Friday, June 20, 2025

Short stuff and historical newspaper snippet!

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 1752:

Edgar’s friends: So excited to see later yesterday morning that Miss Tiny, the Daddy Long Legs I described yesterday, had safely found a place to build a web behind the toilet…well out of the way and a place that I only dust occasionally! By this morning she had moved about a foot along baseboard, but unfortunately this put her more in my path, and by the time I came up to do regular sweeping and dusting she had disappeared again…I hope back to safety behind the toilet. No other sightings in the house, however.

While yesterday I didn’t get any writing done on the novella, I did do some minor research and editing. In addition, I did my two walks--and got up to 50 minutes total. I also hosted my noon zoom meeting and took a short after the meeting phone call. In the realm of marketing, I drafted and scheduled my monthly promotional newsletter that went out today. This newsletter is where I announce if there are any special discounts of my books going on, or if I’m participating in a promotion with other authors.

Today, I have the usual early morning routine of shower, breakfast, clean, walk, write and publish this post, but beyond scheduling and later putting away groceries, nothing else is scheduled. No phone calls, no special marketing tasks, and I hope this means a nice quiet day to work on the novella.

In doing the bit of research I did yesterday (looking for some descriptions of the weather for March 17, when the St. Patrick’s Day parade was held) I ran across the following little snippet in one paper that really tickled me. I was sorely tempted to go down a rabbit hole to see if I could find out any information about this company the newspaper was writing about! But I did think I would at least share this snippet with you! Here is the short article, in total.

Solar Heat: It is likely to produce a good deal of surprise among plodding people to find that a company is actually about to go to work on sunshine and appropriate it as a source of profit. It is likely that much can be done in this way. It is well that a bountiful supply of the raw material can be had every day in clear weather, and that no consolidation of rival companies can entirely monopolize the rays of the sun. We should soon have cold days, indeed, if this were possible. There is a very inviting field for inventors who wish to experiment with solar heat, and more may be done with it than the boldest imagination would now assent to. —San Francisco Examiner 3/17/83

I will try to refrain from looking into this further, but I do think as I finish this draft I will try to share other little snippets I find.

As for my daily dose of flowers, remember that odd bush of a neighbor’s that seemed to be producing both pink and yellow roses at the same time? Well, a new set of blooms just erupted. After the last time, when I ran into the neighbor, I asked about the bush and she said this bush had never done this before. She said when the first blossoms showed up, she looked to see if, somehow, two different bushes had gotten entwined together. But this wasn’t the explanation, and this time it is clearly blossoms from the same bush. So enjoy!

Everything I publish in this newsletter is available to anyone who subscribes, but I am always pleased when someone shows their appreciation for what I am writing by clicking the button below to upgrade to paid, thereby providing me more resources so I can spend more time writing my fiction and less time marketing. In addition, please do click on the heart so I know you’ve been to visit and/or share with your friends, and I always welcome comments! Thanks!