Saturday, June 7, 2025

Short stuff and author/reader musings.

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 1739:

Sorry to say, still no reappearance of Edgar or friends.

However, what did brighten what was a fairly routine day, characterized by persistent gray clouds, was a couple of baby finches at the feeder, which I suspect will be my moment of delight for tomorrow’s post.

I also had an unexpected but fun phone call with a new acquaintance, and I did finish the Gibson book, Pattern Recognition. I’m not so sure that this book by Gibson would really be classified as science fiction because it was set in the time in which it was written, (early 2000s) reacting to recent events like 9/11 or the fall of the Soviet Union. The cell phone finally had appeared, tablets and laptops. No more faxes!!! Really more of a mystery/thriller, but one that was heavy into technology, especially the emergence of on-line groups, and the use of email.

However, partly because I really liked the main female pov character, and because I wasn’t being taken out of the story by details, like those faxes, that undermined the expectations about how different the future would be, I really enjoyed the book tremendously. Anyway, on to the next book in what is called the Blue Ant series.

Last night we watched the movie The Room Next Door with Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton that was a well-done look at the serious topic of death as one friend who is dying asks another to be with her as she decides to take her own life. Insightful look at the issue of how we all react differently to question of death and life.

Today, another gray morning, and as usual for a Saturday, slightly more time cleaning. I may cut back on total walking time today since my heel began to be painful last night. But my bursitis in my left elbow is much better, so I am going to try not to take any advil. I have an early morning zoom call. I did make some progress on novella yesterday, and I hope to build on that today.

Another rose bloom showing the effects of the morning mist!

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