by Roseanna White | Jul 1, 2013 | Giveaways and Contests, Word of the Week
Much as I can’t believe it, there is only ONE MONTH before the release of Whispers from the Shadows, book 2 in the Culper Ring Series!
Man, the last six months have flown by!!
And you know what? I still have boxes and boxes of Ring of Secrets sitting here, just waiting to find happy homes. So…how better to get them into eager hands than with a massive giveaway??
Excellent question. Answer: there is no better way. 😉
So [insert trumpet blare here], allow me to introduce the great, the magnificent
30 Days of Giveaways!!
Each and every day for the month of July, I’ll be giving away 1 copy of Ring of Secrets (if you already own RoS, you can have another of my books. If you have them all, then someone else’s). PLUS, once a week (drawn on Friday), I’ll be giving away a bonus gift. First up:
A $15 gift card to Bath & Body Works
Now…confession. This giveaway has an ulterior motive *gasp*. No, not that I want to suck you into my series with book 1 and thereby cajole you into ordering book 2. Well, I man, obviously that, but it’s not what I mean. 😉 I’d also love to get y’all talking more on the blog. So. If you think I’m discontinuing my normal blogging…think again.
Did you know that Mondays are Word of the Week days around here? Seriously! And this is the sort of fun we have on Mondays.
Today–nickname. Ever wonder where that word came from? No, not from all the Nicholases that came to be called Nick. 😉 Nope. It’s from eke.
Wouldn’t have guessed, would you? But it is. Eke, which means “to lengthen or supplement” (usually laboriously), was added to “name” back centuries ago as an “additional” name. But over time, “eke-name” got shifted and mispronounced and became “nickname.”
Fun, eh?
So my question to you today is:
What’s the funniest/strangest/sweetest nickname you’ve ever been called?
My answer: Boat. Wanna figure out how I got that one?
Now–get entering! And don’t forget to come back tomorrow for Day 2, and more fun stuff. =)
a Rafflecopter giveaway
by Roseanna White | Jun 27, 2013 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
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| The Dentist by Gerard van Honthorst, 1622 |
I can say in complete honestly that yesterday evening was just terrible. As in, took me all night to recover. Why, you ask? Because my daughter has a loose tooth.
Now, Xoe has lost four teeth already, and they were FINE. No pain, little bleeding, no prob’m. Yesterday, this tooth twisted into a very funny position and hurt every time she touched it. And my brave little princess who withstood a broken elbow with nary a whimper had a complete meltdown over this. As in, four solid hours of crying. And what really got me was what she was crying: “Get it out, get it out–but don’t touch it.”
Last night, I broke out all the philosophy and truisms I could think of. Though reasoning with a panicked 7-year-old…yeah, um, didn’t accomplish anything. But oh, how it got me thinking.
Because that, right there, is so often me. Not over the physical ouchies, those I can handle. But when we dig deeper–oh yeah. I can imagine God in the same agony I was in last evening, wanting so much to help me while I thrash around insisting He make it go away but not DO anything.
At one point last night, I said to my sweet girl, “Doing nothing will never accomplish anything. Ever. If you want something to change, you have to do something.”
Yet how often do we complain about something in our lives, beg and plead for God to change it, but then sit on our duffs and cry “Stop!” at the first twinge of unease? And much like tooth v. elbow, I’m not talking about the Big Stuff. I’m talking about the everyday.
We want to see our enterprises, our churches, our businesses, our online presences grow…but we don’t want to give up our time, resources, ideas, or prayers to achieve it. We are, in those moments, nothing but screaming children who can’t see our own hypocrisy. Caught in our own inertia, paralyzed by our own fear…or exhaustion…or hunger.
Because we’re hungry. We’re so, so hungry that we feel we can’t move. We want more…or better…or different…and we can see it. We can see the others who sell more, grow more, give more, get more. Why can’t we? Why hasn’t God given us the desires of our heart?
After dealing with a little one who refused food or drink half the day from fear, I have new insight into that. Our beloved Father isn’t withholding what we need. We’re refusing it. We’re not ready. We’re too afraid. We’re too tired. In order to take what he’s offering, we have to move. We have to say, “It’s okay if it hurts.” We have to be willing to do what it takes.
What’s your tooth today? Are you ready to say, “Get it out, Lord, whatever it takes. I trust you.” … Or are you still crying, “Make it go away–just don’t touch it!”?
by Roseanna White | Jun 26, 2013 | 17th-19th Centuries, Remember When Wednesdays
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| Who Shall be Captain by Howard Pyle |
Is there anything more fun (especially when we’re kids) than a treasure hunt?
Is there anything more fun, as we grow up and (some of us) turn to books for our adventure, than a story that includes a lost treasure?
Allow me to answer for you: nope. 😉
My vacation book was one of Nora Roberts’ latest, and I gotta say, one of my favorite aspects of it was the lost treasure. And would Titanic have been the same with the Heart of the Ocean in it? Nope. Whether it be pirate gold or a legendary gem, we folks love our bling and love the stories of trying to find it. Maybe we’re not all out with our metal detectors, but come on–even if we don’t actually hunt treasure, we love hearing about those who find it!
So it was fun to integrate a treasure into
Circle of Spies, which I’ll be turning in here in another two days or so. Best of all, a treasure people really are hunting today!
I don’t remember the first time I heard about the lost Confederate gold. I suspect it was on television. Possibly that movie with Penelope Cruz and Matthew Connelly. Then an episode of Brad Meltzer’s Decoded (the same show that inspired me to look up the Culper Ring to begin with) did one on it. They’re the ones that pointed out it’s not just about lost Confederate gold–it’s about hidden Confederate gold.
In
Circle of Spies, my bad guy is a captain of the Knights of the Golden Circle. The K.G.C. is a Southern secret society that boasted 300,000 members in the height of the Civil War. For most of those it was probably nothing but a social club, but to the higher ups…it was serious. As in, in regular communication with the Confederacy’s President Davis, receiving instructions on how to undermine the North SERIOUS. And one of the things they were charged with–burying Confederate gold.
Yep, that’s right. They hid it on purpose. Only, it wasn’t supposed to be lost. And it wasn’t just gold. These dedicated Southerners hid everything they would need for a second uprising after the Confederacy surrendered. Gold, yes. And clothes, rations, medical supplies, ammunition, weapons. You name it. There are supposedly caches of this buried all over the South. Booby trapped. And the maps–secret codes hidden in the landscape.
Folks have been searching for these burial spots for decades, and have found enough to keep them searching. How fun is THAT. So in my book, I posit that someone hid some of this treasure in my neck of the woods. In a cave in Western Maryland. Likely? No. But possible. And oh so fun to imagine. =) Because yeah, I love a good treasure story.
What’s your favorite treasure story, be it real or fictional?
by Roseanna White | Jun 24, 2013 | Word of the Week
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| Allegory of Justice by Gaetano Gandolfi |
“You’ll get your just deserts!”
Okay, confession. Because that phrase pronounces the final word as one pronounced the word for the delightful confections that make life worth living, I never once realized it’s spelled with one ‘s’ like an arid area. Hadn’t a clue. But it is. One ‘s’ but pronounced like desserts. And…why?
Well, that’s the interesting bit. =) Apparently it’s from a whole different word that either a sandy desert or a sweet dessert–it’s from deserve.
Ah!
Okay. So the word deserve is from French, and back in the day when it was entering English (as in, the 13th century), desert was used to mean “that which is deserved.” So you deserve your deserts. Which makes total sense, right? And yet it’s fallen completely out of use except for in that one phrase about just deserts. (Probably because of the confusion with sandy ground and chocolate, LOL.)
Pretty fun, eh? Happy Monday!
by Roseanna White | Jun 20, 2013 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
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| The Child Handel by Margaret Isabel Dicksee |
Now, I’ll be honest. I didn’t really want to blog today. I’m ten days out from my deadline, still have 10,000 words to cut from
Circle of Spies, plus another read-through to check for typos, and I’m feeling the pressure. Not to mention that I still need to design a map for the front. And a family tree. Oh, and take care of a lot of WhiteFire business that I’m trying not to neglect.
Yeah. No pressure.
But let’s, again be honest. When am I not pressed for time? LOL. So I tell myself to get over it. And I wonder what to muse on today. Slowly, the realization comes.
Reactions. This here, my blogging when I’d rather keep my nose to the manuscript-grindstone, is a reaction. A thought-out response to an internal debate. Not that big a deal, to be sure, but it’s an indicator of how I react to the stressors in my life. Generally speaking, I moan and groan a little, then I get to work. One thing I thankfully inherited from my family is a strong work ethic. Maybe I’m not out in the fields planting crops or putting in long days at a job site, but from dawn to bedtime, I’m at my computer every moment I can be. Working on one or the other of my many projects. My hubby frequently walks by, sees me still at it, and says, “I wish I loved my job as much as you do!”
When it comes to work, I know my reactions are usually what they need to be. But life, now…those can be harder, can’t they? But the more I pause to consider it, the more I realize that it’s not just our actions that define us, that judge us–it’s our reactions.
It’s not just whether I set out to deal fairly–it’s how I respond when someone deals unfairly with me.
It’s not just that I teach my kids to obey–it’s how I respond when they don’t.
It’s not just that I reach out in love–it’s how I respond when someone lashes back at me.
My hubby has some hard business decisions before him (not for the publishing biz), and we were talking about it yesterday. Talking about how, if it were solely a business decision, the answer would be simple. But being us, we can’t separate business decisions from moral decisions. We need to make sure we’re doing what the Lord wants us to do.
Because when it comes down to it, we’re not judged on how people treat us–we’re judged on how we react to them. Sometimes, that goes against our ideas of “fair.” And we want to think that the world will recognize that. Truth? They don’t. They don’t often care how long we’re beaten up or snarled out. They only care whether we fight or forgive.
Now, God never instructed us to be doormats. So sometimes He’ll call us to fight. To chastise. To punish. But other times, He calls us to relent. And knowing which is right in a given situation requires communication with Him.
As I’m in this time of looming deadlines, it’s so easy to respond poorly. To yell when I should smile, to sigh when I should laugh, to growl when I should get up. But I’m challenging myself today to guard my every reaction, to treat it as if it were an action, deliberated and decided upon. To squelch the off-the-cuff and focus on the from-the-heart.
Because I know it matters. I know that’s what defines me. And I know who I want to be.
Much as I can’t believe it, there is only ONE MONTH before the release of Whispers from the Shadows, book 2 in the Culper Ring Series!
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.