Monday, May 12, 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 1713:

Yesterday was another hot day, but as clouds rolled in, it also got humid. I stuck my nose outside around 7 am (to sweep the front sidewalk since our olive tree’s blooms are tiny and everywhere—and being tracked inside). Anyway, one minute sweeping in the hot sun, and I decided that I didn’t need to walk yesterday. I’d hd a great week in terms of walking, even doing a couple of 40 minute walks, so a day of rest seemed sensible.

Saturday the temp was 25 degrees hotter than average for May, hitting 86 degrees in our neighborhood, and today, while it has already hit 75, I think the clouds are going to keep if from getting to the 80s. But, the temperatures are supposed to br back down to the sixties today and for the next week.

But, never fear I got lots of exercise yesterday, with cleaning. I hadn’t done any mopping since the rains last weekend, so everything really needed to be dusted, dry mopped, and then wet mopped. Consequently, I did nearly two hours of cleaning in four different intervals, sitting and reading all the Mother’s Day posts in between each bout of cleaning (and listening to Black Moth, the first Regency romance Georgette Heyer ever wrote.) Strikes me this is following in my pattern this month of reading the early works of favorite authors, recognizing why I fell in love with them, but also why I stuck with them because they steadily improved. Black Moth has the components of the rest of Heyer’s romances, but also feels immature and unfocused. At this point in the book (chapter 6) I haven’t yet started to identify with any of the characters…definitely not a problem with her later work.

While apart from cleaning and reading, my mother’s day was quiet. We’d had a lovely chat with my daughter on Saturday, and she is going to call again today, but yesterday she was busy being a mother herself!

Today, after publishing this I will take my first walk, then Rio the border collie comes to play, then the phone call with my daughter, then maybe a little writing or reading, then second walk and lunch. I do have a later afternoon phone call, but I should be able to get back to writing in between lunch and phone call. While I took 2 days off this weekend in terms of the novel, for the 5 days I wrote, I did average 527 words.

Meanwhile, the couple of days of very hot weather has started to turn some of the roses brown, so I am glad I took lots of photos last week when they all seemed to be in their prime.

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