by Roseanna White | Feb 22, 2017 | Author Interviews and Guest Posts
Last Friday, my morning was interrupted by some terrible news. Golden Keyes Parsons had been killed the evening before in a tragic traffic accident. My heart still aches at this news. It would have regardless, but especially because I’d just exchanged emails with Golden a couple hours before the accident. I had a Skype call scheduled with her book club for this past Monday. The same day I was sending her edits on her book, The Gift of the Inn, that WhiteFire is scheduled to publish this autumn, in time for Christmas.
Sudden loss is always hard. I can only imagine how her family is feeling right now–Golden was a woman of deep beauty, inside and out, who loved nothing as much as her family. This was clear within minutes of talking to her. She was a woman who loved her Lord and believed first and foremost in doing the work He called her to do–also clear in a single conversation with this amazing lady. She leaves behind her a true legacy of love and light and service. It was an honor to know her.
I met Golden online many years ago. We were both members of an off-shoot of ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers) called HisWriters, that was for writers of European-set historicals. I had my biblicals set in Rome and was working on the series that eventually became Ladies of the Manor. Golden had just contracted her Darkness to Light Series with Thomas Nelson, about the Huguenots of 17th century France, following a family through trials and tribulations that eventually led them to America.
Waaaaaaay back in 2009, when I was re-releasing
A Stray Drop of Blood as a paperback, I asked Golden if she would read the book for me, to endorse it. She agreed and provided an encouraging quote for me to use–and then asked a question. She asked if WhiteFire was accepting submissions from other writers. She had a series of Biblical novellas she’d always wanted to write, and
Stray Drop made her think it would pair well with WhiteFire.
She was the first author friend to ask this question. In the last 8 years, WhiteFire has signed nearly 30 authors, and she was one of the first few. We published her Hidden Faces series, those four biblical novellas about the unnamed women of the Gospels. So not only did I get to know Golden as a fellow writer, as a friend, but she became one of my authors, and I her editor. Which was so hilarious to me at the time, as I still felt like a kid in comparison to her.
As the WhiteFire list grew, our authors became a bit of a family themselves. And Golden always called herself “the grandmother of the WhiteFire crew.” She was always there to pray with us, to encourage us. She always, always proved herself a woman of grace and wisdom.
A few months ago, her agent contacted us about another book Golden wanted to place with us–this one set in Colorado during World War II. We ended up contracting The Gift of the Inn, a Christmas story about reunion and love. Given that edits were underway, I’d been talking to Golden a good bit about her book, her website, her vision. So looking forward to bringing life to another of her dreams.
Tragedy will always leave holes in our lives; that’s part of existing here on Earth. Everyone who loved Golden can take solace in the sure knowledge that she’s with her Father in heaven. But we’ll miss her. And we’ll remember. And we’ll do all we can to honor the name and memory of a woman who epitomized a good Christian, a good person, a good writer.
I am proud to have counted myself her friend.
by Roseanna White | Feb 20, 2017 | Word of the Week
Another special request today, though there isn’t quite as much information on it as there was on last week’s . . .
The questions was where the expression “the dickens” comes from.
Well, the answer’s a bit unclear. What we know is that it’s an English last name, taken from Richard. We’re not sure which Richard, or why the name became an exclamation; Skakespeare used the expression “I cannot tell what the dickens his name is.” (“Merry Wives of Windsor” Act 3, Scene 2), in which it’s clear that it’s a substitute for “the devil.” As for why? [Insert shrug here] Best guess by the Oxford English Dictionary is that it’s simply because it sounds similar.
There’s another bit of history surrounding it too, to account for some of its early uses. Apparently in the 1500s there was a maker of wooden bowls who was rather infamous for losing money, to the degree that much literature of the 1500s would refer to bad investments as “bad as Dickens.”
Whatever the why, modern readers can be assured it has nothing to do with the Dickens with whom we are most familiar–Charles–as it predates him by several hundred years. 😉
by Roseanna White | Feb 15, 2017 | 20th Century, Remember When Wednesdays
This week marked my self-appointed deadline for beginning my next book. I just realized that An Hour Unpsent is not only the third book in the Shadows Over England Series (which begins July 2017), but it will also be my 16th published novel…and my 34th finished novel (we’ll just assume I’ll complete it, LOL). Which means that, assuming I finish writing it before my birthday, it’ll have the distinction of making it so that I’ve written a book for every year I’ve lived. Looking forward to outdoing that number. 😉
But as I began writing, I quickly realized that while I have my plot largely figured out, I had only a vague impression of my characters. Very vague, which is unusual for me lately. Especially given that the hero, Barclay Pearce, has been in both of the first two books of the series. But my only physical descriptions of him are that he’s average looking until he smiles, at which point he’s nearly too-handsome to blend in–and blending in is always his goal.
So last night, I recruited my husband, who pays more attention than I do to all things TV, to help me find the perfect actors to play my characters. Sometimes it’s fun to pretend like I’m a casting director. So here we are. Casting for An Hour Unspent.
First up was finding an actor to play Barclay. After much thumbing through IMDB on his phone and hemming and hawing and joking, he pulled up the Downton cast and said, “What about him?” to Dan Stevens.
Now, I’d watched the first season at Downton, so I knew him as Matthew Crawley…and he wasn’t quite it. But when I looked up his images on his own and saw the photos from the new Beauty and the Beast, I changed my tune.
Yep. This is how I’d been picturing Barclay. Thin face, sandy blond-brown hair. Not given to smiling, though he’s a joker. I hadn’t yet nailed down his eye color, so we’ll just go with Dan’s blue. 😉
But I had even less of a clue about my heroine Evelina, who’s new to the series. I know she’s rather pretty. That she’s a suffragette. Sweet, but also with a backbone of steal and a fierce independent streak. After a bout of polio as a child left her with a limp, she’s had to fight tooth and nail for that independence, too.
So what would she look like? No. Clue. I’m still not 100% sure I’ve nailed it, but . . . well, this morning I was browsing images of English actresses. I honestly hadn’t even chosen a hair color for her, so I had nothing to go on. I was just looking for images that caught my eye and found one of Jane Levy that said, “I am the daughter of clockmaker who’s always running late.” 😉
Something in her expression caught me, so at the moment I’m casting Jane as my Evelina Manning.
Auburn hair and blue eyes? Sure. Why not. 😉 (Interestingly, this will mark my first series where I didn’t have a blond, a brunette, and a redhead as my 3 heroines, LOL.)
So what do you think? Any other suggestions for Barclay, my thief extraordinaire who has patched together a dozen orphans over the years to call his family? For Evelina, my suffragette who sees herself as the only out-of-balance gear in the perfect clockwork of the Manning household?
Regardless, stay tuned for more hints about the story as I get deeper into it!
The challenge:
to steal an hour from Big Ben’s clock
The means:
a distracted clockmaker with a fascination with weaponry
The complication:
the perpetually-late clockmaker’s daughter
who isn’t about to let a little thing like war get in the way of her cause
by Roseanna White | Feb 13, 2017 | Word of the Week
Another Word of the Week request! (Love those–keep ’em coming!) This week for frank as an adjective–made by someone of that name. 😉
Frank is taken directly from the people group, the Franks, who took over Gaul in the Middle Ages and named it for themselves (hence, France). At this time in history, you were either free, captive, or slave–so in this area, the only free people were the invaders, the conquerors. The Franks. Therefore, frank came to mean free.
By about 1300, the word had entered English, still carrying the meaning given it by the tribal group in Europe–“free, liberal, generous.”
So if you want to be frank with someone, or to speak frankly, it’s all because a group of people who called themselves the Franks invaded Gaul in the 400s, defeating the Huns and taking over part of what had recently been the Roman empire.
Side note on Paris–in the Roman days, there was a fort along the Seine called Lutetia Parisiorium. When one of the Frankish kings, Clovis, decided he would unite all the tribes into one nation, this is where he set up his capitol in 481. He simply shortened the Roman name of the fort to Paris and called it his city–and it’s been the capital of France ever since!
by Roseanna White | Feb 7, 2017 | Author Interviews and Guest Posts, Books, Scavenger Hunt
Welcome to the Lost Girl of Astor Street Scavenger Hunt!
We’re here today to celebrate the release of the most awesome young adult novel I’ve read in years: The Lost Girl of Astor Street by Stephanie Morrill
What makes the book so awesome? Well, I’m glad you asked.
Your clue for Stop #25: motives.
If you’ve gone through the entire Hunt,
then this is the last clue,
and you ought to have created a sentence.
Enter it here
for your chance at the prize!
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.