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 1258:
Brief check-in: Yesterday, two unexpected phone calls and a scheduled phone call ended up eating up a lot of my time, so I only got 413 words written. But today, with only one scheduled call in the late afternoon, I do hope to get more written. Now on to my celebrations for the week.
Celebrations:
The novel Hit the 80,000 word mark: When I started this novel, In Ddaera’s Embrace, my target was 80,000 words. I was a little worried that this would be hard to reach, since the events in this 5th book of the series had originally been planned to be in book 4, The Tides of Acerba. However, when this book got too long (finished book is 107,000 words) I decided that in order to do the plot points justice and feel good about concluding the series, I needed to write a fifth and final book.
This week I hit 83,000 words, and I probably have at least another 10,000 words to write in this first draft. Since I usually end up cutting words in the first rewrite, this means I can celebrate that even when I cut, the book will be end up a reasonable length for a science fiction novel.
I have really been enjoying my mixture of audiobooks and podcasts.
This week I experienced a lovely degree of synchronicity. One of my goals this year is to listen to all the Dorothy Sayers Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries in order. I just finished listening to The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (4th book in the Peter Wimsey series). I’ve reread books that have Harriet Vane in them multiple times, but I don’t remember particularly enjoying the ones where Wimsey is acting alone. However, I have been enjoying the audiobook versions of these book, and have been particularly interested in how Sayers have foreshadowed some of the themes he does develop in the Harriet Vane books. There for, I was delighted when listening to the latest episode of the Shedunnit podcast (which is all about the Golden Age mysteries) to learn that the next podcast was going to be all about The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. So I am celebrating the perfect timing of this podcast.
Weather:
I know, I know, I am getting repetitive about celebrating the weather. But, wow, I really enjoyed the variety in this week’s weather. There have been incredible clouds, a nice decent, steady rainfall one day, then a rather unusual couple days of intermittent showers (unlike the steady fog or grey days we call May Gray and June Gloom-and which seemed to trail start in April and last to July this past year. And starting yesterday we seem to be having what I see as Santa Ana weather, very sunny, quite cold at night. Only difference is that unlike the fall Santa Anas, it doesn’t get very warm during the day. Both the excitement of trying to dodge the showers and now the pleasant sunny but not hot days has made walking fun this week, a definite reason to celebrate.
So, ta da! these are my celebrations this week, what are yours?
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I too love weather in all its forms. Have you read The Book if Charlie, Wisdom from the Remarkable American life of a 109-Year-Old Man by David Bon Drehl? Presents history in an amazingly palatable manner!