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 1332:
Yesterday, I sent out my monthly promotional newsletter as well as the daily newsletter that included the last scene of Dandy Detects, which I have been putting up scene by scene. As a reminder, if you want to read the whole short story, you can click on the tab Free Stories.
I found it interesting that having announced in the monthly newsletter about this, I got nine new sign-ups to the daily newsletter. I suspect these were people who were interested in checking out the free story.
I also spent time yesterday looking at the coming month and what sort of promotional activities to do (what audiobooks to discount, what future Chirp Featured deals I might do, etc.) I also had a scheduled phone call, did pilates twice, and edited a scene, although I only cut 26 words.
I have written that the house across the street from us recently sold, and while the young couple with baby haven’t moved in yet, it looks to me like workmen started doing something to the floors yesterday, and I just noticed they were back this morning. I am feeling very much the nosy neighbor as I watch the coming and going.
Today is the usual zoon noon meeting, and some prep for that. The knee is a mite better, but I certainly don’t feel it is up to being walked on. But I will try to keep doing the pilates, not quite the same level of exercise, but better than nothing.
As it was yesterday, today it is supposed to be cloudy and chilly. And whoops, just looked outside and it has started raining!!! First photo is from last evening, when a bit of blue sky finally emerged, and the second from this morning, when you can see sun on hillside, but dark clouds to the west, which have just rolled in to bring the light drizzle (which the weather ap says is only going to last an hour.) Fortunately, my husband had already done the long morning walk with our dog.
I hope that many of you have enjoyed reading or rereading Dandy Detects. I have decided to do the same thing with Madam Sibyl’s First Client. While this is actually the fourth short story I wrote, it is a prequel to the whole series. As I did with Dandy Detects, I will write a short piece talking about why I wrote this story that I will post on Monday. Then starting Wednesday, I will put up the seven scenes in the story itself three times a week, starting. But out of curiosity, could you all please answer the question below.
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I know I read Maids of Misfortune, and was hooked, but am not sure about the short story.
Nosy neighbors can be GOOD. My former landlady (whose house I now own) was looking out the kitchen window and noticed flames coming from the neighbor's house (across our lawn, alley and her backyard). Landlady called the fire department. They got to the house, roused the neighbor and put out the chimney fire....I heard no major damage.