Wednesday February 26, 2025

Making progress!

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 1638:

Yesterday, I finally felt like I was back on track, both in terms of exercise and writing. First of all, I did regular 30 min cleaning, 35 mins of walking, in 2 bits, and before dinner 7 mins on the bike. Not going to pretend I didn’t feel a bit achy at the end of the day, but so far hasn’t resulted in one of those flare ups that make it impossible to walk at all the next day (smile.)

We had another lovely sunny day, (hit 75 degrees mid-day) which made it feel like summer, and this added to the pleasure of the walks. The weather has been warming each day, although in the evening the fog rolls in. Sometimes it is still there in the morning, other times disappears. Tomorrow is supposed to be even warmer, in low 80s, but then a whole new weather system is coming, with the temperatures dropping down as low as high 50s on Monday with some showers!

This morning, in addition to yoga, regular cleaning, I’ve already done a 20 minute walk, albeit at a very slow pace. I do feel good about being able to alternate the walks, with the still very short time on the bike which is clearly at this point giving my heart a good short work out.

As for research, I had a lot of fun going through the 1883 newspapers, searching for how Easter was celebrated in US in general at this time, and San Francisco in particular. I still have a little more of this research to do, including looking at a youtube video I found at the end of the day about how the Chinese living in America in the 19^th century celebrated the festival of Qing Ming. A bit of a rabbit hole which I may or may not use, but my curiosity was prompted when one of the newspaper articles mentioned that the Jewish Passover festival, the Christian’s easter, and the Chinese festival all coincided to be on the same weekend.

Anyway, all this is getting me closer to figuring out the basic outline for the story. I also spent some time yesterday looking at the next 3 months, considering what promotional activities I wanted to do over this time period. All good stuff.

And here is a photo of the bank of fog one night, and the bunch of narcissus growing in another yard—that with my longer walks I was able to reach this morning. Also a reminder that I will be putting up the final scene in Beatrice Bests the Burglars in tomorrow’s newsletter!

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