, everything else we have watched in the past two weeks is some sort of mystery. I do wish we could find some new science fiction to watch. We don’t particularly enjoy the super hero shows, or horror-tinged shows, or fantasy, and my husband doesn’t seem to enjoy all the various Star Trek spin-offs. The last series we both enjoyed was Expanse, and before that, Firefly. Oh, we did enjoy Orphan Black, which I suppose is considered science fiction. So, I guess I am open to suggestions, although as you can see, we are pretty picky.
Listening
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was excited that the podcast that I listen to about Golden Age mysteries (Sheddunit.com) was doing a special episode about Dorothy Sayers’ Peter Wimsey mystery, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, since I just finished listening to the audiobook edition of that. I also listened to Case Histories, the first of the Jackson Brody mysteries by Kate Atkinson. I’ve read the book, seen the TV series (which I would recommend), but I still enjoyed listening to the audiobook, so I will listen to the rest of the books in the series. Currently, I am listening to Slow Horses by Nick Herron. Once again, I’ve enjoyed the tv series, but the book goes into even more detail, and so I think I will continue to listen to the rest this series as well.
For my podcasts, I am still listening to Shedunnit, Situation Normal, What Now? Talking Pictures, and Talk Easy, and mixing in music. If any of you have other podcasts you listen to and recommend, do put them in the comments.
Reading:
I am still reading my print magazines, my newsletters, and slowly getting through the illustrated The Secret Garden, so again, nothing new there. I have been very slowly reading short stories in the Cyber Punk genre at night.
I am consciously not letting myself start to read anything related to the research for the next mystery, or starting a full-length novel to read. Those will be the reward for getting this current work-in-progress done and out to beta readers1
Anything new any of you wish to recommend for the rest of us? If so, do put in the comments.
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