Wednesday, July 2, 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 1764:

Edgar and friends: The great news is Miss Teeny was suddenly active this morning, busy reweaving her web! However, Edgar was no longer visible. I had noticed yesterday that since he had made his web next to the door, every time I came into the bathroom, this would apparently disturb him and he would suddenly start to weave. I don’t know if he had actually hangered on the door, so he had to re-establish, or opening the door pushed some air onto the web, which meant he was checking out if he had caught anything. So I wasn’t surprised he’d moved, but I sort of hoped he would have moved to the other side of the magazine rack, which is where he had felt most comfortable in the past. But I couldn’t find him any where this morning. (Of course I realize that this might not actually be the original Edgar, but since he is of similar size and color…I am going to assume he is.)

Yesterday morning was busy, including a phone call right before lunch. But in the afternoon, I didn’t accomplish as much. I needed to get my husband’s help in making sure my work from the past six months was properly backed up. I do back everything on Dropbox, but with the mess that the recent administration has made of our national cyber security force protections, I wasn’t feeling comfortable with assuming there couldn’t be a disruption in service to Drop box. I had a second external backup system I could use but hadn’t been using since last fall. And, of course I had completely forgotten how it worked. Anyway, by the time that he got me sorted out, I wasn’t in the mood for writing, so continued to read—and not think about what Republicans in Congress were up to.

He also put up a second new feeder that had arrived. Rather freaked the birds out last evening, but this morning I can tell they are starting to explore it. We put it up side by side with the old. Will give it a few days to see if we want to keep both, keep the new one as a back-up for the old (which is losing paint), or just have the new one up. Meanwhile, in the time it has take me to write this, a whole lot of birds have suddenly arrived, some checking out the new, some sticking with the old.

Time to get in walk, and then I have a 9 am scheduled call. Nothing else planned except maybe…write.

More Yellow flowers!

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