Friday, January 17, 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 1598:

The sun came in and out yesterday, but the temperature never made it above 64 degrees, and it looks like we might have more of the same today, but even chillier—high of 59. Sadly, no chance of rain for at least a week. However, everyone in San Diego is starting to breathe easier as the winds ease up.

As expected, I didn’t get any work on the novel done yesterday, but I should have large chunks of time today and over this weekend, despite scheduled phone calls each day. I have done some cleaning each day, trying to add bits of the chores I often relegate to the weekends as I go along. Today I have already, in addition to morning yoga, done basic cleaning downstairs and my weekly dust and clean upstairs. And, iced my elbow and my right foot where the tendonitis is, and now I have both legs raised as part of RICE (rest, ice, compression, elevation). I am being such a good, responsible person!

The work I am doing on the novel (in case you missed my announcement, I’ve tentatively entitled it Etched in Blood) has mostly been developing the new characters I am introducing. Once I’ve done this, then done a preliminary newspaper search using some of the key words I have been collecting, I hope to start to flesh out the basic mystery plot.

Writing this last sentence prompted me to go back and find a panel paper I wrote and an an author note at the end of one of my books where I wrote about where I discover my plots. Given that I am in the middle of this process, I think I will write this up, maybe even doing a two-part post discussing this process.

But for now, time to get to work, leaving you with photo of a sleeping Leeza enjoying the sun.

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