The SCU just keeps growing and growing, and getting more and more complicated. (You’ll find out more if you pre-order Holiday Heat: April, which comes out on Monday!)

Back on April 1, when I wrote this post, I tried to get a jump on next month’s book by putting together the stories for May into a single document. That was the easy part — although, I mean, 55,000 words is no joke. But then I had to work on the connections between that book and the previous ones. It wasn’t as easy as copying and pasting, either; certain characters from April don’t appear in May, and certain characters in May don’t appear in April… or March, for that matter. In fact, I had to go all the way back to February to find the most recent story featuring Fred and Shonda. But after about half an hour or so I had the SCU page at the end of the book done.

And then came the really hard part: the “some characters in this story most recently appeared in…” lines at the start of every story where an existing character is referenced. I do have a spreadsheet with who appears where, but it only covers the major plot points. It doesn’t cover when someone is just mentioned — like, for example, when I mention Charlie and Jeannette in “National Tourism Day” (in the upcoming May edition), they only get a sentence or two, but it still counts. So I have to go through each story in May, and then work my way backward through April, March, and February until I find the right story. My right index finger did an awful lot of scrolling, even with the liberal use of the “Find” command. The process took a full hour, but I got it done.

Fortunately, it wasn’t like I had much else to do. After all, I got laid off recently and Friday March 29 was my last day of work. My long-distance partner went home on March 31, and while my daughter was in the house (it was Senior Skip Day, something I didn’t take part in when I was in high school) she was sequestered in her room doing who-knows-what. All I had to do was keep an eye on the dog in case she needed to go out.

I feel like I got a lot done on that day; I applied for jobs, updated my resume, did a ton of correspondence, went to the grocery store, and worked on my books. I didn’t create any new words but these things happen from time to time. Or, in my case, more often than time to time. But it is what it is, I suppose. Eventually I’ll write new words. Eventually I’ll finish October, November, and December.

Eventually.