Wednesday February 12, 2025

Ruminating.

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 1624:

Yesterday morning I was busy participating in the Valentine Facebook promotion being run by the History Mystery Chicks. It was fun to learn about the other authors who participated and connect briefly with those people who commented on my posts. I do hope some of them might go out and give my Victorian mystery series a try, but I did find the whole thing rather exhausting.

The rest of yesterday I spent getting caught up on reading, emails, and writing a long post for today. However, after doing the usual morning tasks and sitting down to complete this post, I just deleted most of it because it was just too depressing.

Instead, I decided to take the advice of one of my favorite authors, Kristine Kathryn Rusch in a post she published this week, Doing the Work Amid the Noise. She has been writing about both the difficulties and the importance of giving ourselves permission to turn entertainment as a respite from all the stress of current events. So, once this is posted, I am going to do a little light reading while I stay on the alert for two heavy boxes that are being delivered by Amazon and that I don’t want sitting out in the rain.

But then I will get back to working on plotting, because the second point that Rusch made was that not only did we all need to take the time to give ourselves a break, but that as writers, even if there is little we can do to solve the problems around us, our stories can offer others a place to find respite as well.

Rusch wrote in her piece that story telling was her job, but that it was also her salvation, writing, “Storytelling keeps me sane.”

I am also a story teller, and I know that from my childhood, story telling has been my salvation and my delight, whether telling myself stories, weaving the stories of the past into my lecturers as a history professor, or writing my historical and science fiction stories. Even my daily posts like this one give me a chance to turn my days into a story, stories that I hope provide some diversion to you in your own days.

This is also why I have been working on the plot new short story for Mr. Wong, even if it delays getting to the full-length novel. Because working on the short story means I can get to the actual writing more quickly (which gives me respite) and get it into your hands more quickly as well.

Meanwhile, I will continue to put up my short stories for free, and enjoy the rain that is supposed to continue off and on over the next three days. But first I will leave you with a lovely sunset from two days ago.

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!