by Roseanna White | Nov 5, 2012 | Word of the Week
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| A Prayer for Those at Sea by Frederick Daniel Hardy, 1879 |
With Election Day being tomorrow and so many already having voted early, I felt the need to spend today’s post in a word of prayer rather than a word’s etymology. I try to steer clear of politics in my online presence, and so I don’t intend to talk about candidates or my opinions–but please do join me in praying for our country and her direction.
Dear Lord, we fall to our knees before You, in awe of Your beauty and reverence. In amazement at Your love for us. When I think of Your glory, of Your wonder, of all the intricate paths You set before us, tears come to my eyes. You are true. You are holy. You are worthy of every whisper of love our lips can utter. And we worship You knowing that You are the Lord of our beginnings and the God of our ends.
Father, I know you have placed us all where we need to be, for a purpose. You have put our feet on the earth at this exact point in history because this is where we belong. And so we are intimately tied to all that happens in this world around us, even if we are apart from it as our focus is on You. You have called us to live in peace, as much as we are able, and to always, always choose righteousness. If we suffer for Your sake, it is glory. But how much better to live selflessly and so influence other for You so that our enemies become Your children!
So here we sit in this nation You have made ours, this nation founded with such lofty principles, all based on the idea of freedom. Here we sit, people on both sides of the aisle claiming that to elect the other guy would mean fewer freedoms. But Lord, we know that true freedom rests not in the decrees of man, but in the freeing liberty of salvation. We know that there is no man who can become president and set the world to rights–that such change must come from within the hearts of the people.
But we also know, Lord, that only one can win. And we pray now, on our faces prostrate before Your throne, that the man will win who will follow Your path. We pray that your angels be stationed around each polling place, that with their swords outstretched they will keep the enemy away. We pray that the ears of our neighbors be stopped against any whispers from the evil one, that their hearts be guarded against that influence. Because we know, Father God, that whatever You want, he wants the opposite, and he will manipulate mankind to achieve it. Guard us against his wiles, O Lord my God. Guard us and protect us.
Father, we pray Your will be done. In every person’s day, in every person’s decision, in every vote, in every result, in every office. Let Your will be done. Let Truth prevail and overcome any fraud or deceit. Let Wisdom dictate our decisions. Let Love cover campaigns so often focused on the negative. Let Your will be done. And let it be, please dear Lord, for our redemption and not for our destruction. Help us, through our decision, to redeem the times as You instruct us in Ephesians. Help us to be the light in this darkness. And to
Shine that light through our voices and votes.
We commit our nation, our states, our communities into Your hands. We commit our hearts, our lives, and our spirits unto You. Take us back, God of All, hear our cries. And silence our enemies to that we may hear Your voice directing us. In the name of Your precious son Jesus we pray. Amen.
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by Roseanna White | Nov 1, 2012 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
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| Whisperings of Love by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1889 |
8 And above all things have fervent love for one another,
for “love will cover a multitude of sins.”
~I Peter 4:8
I just read these words in my daily reading time and they struck quite a chord. Perhaps because I’d been pondering that exact thing just yesterday in regards to my kids.
Don’t you just love those things in life that have no clear “this way” or “that way”? That have, in fact, so many varying opinions on which way you should do a thing that you usually just shake your head and go with your gut? Raising kids is definitely one of those things. And in this society where all adult problems are blamed on whether mommy did this when you were little or dad did that…yeah, it can be stressful.
And I confess it. I yell more than I should. I get frustrated. My kids usually have to repeat something four times before I actually get up from my computer to help them with it (hence why they now just stand at my elbow going, “Mommy, I need a drink. Mommy. Mommy. Hey, Mommy, will you get me a drink please?” The magic word always gets my attention, LOL). There are things I wish I did differently, things I no doubt get wrong.
But you know what? At the end of the day, my kids are happy. They’re secure. They understand the values I’m trying to instill, and they know they can stretch their wings and grow in our house. At the end of the day, they know they’re loved. And that, I think, is the most important thing I can give them–because love covers a multitude of sins.
Which is true of any other relationship too, isn’t it? Which may be more profound–because it’s easy to love our kids. It’s easy to love our spouses, our siblings, our parents (sometimes, LOL–easy for me to, because I have awesome ones). But what about the acquaintances? The strangers? The people we don’t like? Our outright enemies?
Loving them isn’t always so easy. Not just when we really don’t like them, but even when we just barely know someone. It’s hard to be moved by a story you’ve never heard. Hard to pray for people you’ve never met. But sometimes that’s exactly what the Lord calls us to do. In this section of I Peter, he says we must be serious and watchful in our prayer. We must love one another, being generous and hospitable with out homes, but most of all with our gifts. We must, always, minister.
A reminder I need. Though I know there are so many out there suffering, I might forget that. I might ignore it. I might whisper a prayer now and then but otherwise go on with my life. The Lord, though, calls me to something more here. He calls me to pray, He calls me to give, He calls me to stretch myself out and share what gifts He has given me with others.
He calls me to love.
And if I do that, the rest will follow. If I do that, then the things I fail at will be covered.
I will never be the perfect daughter, sister, wife, or mother, the best teacher or writer or friend. I will never react as I should all the time. I will never always have the perfect response to life’s trials. But I will love. And that will be my covering.
~*~
Good luck to everyone participating in NaNoWriMo! I just wrote 65K in October, finishing up my manuscript as I was, so will not be joining y’all this year. 😉
by Roseanna White | Oct 31, 2012 | Remember When Wednesdays, Uncategorized
One thing that I have found to be super fun in my current series-in-progress is my epilogue. Ring of Secrets was set during the Revolution, with Winter and Bennet as heroine and hero. But my epilogue jumps 31 years to 1811, when war with England threatens again. That’s where I establish that the historical spies which call themselves the Culper Ring may just have taken up the mantle again in the War of 1812, when the man who had once been their leader sat in Congress. (I mean, hello! Right?)
As everyone no doubt knows by now, last Thursday I wrapped up
Whispers from the Shadows, book 2 in the Culper Ring Series. And as I drew near to The End, I began rubbing my hands together, realizing I got to do the same thing again–write an epilogue that jumped through time to introduce the next book, as yet unnamed.
I’m not sure if I can adequately explain how or why this is so much fun for me, LOL. But I think it has to do with the fact that while I’m writing one book, I’m already plotting out the next. I already have an idea of who my new characters will be, what sets them apart, what makes their story tick. Yet in this case, I’m introducing it from the point of view of my existing characters. At the end of
Ring of Secrets, they’re talking about their kids and how their son, Thad, has brought them this news that makes them sure war is on the horizon again.
Whispers from the Shadows takes place another three years after this epilogue, so it was like a little snatched moment–chronologically part of neither story, yet also part of both. It’s the trade-off of the baton.
My epilogue for Whispers jumps even more than that of RoS. Forty-six years later, when South Carolina secedes from the Union that Thad and his family have fought their whole lives to protect…but what to do in this one? How to introduce my next Culper? See, since this isn’t really part of either story, I hadn’t already had it planned out. Nothing hinged on it. Yet it must hit just the right note to provide both closure to one tale and introduction to the next. It must intrigue, it must charm, yet it must also show the happily-ever-after.
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Emma Stone, my model for Marietta
photo by Georges Biard, 2011 |
So in this one, I decided to use as a setting the wedding of my heroine from book 3, Marietta. By the time the next book opens, she’ll be widowed and on the brink of coming out of mourning, the Civil War raging. She’s the granddaughter of Thad, his favorite because she’s so unlike the rest of the family–with such potential, yet refusing to embrace it. She’s the difficult one, the one who probably turned her parents’ hair gray. Book 3 will begin with him forcing her eyes open to what she brought into their family, and the book will be largely about her struggle to change, to learn to trust herself and her God, in an extremely high-pressure situation in which not only her life is on the line, but the life of the President.
But here? She’s just a pretty redhead he’s watching through the doorway as she twirls around the dance floor in her white silk hoop dress. She’s laughing, being charming. Totally oblivious to all the secrets. Fun, fun, fun.
Of course, since these snippet epilogues jump so much, I always find myself ready to write them and then having to pause to go, “Wait! I have no clue about the research for this. When should this be? What would they be wearing? What day of the week was it??”
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| Page from Godey’s featuring 1860s wedding dresses |
I obviously knew some of it–hoop dresses, whoo! But it’s a fun change to consider. That my characters would have changed over those 30-40 years too, their dress and mannerisms, their interactions with each other. What was once new and exciting is now comfortable and expected. The love that had been an explosion is now a carefully maintained flame.
Yep. Fun.
And now, between books as I am momentarily, I get to brainstorm–one of my most favorite parts of writing. So don’t be surprised if for the next month or so, you get some tidbits from me on other eras! And then, soon enough, I’ll be immersed again in that dreadful War between the States.
by Roseanna White | Oct 29, 2012 | Word of the Week
First of all, I would like to report that I finished up Whispers from the Shadows on Thursday! Woot! It checked in way too long (130,000 words instead of the 116,000 I was to shoot for), but everyone agrees that it’s better to have too much than to run out of story with 20K to go. 😉 Now it’s time to shift my focus to editing–and hunker down as Sandy swings up this way. She’s supposed to hit us tomorrow morning, with tropical storm force winds hitting us here in the mountains. Should be interesting.
Anyway. Rereading one of my chapters yesterday, I was inspired to look up the word card to see when the phrase “playing the ______ card” came into being. So I thought I’d share my findings. =)
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| Playing card from the 1895 Vanity Fair deck |
The word card itself is really old–the English word dates from 1400. It’s taken from the Latin charta, which means “leaf of paper,” which in turn comes from the Greek khartes, “layers of papyrus.” Which, in its turn, is probably derived straight from the Egyptian word.
The most familiar meaning of “playing cards” dates in English and French from the 1590s. The listing didn’t tell me about calling cards, but I happen to know those were around for a long while, especially popular in the 19th century. Greeting cards came about in 1869, and people who are original earned the name card in 1836 but usually had “smart” in front of it back then and came from the playing card sense.
“Card table” dates from 1713 and “house of cards” in the figurative sense is from 1640s–supposedly from Milton. To have a card up one’s sleeve is 1898; and, finally, the one I was actually looking for! LOL. To play the _______ card is from 1886, originally the Orange card, meaning “appeal to Northern Irish Protestant sentiment (for political advantage).” Who knew?
So yeah, my hero’s best friend couldn’t accuse him of playing the _____ card, which is fine. But I sure learned something in the looking up of it!
by Roseanna White | Oct 25, 2012 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
My little girl just turned 7 on Tuesday, and we had her party on Sunday. Both were pretty awesome days, even if it is a little hard to believe that my baby is SEVEN. How did that happen??? 😉
And so, because today I’m hoping to finish up Whispers from the Shadows so am a bit lacking in time, I thought today I’d just show you some of the highlights from the party. Starting, of course, with what took up my entire morning. The cake.
Xoe is dressing up as Frankie Stein from Monster High for Halloween, and the party was a costume party, so for that too. When I asked her what kind of cake she wanted, she said, “Frankie!” And I said, “Really? Are you sure? You don’t want one, like, shaped like a mask or something…?” LOL. But no. She wanted Frankie, so she got Frankie.
Ever painted plaid onto fondant with colored icing? Yeah, fun. A new experience, that one, LOL. As was carving bolts out of marshmallows… But overall, it was a fun cake, and Xoe was tickled, which is what matters.
Decorations combined my idea of “Let’s decorate with costumes!” with my mom’s “Do you want me to bring some pumpkins?” So the answer was obvious–let’s dress the pumpkins up in costume! I don’t have any pictures, it seems, but I did get some of the pumpkins the kids painted. =)
Everyone had a great time–I mean, what kid doesn’t like dressing up in costume?? So it was a great day. And now my last two chapters are calling, so if you’ll excuse me… 😉
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Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary. 