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 1297:
Yesterday was a good day in that I continued to experiment with doing ordinary tasks without the splint on, finding that the only thing that really causes me trouble is still the time I spent scrolling or editing on the computer, even with the splint on (in part because other joints are complaining when I am suing them more.)
However, I had no idea what pleasure I would find in flossing and doing the dishes without the splint, and finding I could cut up all the vegetables for my salad with the splint on to no ill effect.
The swelling in the eye lid is continuing to go down, but now it just looks like a normal, small stye (sigh.) I hope this means it is simply going to take more time to resolve completely, rather than it will need it to be drained again.
On the totally good news front, by the end of the day, yesterday the BookBub promotion of Maids of Misfortune had gotten me just under 6,000 downloads, and the rank of #13 in the free Kindle store, with brisk sales of the next couple of books in the series. Today there have continued to be downloads, so the overall ranking on Kindle still is in the top 20.
Yesterday afternoon remained sunny and warm, and I spent some time sitting outside, reading. Several days ago, I decided to reread the first 4 books in the Caelestis series (which I hadn’t read in about 3 years) to check things like character descriptions so that when I did start the main edit I could insure continuity. This has proved to be very productive. I’ve come up with all sorts of details that I note down through dictation on my phone, details I want to put into the final draft as I do my first major edit. A lot of the details are very simple like a character’s height, or the color of a tea pot, but some of it is more crucial in terms of plot themes that I brought up in earlier books that I may want to highlight in this conclusion to the series. And, psychologically it feels better to be making at least this kind of progress, which will help me not jump into trying to finish too quickly, since even doing editing on this post is causing some discomfort.
So, I am going to stop and post this. As many as you pointed out, the picture yesterday was not of lilacs, but of wisteria, which I’m sure I knew once, but is one of those memories that I’m not holding onto at all anymore. However, these two photos I know are definitely of roses. Hope you enjoy.
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!
So glad you are seeing improvement in eye and hand!
Wonderful news on Maids of Fortune! Also happy for the health improvement!