Thursday May 29, 2025

Short stuff!

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 1730:

Edgar the daddy long legs is back!!! This morning I found him up in the corner above the sink counter (where several of the smaller daddy long legs had been last week.) Don’t know if this means he’s trying out this corner because I’d swept out the corner he was in last week, or because he’s wondering what attracted the smaller spiders. Anyway, I was delighted to see him return.

Today is my regular Thursday noon zoom meeting, which probably means my second walk will be in the afternoon, otherwise the day will be pretty much the same as the last few days. Yesterday stayed cloudy and chilly all day and it looks like today will be the same. I’ve cleaned, and as soon as I post this, I will do my first walk, and then I hope to have a couple of hours to write. I did get slightly over 500 words written yesterday, and so I am doing well at keeping slightly above my 500 word goal.

Yesterday I also spent some time on doing some marketing related tasks. I have a featured deal on Chirp coming in mid-June that is discounting the audiobook edition of the second boxed set of my Victorian San Francisco Mystery series. I needed to discount this edition in the other retailers (Spotify, Apple, and Barnes and Nobel) for the same time period, so when I announce the discount, a listener can get the book elsewhere if they don’t want to use Chirp. I also needed to do some research to see if it was worth discounting the first boxed set, the eight novel, Entangled Threads,and my collection of novellas on Chirp at the same time. It does look like the last time I did had a Chirp deal, a good number of people went on to buy other books in the series if they were discounted, so I did go ahead and do the work to discount them for the same period. All this took time. It is all about discoverability.

I will let you all know here, when the discounts are live, just in case you are interested. I have also started to think about contacting my cover designer to work on the cover of the novella I am currently writing. Again, all related to writing, but taking time away from the writing.

More roses today, although I have noticed that more and more of the rose bushes are either filled with browning blooms (so hard to find a new fresh blossom) or have already been pruned back. But the leaves on the plants are still nice and green, so maybe there will be a second round of blooms soon.

Everything I publish in this newsletter is available to anyone who subscribes, but I am always pleased when someone shows their appreciation for what I am writing by clicking the button below to upgrade to paid, thereby providing me more resources so I can spend more time writing my fiction and less time marketing. 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!