Every summer, I find myself standing at the same crossroads. Half of me wants to keep showing up here every day, sharing updates, ideas, fragments of stories, and pieces of the writing life I love so much. The other half knows something equally important: Stories don’t get written in the margins of exhaustion. Stories need space, and quiet, and a time where the only expectation is to write forward. Since Christmas, I’ve been on a treadmill of family obligations (including a family death), travel obligations, and writing deadlines. And this past weekend I discovered that I’m tired. My brain is tired, and so is my body. So this summer I’m doing something intentional. For the next 6 – 8 weeks, I’m taking a Christmas in July break from the blog.
A short pause, a lot of behind-the-scenes writing, and a gift for you
I’m not taking a break from writing my stories or from this community. Instead, I’m taking a rest from the daily rhythm of posting so I can focus on the work that’s calling me most urgently right now, such as finishing two novellas due later this summer, finalizing some behind-the-scenes website updates which requires my CSS/Java/HTML coding brain, and getting a few long-overdue systems in place that will make everything I create going forward more sustainable.
This isn’t a pause in creativity. This summer is just a different kind of season of deep work. And because I never like to leave a quiet space completely empty, I wanted to leave you with something special.
🎄 A Christmas gift in July
For the duration of this break, I’m offering one of my Christmas novellas free through Bookfunnel. Snowbound with Lily is one of the novellas in my Kingsmill Courtships series, and it’s a precursor to Their Forever Summer, a novella that is currently available in the Summer Heatwave charity anthology.
Think of Snowbound with Lily as a small thank-you for being here, for reading, and for supporting my stories while I step back for a little while to build more of them. You can find the link here: https://books.sharonwray.com/b6oo5x5ry9
I look forward to seeing you all again in mid-late August with new books, an updated website, lots of summer stories to tell and:
- new behind-the-scenes updates
- new story progress
- hopefully good news from my agent
- and a lot of exciting things coming this fall
In the meantime, I’ll still be writing every day, just with fewer interruptions and a bit more silence around the edges. Thank you for being part of this world with me. I’ll see you soon, just a little further down the story.
— Sharon
