Monday, January 13, 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 1594:

Yesterday morning did not start out all that well. I’d finished breakfast, was sitting in my rocking chair, getting caught up on news on-line, nursing my bum ankle, my infected elbow, my bout of tendonitis--all on my right side…when our dog came bounding up to say hello and raked her paw against my left shin. The level of pain told me that--despite the layers of the thick sweatpants and thick compression socks covering my shin—her paw had most likely torn a large patch of skin back. Which it had, and blood was merrily oozing out of the triangle of flesh that had parted ways with the rest of the skin. While I knew what to do for it--because my skin is like tissue paper and easily tears so I am always having to fix one of these tears--I also knew a shin injury would be hard to heal.

I sobbed in with the vision of one more injury to deal with. Frankly, once my husband left to take Leeza for her morning walk, I literally howled in my anger and frustration, quite loudly. Felt quite cathartic.

So, for at least for the next couple weeks, I suspect my day will be filled with what I am doing right now… sitting with both legs raised, icing my right foot, with a heating pad on my elbow. And not attempting to do any exercise, because the advice for all my injuries and the infection includes rest and minimal exertion. I do intend to keep to the pranayama yoga, because sitting and breathing seems to be a reasonable activity. I also have been trying to sort of do gentle isometric exercises to keep the blood flowing. (Remember when isometric exercises—which you could do sitting at your office desk—was a “thing”?

Anyhow, once I did my howling, I continued on with my day, gathering my sales data and writing the Tada post, which raised my spirits considerably. (I had another good day of sales yesterday, which made me very happy, since this means I am definitely in the profit stage of the promotion.)

Then I spent most of the day working on the new novel (amazing how much time not cleaning or walking frees up!) I started working on some mini-biographies for some of the new characters I will be introducing, and I actually started to sketch out what is called the “inciting incident” that will set the plot going. All great fun. I plan to do more of the same today.

I did want something very light to watch on TV last evening, and Notting Hill showed up as we looked at options. I swear I hadn’t seen it in decades, couldn’t remember anything beyond that Julia Roberts was an actress, and there was a meet cute with Hugh Grant, a falling out, and a happy ever after. While not a great movie, I am a sucker for Robert’s smile and Grant’s floppy hair and self-deprecating expressions, so I was pleasantly diverted.

Another chill morning this morning (was 37 degrees when my husband went on first dog walk this morning), but very sunny, already up 10 degrees and supposed to get to 65 today and 70 tomorrow. Unfortunately, for people in LA and our anxiety here in San Diego, there is also supposed to be an uptick in Santa Ana winds.

Here is the interesting shadow of a palm tree on a wall in the sun, in one of my attempts last week to find alternative photos since the flowers are not yet willing to bloom in this chill weather.

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