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 1230:
Responses to Polls:
I have continued to be so pleased with the level of response to my polls in my daily newsletter. 75 people responded to the polls on Tuesday, and there is one on-going from yesterday that I really urge any of you who have read my Victorian San Francisco Mystery series to go and take (link here). These questions ask who your favorite characters in the mystery series are, which I am asking not just out of curiosity, but also because this will help me decide which continuing characters I might want to feature in future books! So far, there seem to be some clear winners, but there is another day and a half for people to respond…so go vote!
New bird-feeder:
My birthday is coming up and I got myself an early present of a new bird-feeder. The one my daughter got us last Christmas has been wonderful, but after a year of constant use, and the activities of the opossums, the plastic perch was broken and the lid that you had to take off to fill was getting harder and harder to open. So, I ordered one that is bigger, is a sturdy metal with lots of perches, and you don’t have to take a lid off to fill. It also is mesh, so when it rains the water doesn’t collect, although there is still a roof to shelter the birds.
We can’t tell if the opossums have been there yet, although one morning it was a little tilted, so something besides a bird must have been at it. I hope it is still accessible to the opossums. Anyway, the birds really like it. And the 5-8 small spice finches that would pile on the old feeder, often stepping on each other, now can pretty much all find a separate perch, or get right down into the feeder and eat at the same time! I will definitely work to get photos when it’s filled with birds, but at this point I don’t want to freak them out as they get used to the change! Anyway, I wanted to celebrate how much joy this purchase (under $10) is already bringing me!
Progress on the novel:
I would like to celebrate that my writing productivity went up and I averaged 613 words a day (200 more a day than last week.) I am particularly pleased by the fact that I figure out exactly how my protagonists are going to pull off the rescue mission that will be one of the key elements for the plot’s climax. Up until now, I only had a vague idea how this was going to happen.
Interestingly, with my first book, Maids of Misfortune, I wrote the climax chapters first as an assignment for a novel writing course I took in 1988. To a large degree that chapter was pretty still the same as originally written when I finally published the book in 2009! However, since then, I generally don’t have a detailed idea of a book’s climax until very near the end of the first draft. This makes the action scenes grow more organically from the rest of the story.
New addition to my exercise regime:
Last week, my daughter suggested that I might find the pranayama (breathing) yoga class she takes on zoom helpful in strengthening my core. She has been in a yoga practice with this center for several years and loves the leader. The class is m-w-f, at 6 in the morning! I am usually awake by 5:30, but I wasn’t sure how it would work to dress, have my morning pills (and something to eat since they need to be taken with food), and be ready to sign in at 6. But it’s all gone well, and I think my daughter is right, these breathing exercises, along with the chair Pilates I am doing, should continue to add to my core strength without any fear of any injury. In addition, with this added time in exercise, I averaged over two hours of exercise a day this past week. And it’s been fun to wave to my daughter on zoom, with a quick text hello at the end of each class.
So, ta da! these are my celebrations this week, what are yours?
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