Seasons Change

Plans for 2026

The calendar has changed to 2026, and I can say that a year never went faster for me than 2025 did. Looking at my last posts in July and October and seeing where I am now is startling. In July, I thought I would focus on re-editing Quarantined with Darcy next. In October, I wrote about inspiration for a new JAFF series and working on a non-JAFF series. Since then, I have had a lot of brain fog and difficulty focusing on anything. Apparently, ADHD symptoms ramp up during perimenopause.

Then, Christmas approached and I craved peace and calm, seeking a way to keep Christ at the center of the activities and to do lists. I was facing burnout that I couldn’t cure on my own. In desperation, I sought Chatgpt for some executive functioning help. Its suggestion was to slow down and focus on re-editing my old releases for most of 2026.

Photo by BoliviaInteligente on Unsplash

Leaning on the miracle of Christmas, when salvation came in the most unexpected way, I’m learning that it’s okay to take time out of making new stories to feel closure with the old ones and that editing them to match my current brand doesn’t mean they were bad in the first place.

For most of my writing life, I thought consistency meant never changing.

Same pace. Breakneck. On to the next thing.
Same approach. Writing binges while I ignore everything and everyone else.
Same demands about what I could reasonably carry. Everything at the same time for everyone…but me.

But God revealed His plan for redemption in stages and that can be true for my books as well. The scripture, “Behold I will do a new thing,” which points to Jesus Christ, has inspired me. What if I did a “new” thing and didn’t just leap to the next idea? What if I trusted that God could do something new through an old book?

I’ve been revisiting some of my earlier books. Not with the goal of fixing them, exactly, but of being truer to the faith I always longed to share.

What I’ve noticed is that many of them were written at a time when I believed faith needed to stay mostly in the background to be acceptable. Present, but careful. True, but restrained.

This occurred even in books where I wrote increasingly steamy scenes for the sake of the market and reader expectations. There was no niche for Christian JAFF. At the time, I was reading mainstream JAFF and Regency Romance—heavy on emotional bonding and transformation through love alone. I hoped readers could read between the lines and determine that human love was not enough to transform people. But I didn’t dare put it on the page. I gave the readers what I thought they wanted.

At the time, that felt wise. Safe.

Now, it feels incomplete. Untrue.

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As I re-enter these stories, I’m not trying to make them louder or heavier. I’m trying to make them truer. To let the faith that has always shaped my life show up on the page the way it actually operates—sometimes quietly, sometimes unmistakably, often through people and relationships.

One of the things I’m learning (slowly) is that it’s okay for stories to grow alongside their author.

I took most of my backlist down years ago with the determination to make changes, but I was so crippled by feelings of insufficiency and fear of making more mistakes. I couldn’t move forward with more stories due to the same fear. The backlist shouted at me demanding attention, but I had no plan on when to work on them. Readers have reached out asking where my books are, wanting them back up. Instead of that giving me motivation, it froze me. I felt like a failure and heard the echoes of taunts from my early years as an author when I was bullied for what I wrote.

I sat with those feelings for a long time. After months of crippling internal struggle and crying out in prayer, I’ve learned a lot. It doesn’t mean that I failed because I want to change my books now. It doesn’t mean the story didn’t “deserve” to be published at the time. People loved the books then. I loved them then, too. But what I want in a book has changed and I want my books to reflect that.

Behind the scenes, that’s changed how I work now.

I’m moving more slowly.
I’m planning more intentionally.
I’m letting projects have clear beginnings and endings instead of carrying them indefinitely.

And I’m trying—this is the hardest part—to stop equating constant output with faithfulness.

Photo by Ravi Pinisetti on Unsplash

I still feel God’s call to write new things, but I finally have peace over how to balance it all. He was never asking me to do everything at once. The inspiration for future stories is a promise that I will get through this season and be stronger for it. What is going into these stories now, I couldn’t have written ten years ago. Now, they will be better than ever.

For the next few months, you can look forward to the following re-releases from me: The Gentleman’s Impertinent Daughter (plans for a series cancelled due to lack of interest), Letters from the Heart, and No Cause to Repine.

I pray each of you have a blessed New Year!