Friday May 30, 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 1731:

Edgar Report: Hasn’t moved from his spot, hanging upside down from the ceiling. I found this cute representation I thought I could use when I am doing an Edgar report!

I am pleased to say that I not only got slightly over 500 words written yesterday, unusual success for a Thursday, but I also added 2 slight inclines to my 40-minute walk in the morning, and did get in my second walk right before dinner. And the sun came out very briefly for that second walk, making it very pleasant.

This morning I’ve done yoga, cleaned, and ordered groceries. But, yesterday evening my left elbow started to be sore, and by this morning it was swollen. Definite bursitis, but what was upsetting is that it was in the OTHER elbow. I had already decided to take it easy (at least on the writing if not on the walking), but I might start this cutting back on writing today—since the main cause of bursitis is repetitive movement, so this could simply be the effect of all the typing I have been doing (sigh.) Anyway, I’ve started taking advil, put on the compression sleeve, and will start icing, and keep my fingers crossed it will resolve much more quickly than the right elbow did.

But no reason I can’t walk, and it is already sunny this morning, so once this is posted I will take off.

Thought it might be a good time to review what we have been watching on tv, in case any of you are trying to figure out what to watch.

We did watch the PBS, I, Jack Wright, mystery and we were enjoying it, until it ended…with no resolution and a definite cliff hanger. Boo hiss. But as I wrote earlier, we really enjoyed the PBS show Miss Austen.

But most nights we have been rewatching, on Britbox, the two seasons of Bletchley Circle with women who were part of the super-secret decoding group during WWII coming together to solve crimes in the post-war period. We finished the second season last night, and next, we will watch the spin off set in San Francisco. We have also been rewatching the Life on Mars series, also on Britbox, one of our favorites that we haven’t watched in at least a decade. It is about a British police officer in 2006 who is transported somehow to 1973. And last night we watched the first episode of Death Valley, a new police procedural set in Wales, with young female police officer helped by an elderly actor who used to play a detective on TV. Was not very deep but amusing, (not going to be another Vera) but more along the lines of an Agatha Raisin.

Our lighter short sit-com fare for watching over dinner has continued to be The Good Place. We aren’t sure we watched all the seasons because we don’t remember much about it, but I suspect we are enjoying it even more because of that. One of the upsides of aging memories!

Our before-bed show is still Mad About You. The early years are still missing, but we found season 6, and look to be able to get season 7, which I think is the last. It is very possible we never did watch those seasons, and it is holding up very well for a 1990s sitcom. Not sure if we will try to find the reboot from 2019.

Anyway, these shows are making for pleasant evenings and good night’s sleep.

I went a different route yesterday, and saw this gorgeous sunflower!

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