What is Shade of the Morning Sun?

Shade of the Morning Sun is a blog and a repository of my short stories.

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

My stories are a collection of linked short stories chronicling the lives of a Scottish-American-French family over three generations.

The main characters are Deborah Sawyer (b. 1952) – an ex-Mormon grandmother and her daughter Carrie (b. 1979) and Carrie’s husband, Jonathan, (b. 1975) and their children, Emma and Michael. See the full list of characters here.

It’s about love and loss, families and special needs, hope and dreams, and endless road trips. 

Who is writing?

The stories are written by Christopher Marcus, who also maintains the website and the blog. I live in Copenhagen with my family.

Do I have to read all the stories?

No, each story can be read as a stand-alone story. 

Is Shade of the Morning Sun an online novel or really big short story collection?

It is neither.

Shade of the Morning Sun is a (constantly growing) collection of linked short stories, also known as a novel in stories or short story cycle.

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

Linked short story collections you may be familiar with include Sherman Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, and Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad.

What kind of books are like Shade of the Morning Sun?

I’m very inspired by Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge books, which are incidentally also linked short story collections.

Also, I’m inspired by Andre Dubus III’s Garden of Last Days and House of Sand and Fog, Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky, and Stephen King’s The Shawshank Redemption, just to name a few.

Oh, and movies … like Thelma and Louise, Winter’s Bone and Paris – Texas. And I could go on 🙂

So there is no big plot?

No. But there are some events and associated themes that come up again and again, like Carrie’s recovery from addiction and abuse. Or Jonathan’s PTSD from the Iraq war. 

As the collection grows, there will be sequences of stories that resemble novels.

Where do I start reading?

From 2026 and some years in the future I will be publishing chronologically, starting with stories about Deborah (Carrie’s mother) who came of age late 1960s as a Mormon missionary daughter caught in the May 1968 riots in France. So if you want to read about that kind of drama, start here.

Another good jumping on point could be the stories about the ‘middle generation’ – Carrie and Jonathan – and their family in Yuma, AZ.

What are they about, you might ask? Well, Carrie struggles with unemployment, anxiety and raising a special needs child; while Jonathan is (sometimes) risking his life on the road as a state trooper trying to be the breadwinner of the family. So that. These stories start here if you want to give them a go … (just click next after each story).

There’s also a sprinkling of stories taking place in the future relative to the current date (and not always correctly dated because, you know, the WordPress blog can’t future date any more – even though it used to). But those are very few and I won’t like to them here, you’ll have to discover them yourself – and everything in between!

Why are these stories published on a blog?

I always envisioned the stories “home” being online, because then I could make it a big, constantly growing – “living” – web of stories (no pun intended).

Are there books collecting the stories?

I have published this print collection in 2025 about “the middle generation”. It contains a tight sequence of fully edited and updated linked short 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.

When I settle on a format that works, the rest of the stories will gradually be updated to reflect that.

Why did you create Shade of the Morning Sun?

I started writing a traditional novel 20 years ago with some of the characters but was not able to finish it, being occupied with education, work, and a period of serious illness. 

It soured on me around 2010 but I wanted to do something with the story ideas and characters, so I started writing short stories. I was impatient and just put them out on the internet and it sort of took on a life of its own since.

This site is the latest platform for these stories.

What is behind the name: ‘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 follow the blog-part of ShadeoftheMorningSun.com via the WordPress.com follow system if you are a member. 

You may also follow it via RSS feed in an RSS Reader.  The feed URL is dependingonthemorningsun.com/feed/

You can also subscribe to the blog by email here:

How often will there be new stories?

Occasionally. But that “schedule” is subject to all kinds of caveats of life as a special needs father, which I am first and foremost.

Subscribe above to get a heads up when, as well as important 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! However, I feel that it is rather fitting that the models sometimes vary for the same cast member, as I like to think that many of the Reese-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, 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!