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 1617:
This morning has been very busy, with first yoga, then off to the dentist for a cleaning, and now I want to get this up before I take a phone call, followed almost immediately by another phone call.
However, I do hope that I will have some time to continue to work after lunch, because I felt quite good about what I accomplished yesterday.
For about a week, off and on, I had been looking into a plot for a short story for Mr. Wong. I had an idea about a possible problem for him to solve, but there was one piece of information about California law that I needed before I could figure out if my idea would work. I kept reading articles, excerpt of books and master theses, and Wikipedia articles (and an occasional AI summary) and all I was getting was the same material, over and over, often looking like everyone was quoting each other.
But none of this research gave me the answer to my question. Until yesterday morning when my dogged approach paid off. Even better, what I discovered meant my possible plot device would actually work. I can’t be more specific at this point because I don’t want to gove any spoilers, but needless to say I felt triumphant!
I will let that idea germinate while I turn back to working on the full-length novel this afternoon.
The weather for the next week seems to be a mix of fog, clouds, sun, and slight chance of rain, but never very warm, although we have some sun with the mixed clouds today. But I rather like the variety.
Here is a couple of photos I took yesterday afternoon in the brief period of sunshine.


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I have only recently subscribed to your Daily Diversions and am greatly enjoying something in my inbox, besides news of the world, ads, and spam. Thank you.
I so enjoyed your Victorian novels and would love to see more of your stories set in the past. It makes me want to take a SF History class! Do you know about the Glen Park area? There is a person that is very involved with the library that often has history walks and talks specifically about the area.
Yesterday, I borrowed your first audio book in the Caelestis series. Do the narrators consult with you on pronunciation? Once I have listened, I will go back and read.
Thank you for shining your light.
Sandy Snider
sandraRsnider@gmail.com
Clouds are so beautiful. Joe and I used to see all kinds of animal shapes in the sky.