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, including my struggles to maintain a balanced life, what I listen to, read, and watch for entertainment, and occasional bits of information I’ve gleaned from doing the research for my novels.
In addition, now and again I will provide some of my fiction to read, for free, on this newsletter. Everything is available to anyone who subscribes, but I am always pleased when someone shows their appreciation for the newsletter by upgrading to paid.
Daily Diary, Day 1315:
Brief Check-in:
The good news is that I was able to work on the novel some this past week, the not so good news is that I’ve been having a bad arthritis flare-up that caused the middle finger of my left hand to start to be very painful yesterday. So, I took advil all day to see if I can’t get everything quieted back down. I had a good night, and I am holding off on more advil to see how the day goes. It was also pleasantly sunny yesterday and is predicted to go up into the low 70s for a couple of days, before the return of clouds and some rain showers next weekend.
As promised, I am going to start putting out my first short story, scene by scene, starting today, and will continue to do so Monday’s, Wednesday’s and Fridays.
Dandy Detects: A Victorian San Francisco Story
By M. Louisa Locke, copyright, 2010
Scene 1
Barbara Hewitt sat by the open window, drinking in the faint breeze that barely touched the flame of the candle sitting on the table in front of her. While it was nearly eleven at night, her attic bedroom refused to release the accumulated heat of the day. While it was only her second September in the city of San Francisco, she was already familiar with the odd habit the weather had of producing the first searing temperatures of summer just in time for the fall school term.
Today, her students at San Francisco Girls High had wilted under the requisite five layers of clothing that female modesty dictated, and she had noted that none of them had been willing to forgo the newly fashionable polonaise wool dresses that had clearly been specially tailored for the start of school. She smiled to herself as she thought of the dampness of their knitted brows as they struggled over their first English literature essays--essays that she was trying to finish grading by candlelight so that she could return them in the morning.
A raised voice and a sharp sound shattered her reverie, and she looked out the window into the illuminated back room on the top floor of the house across the alley. A lit oil lamp revealed in stark detail the tableau of a man and a woman and a dog. The shaggy black dog was clutched in the arms of the woman, who was sitting at an upright piano, her shining blonde head bowed. The wide-shouldered man loomed over her, his hands pressing down on the lid that covered the piano keys. The sound Barbara had heard probably came from the man slamming the lid down, since the soft notes of a Beethoven sonata had now been replaced by silence. But it just as well could have been the sound a man’s hand made when it came forcibly against the delicate skin of a woman’s face.
Barbara remembered another room, on another breathlessly hot night, and another furious man. But that room had also contained the increasingly frantic wails of a three-year-old boy, a sound that had driven her across time and space to end up in this attic in Mrs. Fuller's O'Farrell Street boarding house. She stood up and turned her back on the window, taking up the candle to move across the room to an adjoining alcove where her young son lay asleep. Jamie was now eight, and he slept in that deep, drugged state that healthy children effortlessly achieve. She briefly stroked his sweat-darkened short hair that the summer’s sun had burnished golden, and her heart turned over.
She then noticed that Dandy, Jamie's terrier, was sitting upright on the bed, staring alertly at her. The candlelight revealed the blaze of white on his chest and the white around his neck and front paws. The white patches looked so much like a starched white shirt against his black fur that Mrs. O'Rourke, the boarding house cook and housekeeper, had exclaimed, "Oh, Jamie, with that squashed-in face, if he doesn't look like a street tough trying to pass as a high-class gent. A dandy right enough, all dressed up in his fine evening clothes."
Dandy, ears erect on either side of his round forehead and slightly bulging eyes reflecting the candle glow, cocked his head and wrinkled his short muzzle to emit a soft, questioning, "Woof."
"Shush, Dandy," Barbara whispered. "Don't wake up Jamie. I am sure everything is all right.”
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I just enjoy reading about Dandy!