by Roseanna White | Jul 10, 2014 | Thoughtful Thursdays
First of all, don’t forget that there’s a giveaway going on for a copy of Circle of Spies! Hop over to Colonial Quills and enter! http://bit.ly/CQCoS
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One of my grinning-est moments while cleaning out the closets and whatnot at our old house was when I stumbled across a file folder box. It was duct-taped, flimsy, and I had some vague recollection of shoving into it something I wanted to keep. So I opened it up. And I saw this.
This, my dear friends, is the cover I drew for my first novel, at age 12. Back when The Lost Heiress was Golden Sunset, Silver Tear. And back when I was Roseanna M. Higson, LOL. You know how sometimes you see a baby picture of yourself or you kids and go “Awwwwww!” Yeah. That’s what I did here.
But I’ve always been the type to turn to drawing (or now, digital design) when I don’t have the writing groove going on. So this 12-year-old’s version of my cover isn’t the only I did. over the next couple years, as I rewrote and edited and learned more about drawing, I did these too.
Not all covers, of course, but I loved trying to draw Brook. Who was, at the time Brook Moon. Now she’s Brook Eden. But she still has blond curls and green eyes. Though that bead necklace featured in all the above drawings has become one with dangling pearls…
Still. Going through that box was a trip down memory lane. I distinctly remember sitting at my desk in my old bedroom–the one with the peach carpet and the lavender walls–and doing these drawings. I remember holding them up to my mirror to see if they were proportioned right (you can see flaws in the mirror image that you can’t detect normally). I remember working so hard on them and knowing they weren’t quite it.
Some of the teens on Go Teen Writers frequently share their art on the Facebook group, and I’m usually left in utter awe at their talent. Definitely better than my teen doodling! But I always love seeing them and knowing that, yep, that’s what I did too. Not so well, LOL, but still. It gives me a visual documentation of the path the book has taken. I love that. =)
And then, of course, I turned the page and saw this–the title page I created at age 12 too.
It’s the first of 388 handwritten (in pencil) pages. *Sniff, sniff.*
Now my first pages are computerized, and I didn’t bother designing a title page that would get deleted anyway. Now, my document starts like this.
Far more efficient. And I wouldn’t hand-write a book now unless I had absolutely no other choice. But it’s not quite as warm and cuddly, and I’m so, so glad I saved that very first draft of my very first book.
Ah, memories.
(And yeah, I kinda combined yesterday’s forgotten Remember When with today’s Thoughtful Thursday. Because I completely spaced it was Wednesday yesterday until mid-morning, LOL.)
by Roseanna White | Jul 7, 2014 | Word of the Week
In the closing scene of The Lost Heiress, my hero is observing that someone has become a bit of a celebrity…so naturally, I had to look it up to make sure that it was in use like that in 1911.
I discovered that celebrity comes directly from the Old French and Latin word that means “a celebration.” Not surprising when you look at the words, right? So from 1400 to about 1600, it means “a solemn rite or ceremony.” Then it shifted to mean “condition of being famous.” Not the person, mind you, but the condition. So a person would have celebrity, they would not be a celebrity.
That “be” meaning didn’t come along until 1849–when it came to mean “a famous person.” So safe for my 1911 speaker, to be sure. Phew! 😉
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On Colonial Quills today, you’ll find a guest review of Circle of Spies and a giveaway with it! The review is written by a reader from Goodreads, and if you enjoyed the book, I’d love it if you’d drop by and chime in! Read the Review & enter to win!
by Roseanna White | Jul 3, 2014 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
A couple weeks ago, my hubby showed me a video of a truck driving along a street. From the open fields on the other side of it, I’d guess it to be in the Midwest. Truck’s just driving along, when wham! A fork of lightning comes searing down and hits the truck. Not the telephone poles, not the building that the security cam is attached to. Not the highest point in the area. The truck.
The people were fine. The truck…not so much.
As I watched that video, it hit a nerve. I used to be terrified of lightning, of storms. So sure that it was going to strike my house, catch it on fire (the real phobia), and devour me. I was known a time or two to go hide under the blankets when a thunderstorm rolled through. I knew that those blankets wouldn’t keep me safe. But they provided a barrier. Insulation. Comfort.
Even today, when the phobia has been forgotten and I enjoy a good rousing summer storm, some of the old instincts are still there. A couple times recently I’ve been driving home during a storm severe enough to send my phone chirping with tornado or flash flood warnings. A couple times, I’ve been watching the clouds for swirling motion or lightning when I pass through the forests along my road and hit the open stretch where the farm fields take over.
And each time, I can’t help the feeling of vulnerability that hits me when I’m out in the open like that, in a metal cage of a car, with the storm clouds overhead. I’d blame it on the video, but the experience actually came first, LOL. I feel exposed. In danger. I press a little firmer on the gas pedal and head for the tree line. It feels safer there.
But it isn’t. I know that. Well I remember the lessons as a child that say that in a thunderstorm, do not take shelter under a tree–trees are the things most often struck by lightning, and you could be putting yourself in danger by being under them when branches snap off from the surge of electricity. I know it–but it’s counter-intuitive.
It feels safe. It feels better.
But that feeling is a lie. And the truth is, we can’t totally predict what lightning will do, where it will strike. It’s a force of nature. Not always the highest point. Not always the metal.
It’s got a life of its own, it seems. One a lot like life. Troubles don’t strike where we expect them to either. Stress and controversy and attacks don’t always come from the likely source. But come they do. And they leave us smoking and sizzling a lot of times, wondering where that came from.
It’s human nature to seek shelter in the things that feel safe. In our friends. In our family. In a good book. A warm blanket. In food. In a crowd. In our anger.
But those are just the trees. They provide a feeling of shelter…but they’re not.
Shelter is in the shadow of His wings. But here’s the thing–it might not always feel like it. Because to go before God, we have to lay our souls bare. We have to make ourselves vulnerable. We have to go before Him on the plain, where there’s nothing else to overshadow us and distract from us…and that’s scary. We’re afraid it’ll hurt. We’re afraid of what it will cost us.
We’re afraid His lightning will strike us…or at least that His light will make us too aware of our failings.
We serve a God who sends the wind forth from His treasuries. Who makes lightning for the rain. Who makes the earth tremble and the seas to swell. We serve a God who puts His finger on the smallest amoeba. Who strokes the wing of a butterfly. Who cares about our every little worry.
His infinity stretches both to the vast and the infinitesimal. To the storm and the slightest breeze. The lightning and the lightning bug.
He is our shelter, and it isn’t deceptive like that forest I want to hurry to in a storm. He’s true. And though our feelings might make us hesitate, though that shadowy whisper might say it will be too hard, too painful, we’re called to trust in Him. Yes, He might ask something hard of us. But we can trust it will be for our good.
We can trust that He is in control. That he knows where every bolt of lightning will land. And that He can tell us when to seek the fields and when the trees. When to stop and when to go. He has it all in His hand.
And He has us there too. Whether we feel it or not.
by Roseanna White | Jul 2, 2014 | Uncategorized
I’m baaaaaaaaack! And oh, how awesome it is to have The Lost Heiress turned in and be free to catch up on other things. =)
One of which is my opinion on the wrap-up of AMC’s first season of
Turn. I was a couple weeks behind on watching due to the hockey finals and traveling…and for a few weeks there I really wasn’t sure what I could say anyway. I didn’t know how to put my finger on why the show was bugging me, other than the rather blatant ignoring of actual history (which I recognize most viewers wouldn’t even recognize, having not studied it as I did for
Ring of Secrets).
Then they helped me out by making it very clear–adultery ain’t cool, man. Especially when it’s (a) not accurate to history, (b) unnecessary, and (c) used to try to appeal to the viewers.
In a previous post after the first episode, I’d noted (with no complaints) some of the ways the show was fictionalizing history. And I’m quite obviously FINE with fictionalizing history, LOL. At first, I thought they were doing a grand job of doing so, too. They were putting key players together who really weren’t in reality, but that was okay. It was the for the sake of tension, and I really liked how they played off each other.
But here’s where they failed. They took the historical figure of Abraham Woodhull, who was in reality a farmer with firm Patriot roots who took great
Joy in pulling the wool over the British’s eyes, and turned him into a character who wasn’t sure what he believed, who was constantly changing his mind, and who had to be bullied into his role in the Culper Ring. Worse, they took a man of strong faith and made him a murderer, an adulterer, and absent any moral compass.
The Abraham Woodhull I read about in Washington’s Spies was a wee bit skittish, had opinions he shared too freely in his letters to Washington, but was a good man. A likeable man. One I cheered for when reading history.
I don’t want to cheer for Turn’s Abe anymore.
Largely because of the adultery. In reality, Abe wasn’t married at the time. In reality, Anna Strong was a decade older than him, never a love interest. And while fiction-writer-Roseanna is all for introducing a made-up romance (ahem), why why WHY did they have to make it result in adultery??
Anna, at least, thought her husband dead. But Abe. Why give him a wife, just to have him cheat on her? And why did the show assume that would make viewers like them? I guess their thought was to appeal to our desire for love. Yes, we can feel sorry for a character who married a girl he didn’t even know for noble reasons and then was still pulled toward his childhood sweetheart. But appealing to our base instincts–the ones that say Feeling is more important than commitment. What you want is more important than what’s right. The pleasurable is more important than the noble.–doesn’t work. A good TV show will portray a character’s failings in a way that makes us want them to be better. In a way that makes us ask ourselves what we’d do if put in such an impossible situation. In a way that makes us see the noble in the ignoble.
I didn’t see that here. Instead, I saw the noble be eclipsed by the ignoble.
And they missed a key ingredient–guilt. People falter, people make mistakes, and I’m all for using that in a fictionalized story (even if it’s a mistake the historical figures didn’t make). But the story would have been richer if Anna and Abe felt some remorse for what they’d done instead of basically flaunting it for all to see. Can you imagine the outrage in a small New England town if he really dueled for her? If she really jumped out of her husband’s boat and ran straight back into his arms?
In my opinion, that plot thread would have served the story much better had they left it at sexual tension. Have the Christmas scene where they almost falter, where Mr. Baker (best character they wrote!) interrupts. Leave that simmering between them, but give Abe a bit of a backbone. Have him care at least a little bit what he does to his family.
And that is, in my humble opinion, the other failure of the show. Abe isn’t driven. Abe has no backbone. Oh, he takes a few risks…but they’re not rooted in conviction.
What I love about the real historical Culper Ring is that they’re all about conviction. They lack skill, they lack professionalism, they lack training–but they definitely, 100% have a deep-down, scared-but-willing belief in what they’re doing. That, even before the adultery schtick, was what I was missing from the show. By all means, have them run scared now and then (the real people did). Have them second-guess whether they should pass something along for fear of getting caught (the real people did). Have them drive Washington slightly mad with their caution (the real people did). But give them the right heart.
The heart was what turned the real people into real, ordinary heroes.
The heart was what made me ask myself Would I be strong enough to do the same?
The heart is what has the potential to make viewers cheer through failures and setbacks and threat and victories.
Don’t strip the characters of it.
Will I watch next season? Probably. Because I really, really, really want them to redeem this story. I want to like the characters, and I want them to eventually tell the story of the Culpers I love. But I gotta say, I’m disappointed. I had high hopes, I was ready to love this show and shout about it to the world. And instead, I spent a lot of episodes sighing and shaking my head.
And now I’m down to a hope for improvement next season.
Fingers crossed that Abe gets a backbone, conviction comes to call, and they find a new character to give a bit of morality to now that they killed off the one who had it before.
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.