Friday, November 3, 2023: Recommendations

Daily diary, Day 1159:

Brief check-in: Despite how busy my day was with other things, yesterday was a more successful writing day. This was, in part, because I copied some of my sentence outlines for this chapter into the text, and then moved some deleted scenes from the last book into the next chapter.  I know for a lot of writers, my detailed sentence outlines for each chapter are what they call a first rough draft, so I am trying this to see if it works for me this month. I know that the result is that I will mainly edit this material today, filling in transitions, etc. But it did feel good to make this kind of progress. Today, I don’t have any phone calls scheduled, and now that I have done some cleaning, put on laundry and taken my 40 minute walk, after I post this, I can get right to writing.

Now on to what I’ve been doing to entertain myself and can therefore recommend.

TV watching:

We finally finished rewatching all the old Lewis series, as well as finishing the French police procedural Candice, and the second season of Annika. And we watched all of River, which we really enjoyed. A heart-breaker (police officer investigating death of his partner-played by Unforgotten and Annika’s Nicola Walker.) I really recommend all of these shows. Not quite sure what we are going to do next. We did watch first episode of Morse. We have tried this before, as well as Endeavor and never quite got into either. But it is so much fun seeing a young Lewis, that maybe we will stick around at least for a season.

Also continuing to watch the second season of Abbot Elementary, a good show to watch right before bed.

Listening:

After finishing Adam Bradley’s most recent Flavia Deluce mystery, and I listened to the six season of the radio play, on which the Annika tv show is based. The narrator is Nicola Walker, each one is only 15 minutes-so short on actual plot, long on amusing glimpse of the character Annika. Here is the link.

And I am still listening to the podcast, A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs, finally up to later 1960s, currently hearing about the Doors, and this morning I started listening to Georgette Heyer’s the Devil’s Cub, one of my very favorites of hers.

Reading:

Mostly I continued reading my various substack newsletters and print magazine, doing a fairly good job of keeping up. I also continued reading the short stories in The Big Book of Cyberpunk before going to bed. But last night I decided to reread the CJ Cherryh novel that comes before her newest on that just came out. This is book 21 in her Foreigner series, and since I’ve already read, I don’t mind reading it chunks, and then I will really be ready to take a day off and read the new one, called Defiance. I really, really love this series, love the characters, the world, the plots. Rubbing my hands excitedly here at the idea of reading the new one. Maybe I will take Thanksgiving day off and read it!

Have a great weekend!

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In case you aren’t sure how you got here, I’m Mary Louisa Locke, the author of the USA Today best-selling Victorian San Francisco Mystery series and the Caelestis Science Fiction series. This is my newsletter reflecting on my life as an indie author trying to age gracefully. If you aren’t already subscribed but are interested in doing so, you can subscribe by clicking the little button below. If you enjoyed this post, please do click on the little heart and/or share with your friends, and I always welcome comments!