Sunset is coming back.
Thirteen years ago, I started writing about a fictional little Texas town called Sunset. At the time, I thought I was telling the story of Jake Jennings and Jennifer Lawson: a widowed hospice chaplain trying to build a quieter life, and a nurse whose life was already full of children, patients, history, and more complications than either of them needed.
I did not know I was building a place I would eventually want to return to.
For years, I resisted going back. There were some health challenges in my family that made the whole process too emotional and draining. The original Sunset books belonged to an earlier season of my writing. I have changed. My voice has changed. My understanding of grief, hospice, love, faith, trauma, and the way people actually carry one another through hard seasons has deepened. And, honestly, I’m a much better writer than the guy who wrote a Christian romance book having never read a romance novel before.
Then Heaven’s First Breath happened.
What started as a “case study” for another book took on a life of its own. What came out of it is a compelling story in its own right.
Writing Frank and Marlene Abbott’s story brought me back into Sunset from a different direction. The town was still there. So were Jake, Jennifer, Sarah, Roger, Ellen, and the people who had once felt finished to me.
They were not finished.
And neither were the books.
So I have gone back to the beginning.
Sunset’s Dawn is being rebuilt. While it received a lot of positive comments, it was not well written. What I’m working on now isn’t simply a cleaned up or rewrapped book. It’s rewritten with the voice, emotional restraint, pastoral depth, and understanding of human relationships I have gained in the thirteen years since the original appeared.
Sarah’s Prayer is being rebuilt too. Sunset’s Hope is next. And Heaven’s First Breath will open another doorway into this world through the Abbott family and Sunset Hospice.
I discovered that returning to an old story is not the same as going backward.
Sometimes you return because you finally became the writer the story was waiting for.
That is what this season feels like to me.
This fall, readers will be able to return to Sunset.
And if you have never been there before, I cannot wait to introduce you.