Monday, June 16, 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 1748:

We’ve got summer! At least what passes for summer in June in San Diego (still having a bit of June gloom-in that there is misty and clouds in the morning, often followed by mist and clouds in the evening.) But at least for the past two days (and possibly for off and on over the next week) the sun is coming out early, burning away the mist, so it has been sunny and in 80s during the day. We even turned on the air conditioner yesterday.

So, over all, yesterday was quite pleasant. I did the cleaning in 4 separate thirty-minute increments, which didn’t hurt my feet. Did my chair Pilates before lunch and the recumbent bike before dinner, so I didn’t feel like a slug despite not walking. I also did some journal writing, some marketing tasks, and reading…I am now into the third book in Gibson’s third trilogy, called Zero History.

This book has a continuation of characters from the earlier two books…particularly from the second book, Spook Country. As I think I’ve said before, I really do like Gibson’s female characters. This is particularly true for the main female point of view characters, but I even enjoy his female minor characters. Their types range from kick-ass women to more quiet, cerebral women, but all are multi-faceted, intelligent, and sympathetic.

Doesn’t mean I don’t like his male characters, although most of the antagonists are men. In fact, I like the fact that the main male protagonists are very different from standard heroes and they differ considerably from each other. For example, in Spook Country, one of the main male point of view characters was a teenager with an extraordinary upbringing, and the other was a man who had gotten seriously addicted to valium. This second character is in Zero History, and is now sober, which as the book progresses, leads to a sort of rebirth.

Anyway, I think that looking back at what I have read of Gibson so far, I can say that it is definitely Gibson’s characters that are the main reason I have enjoyed his work so much, although the way he plays around with implications of new technology are still intriguing.

I expect I will spend a fair amount of the next couple of days reading, not writing, simply because there are so many other things going on…like the dental work tomorrow, then eye doctor’s appointment the next, then some lab tests the following day. That, plus the usual phone calls, my daily maintenance of the house and my body, should keep me pretty busy. And I will be trying to slowly get my walking back up to normal over the next week as well.

Another lovely couple of blossoms from last week.

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