I think the hardest part about writing my holiday stories is figuring out what characters are going to be in each story. At the point I’m writing this post (about a month before it goes live, with the next story being for May 14), I have 66 possible characters who have already appeared in the collections. Once I pick a holiday for a story, I then have to decide who it’s going to be about — will it be an existing character or a new one? If an existing one, which one? Which ones have appeared most recently, and which ones haven’t shown up in a while? If the latter, do I really want to bring them back or do I want to focus on characters I’m more interested in writing about? And if I’m creating a new character, what will they be like?

It’s kind of like how we’re spoiled for choice with streaming content — I have subscriptions to eight different streaming services (plus YouTube), and I can never figure out what I want to watch. Similarly, I have all these characters, and I can never figure out who I want to feature. I wonder if this is how George RR Martin feels when he gets to a new chapter and is trying to decide who the POV character will be.

Of course, it can also be difficult to figure out what characters to use because sometimes the holiday itself makes no sense. The only good holiday I could find for May 14 is “Dance Like a Chicken Day”. (There are others, but none of them piqued my interest.) Who’s going to dance like a chicken today?

I wonder.

I wonder if I’ll keep wondering, or if I’ll just shoehorn in the holiday somehow, or if I’ll actually write a story based around the holiday itself.

You’ll find out in May of 2024, I suppose.