What is Shade of the Morning Sun?

Shade of the Morning Sun is both a blog and a digital garden for my fiction writings.

My blog mainly deals with life as a writer while also being a full-time caretaker for my autistic son.

My fiction is a collection of vignettes, flash fiction, and linked short stories – all chronicling the lives of a Scottish-American-French family over three generations.

What is the fiction about?

Faith and finding it, love and loss, families and special needs, hope and dreams, endless road trips and everything life throws at you. 

The protagonists are the family matriarch, Deborah (born in 1952), her daughter Carrie and Carrie’s husband Jonathan (born in the 1970s), as well as their children – Emma and Michael (born in the 2000s).

Full list of characters here.

Fiction index here.

Who is the writer?

Everything is written by me – Christopher Marcus – fiction and blog.

I live in Copenhagen with my wife, and my 9-year old autistic son.

I used to have my own IT-company but now I am a full-time carer for my son and a writer in the little spare time that I have.

Do I have to read all the stories to understand what is going on?

No, each piece can be read as a stand-alone story. At least that is the idea.

Is Shade of the Morning Sun an online novel?

Not as such. It is a (constantly growing) collection of linked short stories ranging from 2K to 10K+ words in length, sprinkled with flash pieces (1K and below) and vignettes. Again, a variation of a digital garden for fiction.

But everything is linked. Every fiction piece is about some of the same protagonists, family members through three generations.

Linked stories and fiction pieces can be read independently of each other, but when read together it affects your experience of each of the individual stories.

If you have read, say, Olive Kitteridge – then you have an example of what a collection of linked stories can be like.

Where do I start reading?

Anywhere you like! In theory all the fiction pieces are standalones, as mentioned above.

A good jumping on point, though, could be the stories about the ‘middle generation’ – Carrie and Jonathan – and their family in Yuma, AZ. That is regular family drama, where Carrie struggles with unemployment, anxiety and raising a special needs child; while Jonathan is on the road as a state trooper trying to be the breadwinner of the family. These stories start here.

Why are these stories published on a blog?

It is, for lack of a better term, an artistic choice. I always envisioned the stories’ home base as online, because then I could make it a “dynamic” chronicle – that is, a big, constantly growing web of interlinked stories but also small pieces of “stray thought” from my characters, kind of like social media entries or diary entries.

Once again, the digital garden analogy comes to mind.

Do you edit the stories after they are published?

I polish the fiction in here from time to time, yes.

As regards substance—generally, everything I have written about events and characters stay the same, so if I have written something about a character’s background – say, that she is from Salt Lke City – it usually stays.

As for pieces that take place in the future, they are subject to change, if we get to that future period and I find that events have deviated too far from what I predicted.

Have you done any paper books?

Yes. I have published one print collection in 2025 with short stories about “the middle generation”. It contains a tight sequence of fully edited and updated linked stories that read like a little novel:

Why is the layout different in some stories?

I started to experiment with layouting some of my stories in a more reader-friendly way, especially for mobile. This means more images and bold sentences. Not sure I will continue to do that, though. Let me know which you prefer and I will try to get everything streamlined over time.

Why is it called ‘Shade of the Morning Sun’?

I’ve borrowed the title from the lyrics of New Order’s 1987-song “True Faith”:

I used to think that the day would never come
I’d see delight in the shade of the morning sun

The song is about drug use, but I also see it as a song about wanting to escape from life and searching for “the sun” – whatever that means to each of us.

How will I know when new stories come out?

I will mention in my blog when there are new stories out. (Sometimes I will pool new stories into one announcement a few blog posts down the line.)

You can subscribe to the blog by email here:

How often will there be new fiction?

Occasionally. But that “schedule” is subject to all kinds of caveats of life as a special needs father, which I am first and foremost. Some years I publish weekly almost. Currently, not so often.

Subscribe above to get a heads up when there are new stories, as well as personal updates.

How often do you blog?

Occasionally.

Why are there different people posing for the same character photo?

I can only afford to use photos from Unsplash and Pixabay and similar sites, not to pay a series of models.

I do feel that it is somehow fitting, though, that the models can vary for the same cast member, as I like to think that many of the family’s experiences are universal.

Is Christopher Marcus your real name?

No, it’s a pen name. (I can’t really remember why I chose it back in the day, but it just kind of stuck.)

Why are some photos in color and some in black and white?

For awhile I thought black and white looked better. I may eventually replace all photos, if available, with color versions. We’ll see.

Do you have a social media presence?

I have a Facebook page that I really don’t use except to participate in some groups, and a Goodreads page that is also only updated irregularly. Feel free to give any of these a follow, if you like!

*

Last updated 11 July 2026