Daily Diary, Day 1228:
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: Despite how busy yesterday was with meetings, and phone calls, I did get over 660 words written and all my walks in, but no Pilates. Today has started out with yoga, and an hour and an a half of cleaning and laundry, and now a phone appointment with finance planer (ie funds for the bathroom remodel.) Then…2 more phone calls today, so who knows how much writing!!
And now on to what I’ve been doing to entertain myself these past two weeks:
TV watching:
The only movies we watched (rewatched) were Eric Rhomer’s The Green Ray, one of his usual quiet movies following a young woman as she wanders from place to place. I’m not sure if we ever saw this one before, but thoroughly enjoyed it. Then, in contrast, we watched the action movie, Crimson Tide, with Denzil Washington and Gene Hackman, caught in a power struggle in a submarine. Enjoyed this one as well, for completely different reasons! And last night we watched the Holdovers, which I also liked, and again, completely different from the other two.
Finished watching this season of Shetland, Midsomer Murders, and Candice, and rewatching Katie and Koji, and we are almost done rewatching Life. There are some new shows starting next week. We are really looking forward to the 4th season of True Detective (having liked #1, and #3), especially because this one has Jodie Foster. There is also something coming called Monsieur Spade, which sounds good. And we thought we might soon follow up Crimson Tide with The Hunt for Red October, and then a similar movie on an airplane, called Airforce One.
Listening
I finished listening to Geogette Heyer’s Civil Contract, then read the cosy mystery by Donna Adrews, Six Geese a Laying, and I just finished Sense and Sensibility, and started listening to the first in the Ursula Le Guin, Earth and Seaseries.
Sadly, I finally got caught up with the episodes of the podcast, A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs. So, I went back and found some new episodes of the Shedunnit podcast about Golden Age detective fiction. But the reason I went through Sense and Sensibility so fast is that I started listening to it on my walks.
Reading:
I finally finished the holiday series of short stories that came out one a day, and now I am working on some short stories by Kris Rusch that were bonus reads for those of us who backed the holiday special. I have made some progress on The Secret Garden, but as anticipated, I am not even keeping up with my science magazines as I try to focus on writing.
Thank goodness for audiobooks, otherwise I really wouldn’t get in any recreational reading!
Anything new any of you wish to recommend for the rest of us? If so, do put in the comments
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Louisa: You must try to catch the British spy series, "Slow Horses", with Gary Oldman and Kristen Scott Thomas as leads. 3 Seasons so far.