Saturday January 13, 2024:

Who are your favorite Characters? Poll below!

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.

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Daily Diary, Day 1229:

Brief check in: Yesterday was another day with a lot of exercise, starting with 30 minutes of pranayama yoga (breathing exercises) at 6 in the morning and ending with a lovely walk before dinner. While I didn’t get more than 360 words written, I did completely sketch out the steps my protagonists are going to take in a couple of chapters to achieve the mission that has been driving the forward motion of the whole plot.

Questions, I have questions!

First, I don’t have a lot to say about the poll I did on Tuesday, because there weren’t a lot of surprises. For example, the vast majority (89%) of those of you who responded were fans of my historical mystery series, and a very small proportion (7%) were only fans of the science fiction series. However, I was very pleased that over a third (39%) of the respondents were fans of the science fiction series when I added this small group to those who liked both series.

What did surprise me a bit was that among 6% of the small group who came to my substack from a different route than through my fiction were attracted by the aging aspect alone, although 32% said that both aging and writing were topics that brought them to the newsletter. The largest group (44%) followed the newsletter because of the writing topic alone.

Once again, these polls only give me a glimpse at motivations, since the sample size is so small. Yet I do think that this 44% suggests that people who have discovered the newsletter without being fans of my books probably are other writers I have met on substack, or writers I have met in other contexts, or maybe just friends and family!

In this next set of questions below, I am shifting from trying to figure out who you all are. Instead, I would like to get some feedback on my characters in the mystery series, which means these poll questions are directed at those of you who had read at least some of these books.

I know from reviews and comments that fans of my Victorian San Francisco mystery series have favorites among the secondary characters, and one of the reasons I write the short stories and novellas are so that readers can enjoy spending more time with their favorites. As a result, I am curious to learn who your favorites are, particularly as I decide who gets to play a role in future books.

I am not going to list either Annie or Nate Dawson, because as my two main protagonists, I know they are going to show up in all subsequent books. Neither am I going to list Dandy, the Boston Terrier, because I am afraid he would win and I don’t need any encouragement to put him in future stories.

However, I am going to divide the rest of the characters into those who reside in the boardinghouse (not all, but some), and those who don’t. And unfortunately, because the polls are limited in the number of choices I can give, I am going to have to also divide the polls into two groups, so if you see a character isn’t on the first list, put none of the above and go on to the next list. (I hope this isn’t too confusing!)

This second list from outside the boardinghouse lists those characters either that show up in multiple stories or in the story they show up in have a significant role where you get their point of view. I tried to give a hint of who each character is, because I don’t expect you necessarily to remember every character’s name.

Finally, if there is a character from a book that is missing from these lists that you really want me to consider bringing back into future story, do tell me in the comments section!

I do hope that these two polls will get even more of you to respond to this than have responded before, because I am really curious about this!

Thanks so much to all of you who have taken these polls!

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