Sunday, January 26, 2025:Ta da! List

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 1607:

Thanks to everyone for all the birthday wishes. I had a nice quiet day, a long phone call with one of my oldest friends, and I ate an extra couple of pieces of dark chocolate and some of the almonds that friends sent me along with yummy cheeses.

Celebrating:

It’s raining: Started with a few showers in the early morning, with enough to make the streets wet this morning, and it just started coming down again, but more like a vertical mist. Whoops, as I wrote that sentence it stopped! But that is good because the last thing we or the people in LA need is a downpour and flooding. But it is supposed to have some more showers off and on today and tomorrow morning, definitely a reason to celebrate if this means the end of fire season.

The improvement in the state of my health:

Two weeks ago, when I was writing my last TaDa! post I was not at a good place in terms of my aches and pains (in tendons and joints). I was still grappling with the splint on my left hand, arthritis and tendonitis in my right foot, a swollen right elbow, and a difficult wound on my left shin. And, of course, all this came just as I had finally gotten back up to a few days of feeling good enough to put in 60 minutes of walking, which is so crucial for blood sugar control and general emotional well-being. I was very aware that a year ago I was routinely walking sixty minutes a day, often supplemented with yoga or chair pilates, but that this all fell apart in February of that last year, and I have never achieved that level of activity since. Very depressing.

But today, I am feeling more hopeful.

First of all, the wound on my shin has finally begun to heal, it no longer bleeds, only needs one band-aid, and this means I can take my daily morning shower (heaven!) And, while it appears the tendon in the left hand is not working any better after splinting for nearly 2 months, I have been able to take it off, which makes life so much easier.

I confess I am actually relieved to know that going forward there isn’t really anything I can do for either hand beyond what I had been doing (arthritis gloves and occasional use of commercial splints when doing a lot of typing or heavy cleaning.) This is very manageable, and I at this point I feel no need to pursue surgery.

In addition, neither the plantar fasciitis or the arthritic ankle are playing up right now, and finally, having found a compression sleeve that isn’t too uncomfortable, the swelling in my elbow has gone down considerably.

Consequently, I have very carefully started cleaning and taking short walks, having done 30 minutes of walking yesterday (and hope to do so again in between showers.)

Only baby steps, but at least in the right direction, and a definite reason to celebrate!

The continued success of the BookBub promotion:

Over all of 2024, I only had 2829 downloads Between Mountain and Sea, the free first book in the Caelestis Series, selling slightly under 400 copies of all the rest of the books in the series.

This month, Between Mountain and Sea has had 13,791 downloads, and I have sold 451 of the ebooks in the rest of the series! This has meant a steady increase in the sales (and positive reviews) of Where the Glassflowers Grow, the final book in the series that I published less than two months ago.

Certainly, another reason to celebrate!

What are you celebrating today?

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