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.
Daily Diary, Day 1314:
Celebrations:
Today I am delighted to celebrate the second birthday of the Aging Author’s Daily Diversions newsletter (the anniversary was April 5.) As I’ve pointed out before, this daily post is a continuation of a daily Facebook post I had been doing since August 23 of 2020. That’s why the count of days that shows up at the top every post is already in the 1300s. I am enormously proud of this unbroken streak, and knowing at least some of you would notice if I missed a day, really does motivate me.
I am pleased that this past year I have seen growth in the number of subscribers. The first year, withing the first month had 215 subscribers (most of them had previously been following me on Facebook or my website blog). By the end of the first year, the number of subscribers had increased to 389, and I am assuming most of the growth continued to come from people who were still trickling over from Facebook or had found the sign-up at the back of my novels.
In the past year, the number of subscribers has continued to grow to 565 subscribers. There is constant churn (some adding, some leaving) but my impression is that those that sign on and then leave are people who found the newsletter through the mechanisms that substack provide for recommendations.
In short, they were probably not a good fit for my newsletter, particularly since I imagine getting an email daily would be annoying if you weren’t really invested in reading about my walks, health issues, and struggles to hit my word count!
But that means I am all the more delighted and thankful for those of you who have stuck around, open my newsletters, click the little heart, and comment. And, of course I really appreciate the 15 people who upgraded to paid subscriptions, gave me exactly the amount of money I wanted to spend on the BookBub featured deal of Maids of Misfortune this year. And this promotion exposed nearly 10,000 new readers to the series, and that tickles me pink!!
I started this daily diary on Facebook in the first year of the Covid pandemic, partially in response to the fact that my husband was out of town for a number of months, up in Washington state helping our daughter and grandsons out. I found that posting an account of what I was doing day-to-day, knowing that there were a good number of people who read these posts, made me feel less alone.
This is still very true today with this newsletter. I can say honestly, that given the way age and health issues have affected me this past year, doing this daily newsletter has become even more important to my feeling connected to a wider world. I get a daily boost in my spirits as I imagine the 40% of you who open up the emails up every day. And the support you give me certainly motivates me to keep writing!
So thanks, and I look forward to celebrating with you all next year!
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I would certainly miss your daily activities if you were to stop!
Keep up the good work. It brightens our day.