Friday February 28, 2025
Short stuff!
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. Occasionally, I will also publish some of my shorter fiction in this newsletter to read for free.
Daily Diary, Day 1640:
Hard to believe that this is the last day of February, and that yesterday the temperature in our neighborhood hit 89 degrees!!!! So weird for this time of the year. But today it is very cloudy and it is only supposed to go up to 64, then steadily drop over the weekend, hitting a high of 56 on Monday with 70% chance of showers. Needless to say, the weather channel is mentioning this means March is coming in like a lion, for not just us, but much of the country.
I am looking forward to the cooling trend and rain, it just felt wrong yesterday to have it so warm. My second walk, before lunch, was too hot (or I was dressed completely inappropriately.)
Beside getting my morning exercise, the rest of yesterday was filled with a meeting, phone calls, and writing out my schedule of posts for March. In the evening, we finished watching the De Niro thriller, Zero Day. Not sure the plot was entirely understandable, and felt a few times as if they didn’t play fair with the clues, but it was fun to watch De Niro act. We also watched another episode of Reacher. But to lighten things up we have also been watching the UK Ghosts during dinner, which we have enjoyed, and after having watched Paul Reiser first on the Kaminsky Method, then Reboot, this past month, we decided to watch old episodes of Mad About You for our before bedtime watching. We couldn’t find seasons 1-3, so we are watching season 4. What we are not watching is the news. Even the little snippets we get from newspapers and newsletters are horrifying enough. So, I am finding myself singing, “This little light of Mine,” hoping that in my fiction, my newsletter, and my phone calls, I am injecting a little joy in both my own and others’ lives.
Today is another busy day. I’ve already done yoga, written a long email, worked on this newsletter post, and will be going to the clinic to get some blood drawn. Then a walk and some more work developing a promotion schedule for next month before lunch. I have a phone call after lunch, and I hope some more plotting. I really started making progress yesterday afternoon, so I want to pick up where I left off.
What I am not doing is going on Facebook or buying anything on-line.
Here is last night’s absolutely lovely sunset.
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Nature is the best artist!
I thought it was quite enough at 73 here today. Yesterday I went out in nothing but a t-shirt and jeans, which was nice. I'd have been too hot in anything more. Tomorrow is going to be 65 and the rain might return. It's been high overcast the last few days and soon to be completely so, but we do need the rain.
Today was the "don't buy anything anywhere" nationwide scheduled day, and since all I've needed this week was groceries, it wasn't hard. After my week full of errands, I was happy to sleep late and plan a weekend wrapped up and watching TV. I loved "Mad About You" as well. I haven't watched/read news in months and that's much better for my health.
I am going to have to keep patronizing Amazon for Kindle Books -- I mostly buy on deep sale -- but otherwise no. Luckily the cheaper grocery up on the corner is locally owned, and the "ethnic" ones aren't part of conglomerates.