Sunday, June 1, 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 1733s:
Looks like the end of each month is turning out to be a good time to do a celebratory TaDa! List post, with the primary celebration for the end of May being my continued progress on the new novella, Mr. Wong to the Rescue. The manuscript is now 26,000 words long, and I am hoping to finish this draft in the next two weeks. I do know that I will need to spend several weeks after that dealing with several major plot threads I need to weave into the story as currently written. But this is actually something to celebrate as well because I do love rewriting, seeing the basic story-line improve.
Also, I have every reason to continue to celebrate the fact that I am steadily increasing my stamina, as I have started increasing one of my walks a day from 30 to 40 minutes, as well as walking faster and integrating some mild inclines into the walk. While I don’t expect to get to where I was three years ago, I am pleased that I am making some decent progress towards at least getting part of the way there.
Edgar and Friends Report: Finally, I would like to celebrate how much fun it has been to write about the daddy-long legs I have called Edgar and his friends, seeing how this has amused so many of you. And I am glad to report this morning there has been much action.
When I first looked in the bathroom, I was initially sad not to find Edgar hanging from the spot near the right corner of the ceiling above the sink counter. He’d been there two days and not caught anything, so I guess I wasn’t surprised that he would move. But I was delighted to discover that he was now hanging from the ceiling near the wall that is on the left of the sink. Hoping he has more luck there. Here is a good shot of him.
About a half hour later, when I went back in the bathroom to dust that room (being careful not to upset Edgar), as I put the duster down near the magazine rack on the floor, there was a flurry of movement and I discovered I had disturbed one of Edgar’s smaller friends (or potential meals?). As I watched she climbed swiftly up the wall, and when I came back in a few minutes she was hanging in about the place Edgar had been hanging from last week. She is definitely smaller than Edgar. Anyway, much excitement, and I hope one of them catches some insect, and not each other!



What are you celebrating today?
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