Sunday, September 22, 2024: 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, 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.

In addition, now and again I will provide some of my fiction to read, for free, on this newsletter. Everything is available to anyone who subscribes, but I am always pleased when someone shows their appreciation for the newsletter by upgrading to paid.

Daily Diary, Day 1481: Reasons to Celebrate

Heat wave broke:

All week, the highs were low to mid 70s, with nights getting down to the 50s. Most days were cloudy the major part of the day, with light sprinkles one day, and when the sun did come out, it tended not to last but a few hours and not get very hot. Lovely fall weather. Good for walking all day, and the change in the weather has helped with getting the large wildfires in the state under control. Definitely a reason to celebrate.

The chirp deal was successful.

I wrote about this two weeks ago, so I thought I would report what the result was of the four-day promotional opportunity I was given by Chirp.com to be part of a new promotion they are testing they call Freebie Fridays. Their promotion ran from September 6 to the 10^th and over that time, in response to the single email they sent out on the sixth, Maids of Misfortune was downloaded for free by 3,853 people. At the same time, the next two books in my Victorian San Francisco Mystery series were discounted to 99 cents and 474 people bought Uneasy Spirits and 466 bought Bloody Lessons, and the revenue I received from the two of those books combined was $450. And my hope is that at some point when people have finished listening to these three books they will be prompted to either buy the other audiobooks, or even the ebooks.

Finished Editing:

This Thursday I finished editing the first draft of In Ddaera’s Embrace, the fifth and final book in my Caelestis series. In April of this year, I had been steadily working on writing this book since the previous August and had gotten to chapter 31 (with 95,965 words) in the first draft. Then, because of a series of injuries, particularly to my hands, (coinciding with the beginning of the bathroom remodel), I decided to take a “vacation” from writing. This was really the first break I had in 15 years from working as an indie author. That vacation ended mid-August, and since then I have been going back over that first draft, doing a first edit. One of my main goals was to do a significant cut in words, which I was successful in achieving (at the beginning of this week the manuscript was down to 80,000 words.) And I am pleased to say that since Thursday, I have stopped editing and started writing. I wasn’t entirely sure how this end of the book was going to play out, but right now it looks to me like I won’t need to write more than 2-3 more chapters to be done with a complete first draft. And that is the best reason of all for me to celebrate!

---

Brief check-in: Another cloudy morning, another hour and a half thorough cleaning, another walk where talked on phone so walk turned into 40 minutes, and another day to write. Here’s a group of amusing lawn ornaments.

If you enjoy my daily posts and would like to subscribe for free or become a patron (where you will get the pleasure of giving me the resources to spend more time writing and less time marketing) click the little button below. In addition, please do click on the heart so I know you’ve been to visit and/or share with your friends, and I always welcome comments! Thanks!