by Roseanna White | Jan 21, 2015 | Remember When Wednesdays, Uncategorized
Some years, WhiteFire has a lot of contemporary titles…other years, a lot of historicals. This year is shaping up to be history-filled. And of course, I have my new historical series beginning with Bethany House in September. So for me, 2015 is going to be a year full of history!
I thought it would be fun to give you a peek at what will be filling my calendar for the year. =)
APRIL
Gathered Waters
by Cara Luecht
I’ve already shared a bit about this one when I did a cover design post on it last August. (
View the post here.) In short,
Gathered Waters is set in the late 19th century, following some of the first Swedish Baptists from their home in Sweden to America. This book is a beautiful glimpse into what defines us, where we draw our lines in the sand, and what we’re willing to sacrifice for our faith.
~*~
JUNE
The Sound of Diamonds
Steadfast Love Series, Book 1
by Rachelle Rea
Set in the Elizabethan days, The Sound of Diamonds is about a Catholic lady who has taken refuge at a convent in Holland after her parents’ murders…only to be caught up in the Iconoclastic Fury, when Dutch protestants hunted down any Catholics they could find and killed them, setting fire to Catholic churches and monasteries and nunneries. She has to get home–but the only man who can help her is the one she hates above all the world–the man wanted for the murder of her parents.
Adventure, romance, and look into a little-known side of the great Catholic/Protestant struggle…oh yes. =)
~*~
SEPTEMBER
Ladies of the Manor, Book 1
by Me (Bethany House)
I should be getting my cover for
The Lost Heiress very soon–for now, this is my very much unofficial title image, just so I have an image to post. š
I have official catalog copy for this now, so here it is!
Brook Eden has never known where she truly belongs.
Though raised in the palace of Monaco, sheās British by birth and was brought
to the Grimaldis under suspicious circumstances as a babe. When Brookās friend
Justin uncovers the fact that Brook is likely a missing heiress from Yorkshire,
Brook leaves the sun of the Mediterranean to travel to the moors of the North
Sea to the estate of her supposed family.
The mystery of her motherās death haunts her, and though
her father is quick to accept her, the rest of the family and the servants of
Whitby Park are not. Only when Brookās life is threatened do they draw
closeābut their loyalty may come too late to save Brook from the same threat
that led to tragedy for her mother.
As heir to a dukedom, Justin is no stranger to balancing
responsibilities. When the matters of his estate force him far from Brook, the
distance between them reveals that what began as friendship has grown into
something much more. But how can their very different loyalties and
responsibilities ever come together?
And then, for a second time, the heiress of Whitby Park is stolen away
because of the very rare treasure in her possessionāand this time only the
servants of Whitby can save her.
~*~
OCTOBER
A Fair to Remember
The World’s Fair Series, Book 1
by Suzie Johnson
Let’s all admire the beauty of this cover photo–for which I can take no credit. š The heroine of A Fair to Remember looks like the famous Edwardian actress, Lily Elsie. The above photo is of said actress…but colorized by a very talented Czech artist who granted us permission to use this one, and who will be colorizing old photos for the second two books in the series too! We’re all very excited about using actual Edwardian photographs, given a modern twist, for these. =)
We’re really excited about the concept of this series too. Each of the 3 books will be set during one of the World’s Fairs of the early 20th century, beginning with the Pan-American expo in Buffalo, New York, where the president was shot…
The series will combine history and romance with a bit of suspense, and I for one can’t wait to get my hands on it. š
~*~
OCTOBER
The Sound of Silver
Steadfast Love Series, Book 2
by Rachelle Rea
The cover for this is done, but not revealed yet…so you’re just getting a wee little glimpse here. š
The Sound of Silver will be the continuing adventure of Gwyn and Dirk from
The Sound of Diamonds, taking the reader into the questions of new love and faith, and the price of proving one’s innocence.
~*~
NOVEMBER
by Yours Truly
I also already shared a bit about this one in my cover design post from just a little while ago. (
View the post here.) =)
Giver of Wonders will be the story of St. Nicholas that led to one of our beloved Christmas traditions–gifts in stockings–but will of course not be all about Nick himself. It will instead focus on the recipient of his gift, my fictionalized heroine named Cyprus and her twin sisters, Alexandria and Rhoda. A story of sacrificial love and the boundlessness of faith, this will be another installment of the Visibullis family’s story.
It’s going to be quite a year! And that’s not even looking at the contemporaries and non-fiction on our plate. š
by Roseanna White | Jan 19, 2015 | Word of the Week
A week or two ago, my best friend sent me one of those hilarious “someecards” photos on Pinterest that totally sums up my outlook on housework.
I love this. But I’m also enough of a grammarian that I had to point out the typo, LOL.
I was in college, reading all the ancient Greeks with their love of flattening opposing cities, when I came upon the word raze. While raise means “lift up,” the homophone raze means “tear down.” Don’t you just love English?? LOL
Apparently raze, which dates to about 1540, is an alteration of rasen, a 14th century word coming from Old French that meant “to scratch, slash, erase.” We see that meaning preserved in erase, which is quite closely related (who knew?).
Raise, on the other hand, comes from a Scandinavian source, likely Old Norse. It dates from about 1200 and has always meant what it means now, in the physical sense. The meaning like “raise from the dead” comes from a literal “make higher” that is taken from that physical sense, and is from about 1300. “Increase the amount” joined the fray in 1500s, usually speaking of money or price. “Bring up a question” dates from the 1640s. In the 1660s it was also applied to growing crops. It was applied to rearing children in about 1744 (though not everywhere–apparently American Southerners used it to speak of breeding slaves, and Northerners wouldn’t use it of children at all, only of crops.) And finally, in the 1820s, it became a phrase used in playing cards.
by Roseanna White | Jan 15, 2015 | Remember When Wednesdays, Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
I often, like many others, pray for a word for the new year as the old one draws to a close. Unlike most people I know who do this, I don’t generally get my word before the year begins, LOL. Instead, mine seems to come the first time I go to church in the new year. Don’t ask me why, but that’s the pattern. š This year, we were iced out of our first service of the year, so this past weekend was our first church of 2015. And lo and behold, on the drive in, it hit me.
Deliberate.
This is an idea that has been coming at me from every direction in recent months. Our church is going from a branch church to a full member of our conference this year (hopefully), which requires that we examine our constitution and by-laws and make any changes we feel are necessary. As we spent hours pouring over this foundational document in recent months, there it was: be deliberate. We were engaged in a rather sacred endeavor, establishing how our church is to run until someone takes it upon themselves to change the constitution. We were setting up education, membership, and business practices. We had to be deliberate in how we did this, and where we wanted the focus to be. We had to be deliberate in giving the authority to whom it belongs. Ultimately God, and then those who follow Him.
It came up again in our Bible study that we have with friends. We’re beginning a new study on parenting, were talking the other night about how we educate our children (those present on Friday were all homeschoolers). And it hit me again. Be deliberate.
What does that mean?
Well, it means that I’m not to be washed to and fro by the currents of the day. I’m not to just go with the flow. I’m not to do something just because it’s how it’s done. I’m not to call things “good enough” and leave them. I’m not to do things thoughtlessly, by rote.
In my world, there’s a lot of routine, a lot of habit. All well and good…but not enough. Because I don’t just want to be a leader, or a follower of God, or a writer, or a friend. I want to raise leaders. True followers of God. Focused and determined people. A man and a woman who know the value of friendship, of honesty, of sacrifice.
Will they learn just by observing? To a point…yes. But also no.
This is another something my husband and I were just discussing, as he reads the works of John Lake, a truly great evangelist whose teachings helped found several worldwide denominations. David had just gotten to the chapters where Lake was mourning the death of the movement he had helped begin. Where he was looking at these floundering church groups and realizing that there was no one to take up the mantle. That they had assumed, he and his colleagues, that others would follow like them, ready to lead and continue the work.
But there was no one.
I mused, as we spoke of this, that perhaps it was because great leaders are often so focused on their calling that they’re not focused on raising up the next generation. Because they believe (idealistically–not badly, but not realistically) that just as they watched and were convicted and accepted a call, so will others be. They think they need to be always on the front lines, not behind them teaching those who come next.
We’ve been talking a lot about how to change a culture slip-sliding its way into decay. But you know what? No matter what answers we come to, they won’t matter unless we also figure out how to keep it. Unless we figure out how to teach our kids that there’s no such thing as “the way things are.” There’s just “the way things are going right now.”
You can see it over and again in history–one generation feels a deep conviction, makes changes. They set up a society in a given way, and raise their children in it. But then, to those children, it’s just the way it is. They don’t remember the reasons. They live it, but they don’t teach their children anything but the “facts” of their world…and so those children rebel. Go astray. Decide they’d rather taste this other way.
Because no one is deliberate.
We need to be! Oh, how we need to be. Because it doesn’t take long–a generation, two at the most–for religion to take the place of faith. For prejudice and judgment to overcome us. For ideals to be overwhelmed by rules. It has happened countless times in the church, it has happened in society, it has happened in our schools. Good intentions slowly morph into legalism until the original intent is buried so far beneath the mountain of words no one can even remember what it is anymore.
I want to raise my children with deliberation. I want to raise them not to believe the lies of the world. The lies that say there’s only so much we can do, so much we can change. The lies that things are what they are. NO. I want my kids to fully understand that the world, their culture, their lives are ever-changing and always able to be influenced. That their God is bigger than the enemy. That they can do all things through the strength of Christ. I want them to know that there’s no such thing as second-generation faith. They need their own.
How to teach them this? Well not by a lesson in church every week and nothing else, that’s for sure. Not just by setting an example. No, sorry–if I’m going to teach them these important life-lessons, then it’s going to have to be through deliberate choices. Deliberate guidance. Deliberate words given at deliberate moments to usher them along their own path. Not mine. Theirs.
As a homeschooling mom, I’m not sure if this sacred charge is easier or harder. On the one hand, it’s far more difficult because I’m with them every moment of every day–and it’s hard to be deliberate 24/7. But then, it might be easier, because I know what they’re being exposed to every moment of every day. I know what conversations to have when. There are no surprises when they get home from school and say, “Well Jake said that…”
When I pray for a word for the year, I don’t always get one. But when I do, it’s never just a word for the
year. It’s a word for my life, forever. Like “
Shine“–I’m still living that one, working on it. “Deliberate” is going to have to be the same way.
Because if I want to be a woman of faith, I have to choose it every moment of every day. I have to make a conscious effort to listen to Him, to walk in His power and truth. If I want to be a mother who raises children who understand this, I have to deliberately foster them in their growth. I need to not accept pre-boxed, ready-made answers and instead encourage and help them in finding their own. I need to make sure they understand that faith is work.
I think a question for the ages might be “How do you overcome generational decay?” And I believe this is the answer: by not assuming our kids will understand what we’ve come to learn. By not thinking “just living it” is enough. No. We have to be deliberate–otherwise all we build will be forgotten.
Stone man photo credit: Travis S. via photopin cc
Winding road photo credit: bobarcpics via photopin cc
by Roseanna White | Jan 13, 2015 | Uncategorized
I posted in November about the photoshoot we did for an upcoming WhiteFire title by Rachelle Rea. Well, today the cover for The Sound of Diamonds goes live and will be revealed around the web! Kicking it off is a blog on how I designed it at Go Teen Writers.
Are you ready?
…
… Set?
…
… Here it is!
Check out the full how-I-did-it on GTW!!!
Curious what it’s about? Here’s the (not final) blurb.
In Reformation-era England, a converted rogue wants to restore his honor
at whatever cost. Running from a tortured past, Dirk Godfrey knows he
has only one chance at redemption.
An independent Catholic maiden
seeking refuge in the Low Countries finds herself at the center of the
Iconoclastic Fury. Jaded by tragedy, Gwyneth’s only hope of getting home
is to trust the man she hates, and she soon discovers her poor vision
is not the only thing that has been blinding her.
But the home
Gwyneth knew is not what she once thought. When a dark secret and a
twisted plot for power collide in a castle masquerading as a haven, will
the saint and the sinner hold to hope…or be overcome?
You can find The Sounds of Diamonds for pre-order on Amazon. The book will release June 15.
by Roseanna White | Jan 12, 2015 | Word of the Week
Last week, I made some truly beautiful southern-style biscuits (click the photo for the recipe). And oh, how delicious they were!! Of course, this being my family, the mere bread itself wasn’t the only thing we worked on. My awesome children also had to ask, “So if they call cookies biscuits in England…then what do they call biscuits?”
I know I have some English followers, so perhaps Elisabeth will chime in (hi, Elisabeth! LOL), but from my research, here’s what I found. As I stood there with flour on my shirt, the table still a mess, and my lovely white rounds rising in the oven. š
The current spelling of biscuit is from the 19th century–earlier it was bisket (16th century) or besquite (14th century). It comes from the Old French besquit, a word from the 12th century that literally meant “twice cooked.” The idea of a baked good actually came about in the French because it was so close a cognate with the Italian biscotto, which meant “(bread) twice baked.”
The American biscuit is first recorded in about 1818. Our idea of calling the baked sweet cookie was taken from the Dutch koekje, which means “little cake.” (You will in fact find many colonial recipes for things like “little sugar cakes”…which are just sugar cookies.)
But to answer my kids’ original question, I had to keep looking. What do they call our biscuits?? Well, there are scones…but scones are generally sweet, not the type of thing to dip in soup. Rolls are yeasty, as are buns.
So we eventually found this answer: the American biscuit just exist elsewhere, LOL, so there’s no name for it. There we go. š And now I’m hungry!
Be sure to stop by tomorrow for links to a cover reveal for another of my designs!!
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, sheās 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 booksā¦to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary. 