Saturday, July 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 1774:

Edgar and friends: Edgar’s back! Junior is still up in his safe corner near the ceiling, but still no sign of Miss Teeny. However, in the past two days I have had 3 encounters with those small black spiders, called bold jumping spiders (size of dimes) that are common in San Diego. I never seem hanging out on webs, but instead they often give me an initial scare since generally I will be moving something (like a plate on the kitchen counter or a piece of paper on the table) and they will scoot out from under, startling me. Once I can see what kind of spider they are, and giggle at how the really do hop around, I will get them to climb onto something so I can take them outside, which I was able to do with all 3. Interestingly, yesterday a young man came to the door to try to sell me on their service to get rid of spiders and ants in the yard. This was the fourth time someone in the past month has tried to get me to sign up to this sort of service, none of them happy to take no from me, and I have to refrain from starting to tell them all about Edgar and his friends!

Yesterday was pretty routine. The cloudy morning ensured that my earliest walk was cool and pleasant, and while it eventually became sunny, it never got hot enough for a/c inside, nor too hot to enjoy my second walk before lunch.

The zoom call was a lot of fun, I do enjoy spending time with people who are younger (in this case someone who is 25 years younger than me.) Rather enjoy pretending that my age has actually given me special wisdom. I know being able to have friendships with younger people does help keep me young, while giving enormous gratitude for the fact at my age I am no longer wrestling with some of the decisions younger people have to make!

Yesterday, the technician to check out our heat pump came while I was on zoom, changed a filter, checked everything, and we are now good to go until it is time next fall to turn the furnace back on, when they will come out and service that part of the system.

I had a phone call after lunch, then read, did a little writing on the novella, then dinner. We wanted to finish a two part The Closer, so we didn’t want to try one of the various movies we have listed as possibilities, so we decided to start rewatching an old Elementary. I know we’ve rewatched it at least once before, but it was enjoyable, so I suspect that will start to be in rotation.

Today I am participating in an early co-writing zoom meeting that started at 7 am (that is where I am writing this post,) so I skipped cleaning and instead got in a quick 20 minute walk. Once I have posted this, I will use the rest of the time to work on the novella. Then I will clean, do some journaling, and take my second walk before lunch. Nothing scheduled for the afternoon, so may or may not write.

Today I was feeling in the mood for pink! Motivated in part by the cover reveal I am going to do tomorrow in this newsletter of the new cover for the novella I am working on, Mr. Wong to the Rescue!

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