by Roseanna White | Jan 25, 2013 | Uncategorized
I’ve never been a total book-trailer fan, but I gotta say–when I got an email from Harvest House last night with this link, I was 100% giddy. =)
I would so appreciate it if you’d take a minute and a half to stop by YouTube and view this! Breathes some excitement into the words I know so well.
Yep–giddy! =)
by Roseanna White | Jan 24, 2013 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
For some reason that I can’t quite explain, 4-year-old Rowyn has decided that Heaven = Outer Space. There is no hesitation in his mind. When he talks about going to Outer Space, it’s to drop in on God and say, “Hello.” Preferably in a rocket. That, he says, is where he will go when he dies to live again forever.
Who am I, mere mortal that I am, to try to straighten it all out for him? LOL. The book of Daniel tells us about angels on a physical journey from Heaven to Earth, waylaid by demons so that they arrived seemingly “late” to answer the prayers of the faithful. For all I know, those demons were hiding behind an asteroid orbiting Jupiter. *shrugs*
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The Milky Way over the
West Virginia hills |
But it came up in my little brain in response to some wonderful conversations and books I was reading yesterday. The conversations joked about how the particular group involved is made of black sheep, it seems. Or at least, would be dubbed so by a prominent few. We like reality in our fiction. We believe that redemption is greatest when the sin was staggering–after all, who will love the forgiver more, he who is forgiven much or little? We believe in thinking, in living our life in this world even if we’re not of it, in refusing the neatly bottled answers that are often tossed around in Christian circles.
And yes, that leads some of us to rant and rail on occasion. Why, we ask, do our brothers and sisters in the Church judge us for following Him into the wilderness? Isn’t that where He went? Where He ordered us to go??
Then, in something I was reading by my good friend and WhiteFire author
Christine Lindsay, she quotes C. S. Lewis, and it resonated:
“
It
would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too
weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex
and ambition when infinite Joy is offered us, like an ignorant child
who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot
imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are
far too easily pleased.”
You know what that hammered home to me? That we’re so very small. Sometimes, that makes us petty. Sometimes, that makes us close ourselves into a cozy little box. Sometimes it makes us judge–and I’m not talking just about the ones in the box judging those outside, I’m talking about the opposite too. We all want to be accepted for who we are–and when someone else is different, we feel that as judgment. Don’t we?
But what Lewis pinpointed so beautifully there is that God is bigger than that. God is a God of the biggest dreams, the grandest ideas. He’s a thinking man’s God and an infantile-minded man’s God. The God of the broken and of the fixer. He’s a God who says, “You want the world? Foolish mortal–I’m offering you heaven.”
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The Dirty Devil River
photo by Seth G. Cowdery |
Or as Rowyn would say, Outer Space. 😉 And that’s true too, isn’t it? He’s the God of the universe, of the infinite.
But how often do we forget that, as Pascal expounded on in a Pensee, the infinite goes both directions? The infinitely great, and the infinitely small. So often, we pick one direction and focus on that, because that’s where our interests lie.
I love–absolutely love–that I serve a God with no limits. A God who can touch hearts through the sweetest stories as well as through the grittiest. A God who doesn’t say we must change before we can enter His house, but who invites us in as we are and says, “I’ve been waiting for you. I have a job for you to do, and those quirks of yours will make you a perfect fit.”
I don’t know about you, but I serve one amazing, all-out, no-holds-barred God. He meets me in the grime, and He promises me the galaxies. He tells me that there’s nothing I can dream that’s too big…but that sometimes He wants to give me something even bigger than the corporeal, than the physical. He’s a God who says, “Go ahead. Reason. Ask questions. Explore the what-ifs. I’ll be there too.”
So for today, in all gratefulness, I say, “My God, who art in Outer Space, I set your name aside as holy. Establish your kingdom, and do your will, O Lord. Not just up in the stars…but right down here in the muck.”
by Roseanna White | Jan 23, 2013 | Book News, Books, Remember When Wednesdays
Ring of Secrets is thiiiiiiis close to releasing, y’all! Okay, so maybe thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis close. 😉 I know some stores will stock it beginning February 18, though other places are listing March 1 as the official T-0 day. Either way, I just realized last night that my author copies will be arriving within a couple weeks. Squeeeeee!!!!
Which means I have to get my promotion machine in order! =) Some things you have to look forward to once it’s up and running…
~ Pick your own spy name
~ Scavenger Hunt
~ Secret messages to decode
- A kick-butt giveaway featuring:
~ Ring of Secrets (obviously)
~ This one-of-a-kind, hand-crafted Winter Reeves doll
~ A one-of-a-kind, hand-crafted cameo necklace inspired by the book
~ A leather journal
~ A quill pen
~ Other stuff yet to be selected
~ Seekerville – “The Intuitive Writer”
~ Novel Rocket – “The Writer’s Race”
~ Go Teen Writers (with a fun contest where the winner gets to help me name a character from Book 3!)
~ tea party at Colonial Quills
~ Several blogs (want me on yours? Just let me know! I’m happy to interviews or guest posts!)
- A free novella! (Details are being worked out now with the team at Harvest–this will probably release midway between Ring of Secrets and Whispers from the Shadows, and the “how” will be solidified in the next couple weeks.)
I’m getting really excited, in case you can’t tell. =) And since I spent January thus far editing WhiteFire novels and critiquing and doing cover designs and all that other stuff that isn’t writing, I didn’t have any new, fun historical tidbits to share, so you get to hear about it, LOL.
I’m also considering putting together a Revolutionary Spy Master’s Toolkit. With quills, vials of invisible ink, a code book…but this would be pure novelty. Anyone actually interested in this??
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by Roseanna White | Jan 21, 2013 | Word of the Week
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| Young Lady Seated at the Virginals by Johannes Vermeer, 1670 |
I was looking up back seat and saw these entries. And given that they came up in the search backwards (entry 2 before entry 1), I had a moment when I thought seat as in a place of government–like a county seat–pre-dated the thing on which we sit. Not so, but there are some interesting tidbits with this word. =)
Seat, “thing which one sits on,” is from about 1200. No great surprise there, that it’s one of the Ye Olde English words, eh? But the second meaning of “residence, abode, established place” wasn’t long in following, coming into be by the latter part of the same century. It took it a little over 100 years to evolve into “where a government sits.”
By 1600, the literal version of the word had extended to include “the posterior of the body.” For the part of clothing covering that part, 1835. And finally, seat belt is from 1932–their first appearances being in airplanes.
On more interesting tidbit on that second meaning of seat goes back to the Old English sæt — which not only meant “a place one sits in ambush” but also “resident, inhabitant.” That, I did not know. But it’s apparently where the -set ending comes from in British town names like Dorset or Somerset (hey, I have a Somerset around here! LOL)
I hope everyone had a great weekend!
Oh, and a quick update on little Haley, for those who have been praying. They didn’t get the whole tumor–an MRI will tell them how much of it they got, somewhere between 50 and 90%. But Haley’s doing really well and has even been transferred to the general Peds ward! Please do keep praying–this isn’t over yet, and her poor parents are close to overwhelm.
by Roseanna White | Jan 18, 2013 | Uncategorized
Please remember Haley in your prayers today. For anyone who didn’t see it early, she’s an 8-year-old girl (our families go to Bible study together) who had been experiencing dizziness and balance issues. Scans showed a tumor over an inch big growing at the base of her brain stem.
The tumor is benign, praise the Lord, but surgery was obviously still required. That surgery is today, Friday 1/18, at 12:30 p.m. EST. She and her family are understandably terrified.
Please cover them and the doctors and nurses in your prayers! She’s at Johns Hopkins, so we know she’s getting the best possible care. But do pray for wisdom, guidance, a divine touch, that there are no after-affects from the surgery (brain stem–*shiver*), that her recovery is quick and complete, and that they’re all just bathed in the peace of the Spirit today, that nerves are calmed and fears abated.
You have already heard our prayers for this precious little girl, Lord, and we praise you for that. Now we come before you again, thanking you for what you’ve done and trusting you to keep your hand upon them.
If anyone would like to send Haley a card to let her know she’s being prayed for in your neck of the woods, please send me an email at roseanna at roseannawhite dot com and I’ll give you her hospital address!
~*~ UPDATE ~*~
Just got the word on Haley. She’s doing well, but the doctor was unable to get the entire tumor–it was hard instead of cystic, as they had hoped. He still believes it’s benign though. She’ll have an MRI over the weekend to see how much they got–they think between 50 and 90%.
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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. 