Mary Louisa Locke's Monthly Newsletter

January 2025

Dear Reader,

I’m very pleased with the sales of Where the Glassflowers Grow, the fifth (and final) book in my Caelestis series, I have sold nearly 150 copies so far, and it is racking up 5 star reviews.

Another good sign for the health of this series, which is dear to my heart, is that I just completed a successful promotion of the first book in the series, Between Mountain and Sea, which at least for the next month or so will remain free. In just this past week, there have been well over 11,000 downloads of the book and that means that lots of new potential fans of the series. I want to thank all of you who have taken the time to post ratings and reviews for my books. I know that seeing so many stars and reviews for Between Mountain and Sea did a lot to convince people to give it a try.

I must say, health-wise, 2025 seems to be more of the same—minor injuries and infections—none life-threatening, all annoying. However, the upside is that because a couple of the injuries are keeping my off my feet I have more time to work on the next full-length historical mystery novel.

This next book in the Victorian San Francisco mystery series is tentatively entitled Etched in Blood, and it will feature western women artists in the 19th century, particularly those who made their living creating illustrations for the books, newspapers, and magazines of the time. I am slowing moving from background research to coming up with the characters and the plot, and I can’t be more excited.

Photo by The Cleveland Museum of Art on Unsplash

To make sure I have details from previous books down, so as to avoid those pesky continuity issues like changing a character’s eye color, I have been systematically listening to the audiobook editions of the series. This reminded me of how cozy it is to hear someone read the books to me, so I decided to restart raffling off Spotify free codes for the audiobooks (see below).

Finally, I finished putting up the Christmas story Tilly Tracks a Thief on my daily newsletter, An Aging Author’s Daily Diversions, and I have started doing the same thing with the short story Mr. Wong Rights a Wrong. If you want to read/or reread any of the short stories I have put up in this fashion, click HERE to find the stories scene by scene or better yet, subscribe to the newsletter.

A reminder of my Ebook Perma-free books:

Maids of Misfortune: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery (Book 1) This first book in the series permanently free and you can get it on Kindle and all other Retailers.

Between Mountain and Sea: Caelestis Series (Book 1) This first book in the series is temporarily free and you can get it on Kindle and all other Retailiers.

AudioBook Spotify Giveaway:

In the coming months, I will be start giving away codes that will permit you to download audiobooks on Spotify. This month’s winners will get a code to download Maids of Misfortune as an audiobooks on Spotify. These codes are available primarily for listeners in US, UK, CA, Australia. All you have to do is reply to this email and tell me you wish to participate in the the giveaway by January 22, 2023.

---

For more information about either my mystery or science fiction series, check out my website. For daily information on my journey as an indie author trying to age gracefully, check out my newsletter, An Aging Author’s Daily Diversions.