Tuesday May 20, 2025

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 1721:

Yesterday it got up to 72 degrees, sunny, and generally quite pleasant for my two walks before lunch. Today, however, supposed to get up to 79 degrees, so I definitely needed to get my first walk in early, and perhaps do my second as soon as I am done with my scheduled 9 o’clock phone call.

I was glad to see that getting back to 2, thirty-minute walks caused no ankle problems yesterday, but I did order a replacement set of shoes, in case the tingling in my heel the past few days (that I associate with the beginning of plantar fasciitis) is because the shoes I have been wearing for five months are beginning to wear out in some fashion. The first time I got plantar fasciitis happened when I shifted to new shoe without the right support, so I thought, better safe than sorry.

Besides my two walk and my zoom call, yesterday I also got slightly over 300 words written yesterday, and hope that today, I will actually hit my 500 goal.

The weather is even prompting some of the cacti in the neighborhood to bloom. Lots of yards have cacti, but very few of them actually produce blooms, or if they do they are so fleeting that I miss them. So here are blooms from two different yards. Now off to walk.

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!