Friday, March 21, 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 1661:

I am really enjoying the fact that this week has been rather uneventful in terms of my personal life.

I wish I could say the same about what is going on in the nation. I did make a couple of phone calls to my elected representatives yesterday, thanking one for his work in resisting the actions of the current administration that are causing so much chaos and pain and politely telling the other how disappointed I am in his recent behavior as he clearly has started to back-pedal on the values he had said he believed in--for future political gain.

However, on a day-to day-basis, the week was quite pleasant. The days remained sunny, but with a delightful level of wind to keep them cool enough to enjoy walking. The length of time I can spend walking has been steadily increasing, without any negative effects on my joints, and I can tell I am walking more quickly. The rain we had the previous week has spurred a number of rose bushes to start showing buds (see below). Finally, I have made enough progress on developing the plot for the novel, that I do believe I will be ready to actually write next week.

Today, the wind has died down and it is supposed to get up into the high sixties (which from experience means mid-day in our neighborhood the low seventies), and the next ten days at least this will be the basic forecast (with occasional clouds.)

We are interested in seeing what the final episode of Severance is going to bring us tonight, although we suspect it will be a cliff-hanger as it was the end of the first season. Not my favorite way to end a season. We have started watching the original French version of High Potential, and even though, so far, the American version was very faithful to the French version, we are still enjoying them. We also watched the first episode of a new British mystery, Ludvig, with a main character who is very reminiscent of Monk (and frankly of every other show with a character whose autistic abilities make them uniquely suited to solve mysteries while having difficulty interacting with people). But there is a reason that tropes like this are used…and I rather liked the show.

Off to walk, do some more plotting, and one scheduled phone call, and a day where I am definitely going have gratitude for every joint and tendon that is going about its business with only mild signs of being cranky about still being asked to perform its duties after 75 years!

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