by Roseanna White | Jun 22, 2016 | Giveaways and Contests, Remember When Wednesdays
It’s time for the June tea party at Colonial Quills! We just realized my April release, The Reluctant Duchess, hadn’t been featured in one yet, so I got in on the fun. =)
The main action will take place on the CQ blog, where we’re virtually dining at the Jefferson Hotel. Just head over there to leave comments for the participating authors, which will enter you in the many giveaways!
THEN . . . come chat with us live on Facebook! The Facebook party will run from 5-8, and I’ll be kicking it off at 5:00 on the dot. Bring your questions, comments, and silly statements, along with a picture of what you’ll be wearing to our virtual tea party. (I’ll be hunting up my tea gown for the day too!)
Hope to see you around the Colonial Quills sites today!
by Roseanna White | Jun 20, 2016 | Word of the Week
Tab is a little word with a long history. I looked it up to check on the age of the phrase “keep tabs on” and found that the word itself goes back to Middle English, where it meant “a small strip or flap of material,” interchangeable with tag. From the mid-1400s on, that was the word’s sole meaning for hundreds of years. It began to be used as a verb in 1872, when it simply meant “to affix a tab to something,” again as an alteration of tag.
It wasn’t until the 1880s that tab also took on the meaning of “an account, bill, check,” and this came about, it’s thought, as a shortening of tabulation rather than anything to do with the original word. Or perhaps a shortening of tablet–as in, the paper that you write on. Regardless, this is where my phrase came from. It’s a figurative sense of this tab, but was originally used only in the singular–you would “keep a tab on someone” from about 1890 on.
Tab, as in the key on a typewriter or computer, is from 1916. As a verb meaning “to designate, label, or name,” it’s from 1924.
So in some ways, this word has a downright ancient history…but in other ways, it’s surprisingly modern!
by Roseanna White | Jun 16, 2016 | Thoughtful Thursdays
It’s a busy week here in the White House. David’s birthday was on Sunday (and I’d like to give a big shout-out of thanks to the Penguins for winning the Stanley Cup that day, which made a fantastic birthday present for that die-hard fan. When they won, I looked over and said, “Happy birthday! See what I got you?” Oh yeah. All me. 😉 Ahem.) Friday is our 15th anniversary. Sunday is my sister’s birthday and Father’s Day.
Yes, much to celebrate this week. And as I look over at that man I love so much, I know I’ve already said many, many times how much I love him. I’ve mused endlessly over the years about love and anniversaries and how I wouldn’t change a thing.
And I still wouldn’t change a thing. Just the other day, we were talking about how we’re at the age where people look back on their teen years and think, “What in the world was I thinking?” But I don’t. I still look back on my teen years and nod. I knew what I was thinking and doing. I was responsible. I was mature. I was determined. And I was right. I think I’ve earned the privilege of saying so at this point, LOL.
See, the world told us then that we were too young to get married. We were too young to know what we wanted. We were just too young, and we’d pay for it. We had people aplenty saying it wouldn’t last and asking us why we didn’t just live together.
And I shook my head, anger rising. I shake my still, and still feel that anger. This world, that condemns so quickly, is so very off. This world deems it acceptable to sleep with someone but risky to commit. This world tells young people that they can’t make decisions to stay with one person for the rest of their life, but they can decide to give their bodies to countless people if they so choose.
This world is backward.
And it still frustrates me when I hear people saying, “You’re too young to be thinking about dating so seriously. You think you’re in love, but you don’t know what love is. It won’t stand the test of time. Do you have any idea how few people actually stay married to their high school sweetheart?”
But think how different our world might look if we taught our kids what real love looks like–sacrificial and brave, selfless and strong–rather than telling them they can’t recognize it. Think what our world might look like if we taught children to make good decisions rather than telling them they don’t know how. Think of what it could mean if we gave them confidence in who they are rather than telling them all their lives that they don’t know their own minds and can’t be trusted.
Think how different the world would be if we taught people to respect marriage as something created to make us holy rather than to use it as a tool to gain our own happiness.
Because a good marriage has nothing to do with the age of the people going in. It has to do with the emotional maturity of the people going in. And we live in a world where emotional immaturity is the order of the day. We live in a world that preaches personal happiness above all. We live in a world of “You’re Worth It” and “Put Yourself First.” These are antithetical to a good marriage. A good marriage is about telling the other person that he is worth the sacrifice. It’s about putting her first. It’s about going through each day asking, not “What’s in it for me?” but, “What can I do for you?” It’s about knowing that God didn’t design this sacred union to make you happy–He designed it to draw you closer to Him and to make you stronger together than you can be apart.
Do I think most 18-year-olds today are ready for marriage? Um, no. But it has nothing to do with how long they’ve been on this earth and everything to do with how they’ve spent the time they’ve had here. I think 150 years ago, 18-year-olds were absolutely ready for marriage. I think 350 years ago, 18-year-olds were considered past their prime. I think much of our opinion on this comes from the very newfangled idea of adolescence and teen years and the place we’ve given that oddity in our society. Historically, this idea of in-between didn’t exist. There were children. There were adults. You were one, then you were another. The goal of the first was to prepare them to be the second. These days, we hurry our children through those early years (put them in school earlier and earlier, teach them to read earlier and earlier, cut back on play time…), but then we tell them to slow down (you’re too young for that, you don’t understand this, it’s just your hormones, not your heart…). Is it any wonder kids are confused? We rush them out of the time they should spend a few more years in, but then we tell them to put on the brakes. We’ve created a limbo for our young people that has no responsibility and yet huge expectations.
If I had my “druthers,” society would focus on teaching youth to handle responsibility rather than telling them they can’t. We’d teach them to think and reason rather than to react with nothing but emojis. We’d teach them to look ahead rather than to hit the backspace key. And we’d stop judging maturity based on how many years a person has lived and start judging it based on the decisions they make.
The world told me I was too young to get engaged at 17. Too young to get married at 18. The world thought I should have just given my body to the man I loved, that that would have been more responsible than waiting for sex and marrying young. The world told me it wouldn’t last, and that marriage is a failure unless I’m 100% happy every day.
The world is stupid.
I wasn’t too young. I made the right choices. And while I would indeed say that I’m happy a huge majority of the time, it’s because I know that happiness isn’t to be found in what I get–it’s to be found in what I give. And because my husband and I both understand this and both deem it worth fighting for, we’ve got 15 years under our belts already.
There are bumps in the road. Facing them has nothing to do with how old we are–it has to do with Whose hand we put ours in as we do. Each other’s…and God’s.
by Roseanna White | Jun 15, 2016 | Remember When Wednesdays
Sometimes the publishing industry seems a little strange. A Lady Unrivaled is getting it’s final copy edits at Bethany House, in preparation for being sent to press so it can release in September. A Name Unknown is going through its first edits there now. I have turned in my synopsis for approval for the second London Shadows book, A Song Unheard, and am doing research for that one now . . . even though it’s a year and a half before it’ll come out.
As I’m brainstorming characters and plots for this new book that I’ll begin writing soon, I realize that a lot of my planning takes the shape of contradictions or oddities. For instance . . .
In A Lady Unrivaled, my characters are:
A young lady who has always been enamored with romantic tales who . . .
Is afraid to trust her own judgement and fall in love.
A gentleman who is ashamed of his past and determined to be a better man, but who . . .
Will never confess the truth of who he is and his artistic “habits” to anyone.
A ballerina willing to do absolutely anything to hold onto the life she fought to achieve, but who . . .
Can never get her Russian grandmother’s voice out of her head.
Then we have A Name Unknown, where the characters are:
One of London’s best thieves on a mission to steal information from a wealthy gent in Cornwall, but who . . .
Has a sense of justice that insists she fight for someone being wronged, even if she intends to wrong him too.
A best-selling adventure novelist with a heart of gold and an enormous faith, but who . . .
Can’t put a coherent sentence together when speaking and is contemplating changing his name to avoid political fallout.
So now, here I am planning out A Song Unheard. Thus far, my characters are:
A former urchin and current thief who . . .
Is also a violin prodigy, sent into an orchestra to steal from its lead violinist.
The most brilliant cryptanalyst (code breaker) in Europe who . . .
Is only an eleven-year-old girl.
A charming violinist accustomed to smiling at the right people to achieve his aims who . . .
Is nursing a gunshot wound from an attempt to rescue his little sister (see above).
See now, that last one doesn’t come off quite how I want him to, LOL. I’m still figuring out my suave Lukas De Wilde, discovering what makes him ticks and motivates him. The idea of having him be injured actually just came to me the other day–through the book, he’s going to be fighting to save his sister and mother from the German occupation of Belgium. But I had to figure out why he hadn’t done so already.
I rather like the answer that he tried–and failed. And is still feeling the effects of that failure. Effects that will, happily for me but not for him (mwa ha ha ha), also impact his career, in which he’s put his hopes of future success in his endeavors. He has to play, to earn money to go back to Belgium for another rescue attempt. But playing becomes difficult when one has a serious wound in one’s shoulder…
So there you have it–a peek into how story shapes up in my mind around characters . . . and their contradictions.
by Roseanna White | Jun 13, 2016 | Word of the Week
No, I don’t have a headache. Not today. 😉 But this a word I’d looked up to make sure I could use it in a 1914 setting, so I thought I’d share the interesting pharmaceutical history that went along with it.
Aspirin was a trademarked name, created in 1899 by German chemist Heinrich Dreser. It’s from the Latin spiraea, or “meadow-sweet,” the plant from which it’s derived.
Here’s the interesting bit. According to German law, prescriptions had to be filled exactly as written. So chemist companies would trademark very easily-made drugs that were made from common items, using household names for things that were easy for doctors to remember. Doctors would then write a prescription, and they would have to be filled as written. No generics for them! So these companies were then making a lot of money from very simple items.
I find it interesting that, in the U.S. at least, “aspirin” is certainly not considered a brand name; it’s the rather generic name for that type of medicine, which any company can then make. I wonder if the same is true these days in Germany…
~*~
On a totally unrelated note, the paperback of A Stray Drop of Blood is finally available on Amazon again!
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. Having successfully launched two homeschool grads, she now spends her time writing fiction, 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, as well as a fantasy series and contemporary mysteries and romances. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.