by Roseanna White | Jun 28, 2010 | Uncategorized
Last week when my brain was a pile of goo after the stressful weekend prior, I let myself veg and reread the 60,000 words I’ve written in my contemporary about the Bedouin woman, the ex-SEAL, the pirate, and the black-arms dealer. One of the things that my hero mentions and which struck me as well is the contrast of different worlds within one.
It’s something we all come across, right? There’s your world, whatever it is. For me, that’s a small town, mountains, family nearby. Peaceful for the most part, a relatively slow pace. Though the area has its problems and its trouble-makers that occasionally shock us with the level of depravity humanity is capable of, our crime-rate’s darn low compared to, say, a city. But maybe that’s where you live–where the buildings stretch toward the sky, the trains rumble under the ground, and everywhere you turn there are people rushing to who-knows-where.
Then there’s the other side of the world, where civilization rarely intrudes. Or the parts where the people will say things like, “Why worry? It’s just another war.” There are the people who have so much that they think everyone in the world is their slave–and those who have so little they think everyone owes them.
Things can get really interesting when these worlds collide. Tons of books do this to great affect, from the simple city-girl-in-the-country idea to the American-girl-caught-in-a-warzone thing. In Seized (the contemporary I’m working on), I thought it would be fun to have a clash of many worlds. There’s the Bedouin woman, who grew up in the deserts of Egypt among a tribe that is still fully nomadic. Her people have been largely unchanged by modernity, especially in their thoughts regarding woman. They had vehicles, but she was never allowed to drive one or fiddle with the controls. She’s never used a phone. Never turned on a computer. She knows about the outside world, but mostly through a British anthropologist that traveled with them for a while.
Her world changes drastically when she ends up on a yacht in the Med. Again when the yacht is hit by pirates, and she’s taken with the other booty. And yet again when the ex-SEAL rescues her and takes her home to his parents’ horse farm in Virginia to recuperate. That’s what leads him to reflect on the collision of worlds–that in this peaceful place, the one that his parents think of as “the real world,” the forces that have shaped the heroine’s life don’t really exist. But now they will, because he brought it to them.
Ah, conflict. Sometimes contrast can create a lot of it.
by Roseanna White | Jun 25, 2010 | Uncategorized
Today I’m happy to welcome Vickie McDonough to talk about her latest release The Anonymous Bride, first in the Texas Boardinghouse Brides series.
Vickie is offering a giveaway to U.S. residents of all three books in her previous Oklahoma Brides series, Sooner or Later, The Bounty Hunter and the Bride, and A Wealth Beyond Riches! Thanks, Vickie! Just leave a comment with an email address to enter!
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About Vickie
Vickie Mc
Donough is an award-winning inspirational romance author, with 18 novels and novellas published. The Anonymous Bride, book one in her debut trade fiction series the Texas Boardinghouse Brides, released in April. Vickie was recently voted 3rd Favorite Author in Heartsong Present’s annual readers’ contest, and her book, Outlaw Heart, placed 2nd in the Favorite Historical Romance category. Vickie is currently the ACFW treasurer, and a founding member of WIN, an ACFW chapter in Tulsa, OK. She is a member of RWA, CAN, Women Writing the West, OKRWA, and OWFI. She is a wife of thirty-four years, mother of four grown sons and grandma to a feisty four-year-old girl. To learn more about Vickie’s books, visit her website: www.vickiemcdonough.com
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About The Anonymous Bride
Three mail-order brides arrive in Lookout, Texas, each expecting to marry the local mars
hal. But—he didn’t order a bride. When a contest ensues to discover which bride will make him the best wife, there is a surprise fourth entry–an anonymous one. Mayhem occurs as the whole town tries to figure out who the anonymous bride is, and the mayor pressures the marshal to pick a bride or lose his job. Will Marshal Davis tuck tail and run for the hills? Or will he lose his heart and his bachelorhood?
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What’s your latest book?
The Anonymous Bride, book one in the Texas Boardinghouse Brides series released April 1.
Fun title! What’s your favorite part of the story?
I love the ending, but there are also several other favorites I have. One is the scene where two of the mail-order brides arrive. Another is the one where Luke puts Max (a dog) in one of his jail cells and Jack comes in and talks to him about that.
LOL. Must have been a really rascally mut. 😉 What was the hardest part to write?
Probably the parts where Rachel, the heroine, is suffering guilt about her past and also when she doesn’t feel like she’s a good mother. I doubt there’s a mom alive who hasn’t felt that way at one time or another.
I know I have! Luckily those little tykes occasionally assure me I’m the best. Always makes my day. What do you hope your readers will get out of the story?
My brand is “An Adventure into Romance.” I hope my stories entertain the reader, take them away from their own world or problems for a time, and give them an adventure and encourage them in their faith walk.
Is there a theme to this book?
Yes, the main theme is “forgiving past hurts” and realizing how clinging to them hurt you more than the person you’re angry at.
What’s your favorite genre to write? To read?
It’s definitely historical romance. That’s what I mostly read and love to write. My favorite time period is the late 1800s with settings in the American West.
What are you reading right now—and what do you want to read next?
I just finished reading A Tailor-Made Bride by Karen Witemeyer, and it is probably one of the best debut author’s books that I’ve read.
That’s the third time TODAY I’ve seen something about that book! Must be awesome. What’s one of the oddest or most interesting things someone has ever said about you?
A lady I used to attend church with saw me at the new church we were attending. She told me that she’d read some of my books, then she blushed big time, and leaned toward me and said, “You’re books are so sensual, you must really have a fabulous love life.” I just stood there thinking, My books aren’t sensual. I wonder if she confused me with another author. Then I nearly laughed as I thought about my very-sweet-but-not-so-romantic husband. I still don’t know if she was talking about my books. I responded with something like, “Uh. . .thanks,” I think.
Also, I just have to share this: My four-year-old granddaughter says the most hilarious things. Yesterday, she was talking about her preschool and I could tell she was struggling to remember something. She looked at me and said, “What was I thinking about?” as if I could see into her mind and tell her what she was trying to think of.
Yeah, that sounds like a four-year-old! How cute. And a big chuckle over that, um, compliment.
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Thanks
for stopping by, Vickie! Readers, Vickie will be visiting again in October to talk about the second book in this series,
Second Chance Brides, so you’ll get to learn more about her and another of her books then!
In the meantime, you can purchase The Anonymous Bride at Amazon or CrossPurposes.
Void where prohibited. Entry into the contest is considered verification of eligibility based on your local laws. Contest ends 7/1/10. Winner will have two weeks to claim book.
by Roseanna White | Jun 24, 2010 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
A couple weeks ago in one my daughter’s Famous Fits of Four-Year-Old Frustration, she tossed out that she hates being alone in her room (and tacked on that I don’t care because I’m mean). Which made a strange idea click into me head. Me, the queen of One Child Per Room, thought “Huh. I wonder if it could work to move them into one room.”
The other day we did it. Stacked their bunk beds up (not that Xoe will sleep on the top yet–she’s been camping on the floor for the past two nights) and turned the nursery into a school room.
And you know, I gotta say–I love it.
See, I’d been kinda panicking at the thought of getting started with home schooling this year, even though I knew it was what I wanted to do. Much of it was apparently rooted in the fact that I had no good place to DO this schooling. But as soon as I considered making the nursery into a school room . . . wow. I was actually excited.
So on Tuesday I put Xoe’s new desk together (all by myself), moved a bookshelf in, organized the bedroom into a mish-mash of boy/girl kid stuff (other than the pink curtains, it was fairly neutral anyway–being very Pooh-ish), and Xoe and I had our first day of school.
It was so much fun. I decided to start with the Five in a Row system and got the book that will take us through kindergarten, and which I can also use with Rowyn. FIAR basically guides you through using actual kids books as your basis for subject-learning, by reading the same book each day for a week and looking at different aspects of it. So, for instance, you’d read a book about a panda–Monday you’d then study bears, Tuesday you’d study China, Wednesday you’d look at vocabulary words, etc.
At the pre-school/kindergarten age, it’s not so much academic as just looking at different aspects like patterns and rhymes, and then trying to incorporate it into your day. We’re also doing some basic letter/number stuff, Bible stories, coloring . . .
My highlight thus far was when we were reading about Adam and Eve eating the apple and sinning, and I explained how that meant they couldn’t talk to God like they had before, because they’d disobeyed him. And she piped in with, “But now we can again, because Jesus died and took the punishment.” A close second is that the American flag is important “because it reminds us of our country and Jesus, because he and God made the world and gave us our country.”
I’m having a blast gettin
g a peek into the mind of my sweet little girl. And my adorable little boy loves being in what was formerly Xoe’s room, and also loves the school room, where he plops down on his belly with paper and a pencil and goes to town. Overall, a great solution–and a new adventure.
by Roseanna White | Jun 23, 2010 | Remember When Wednesdays, Uncategorized
One of the things my critique partners and I have been discussing as I work through
Jewel of Persia is how the Spirit works in the Old Testament world. Under the new covenant, we know how it goes–you are saved by grace, then the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in you and (if you let him) will guide you and whisper Truth into your ear any day, any time.
But back in Esther’s day . . . ?
I find it really intriguing to look at how the Spirit moved back then. In certain cases we see him moving almost forcefully. Like when King Saul was overcome by the distressing Spirit and prophesied.
I’ve mostly been looking to Daniel for my examples, since it’s the same century and empire as Esther. Most of the mentions of a/the spirit in the book of Daniel is someone noticing the excellent spirit in Daniel. But we also see in Daniel a lot of examples of the physical side of the spiritual–like when Gabriel arrives and says, “Hey, God sent me as soon as you started praying. I know that was three weeks ago, but dude! I got waylaid by some spiritual bad guys and had to wait for backup.” Isn’t that cool? I mean, not cool for Gabriel. But I was so struck the first time I read that and realized that that is sometimes why an answer to prayer isn’t instantaneous–God’s messengers travel through space, and they can be held up.
One of my recent scenes in Jewel of Persia is the Spirit coming upon my heroine–she has the impression that she must pray for a certain someone, but she’s mad at him. So instead she prays for her family.
Doesn’t cut it. The Spirit whips away and leaves her. Today’s scene is where she learns why she was to pray that day. Gonna be fun stuff.
by Roseanna White | Jun 22, 2010 | Uncategorized
Claudius lives a quiet life on his Kentucky farm. Not much ever changes in his life, and he’s okay with that. When a man gets to be in his seventies, well . . . he doesn’t need to seek out change. But somehow, when a pretty little blonde crawls in front of his car and he stops to help her, he’s okay with the necessary change to his schedule too. In some ways May, who just graduated from college to pursue journalism, is as unlike him as a creature can be. But in other ways, they’re more alike than he can explain. She has loving parents, and he’s a crusty old bachelor, but it doesn’t take but a couple hours for him to think she’s the daughter he never realized he needed.
But after a summer on the farm, May’s headed for Rwanda. Not as a missionary, mind you, but just to help out a priest in a little village. She just wants to do her part, you know? And since the job she was hoping for fell through, she doesn’t have much else to do. And Rwanda . . . who’d have thought a third-world country could enrich her so? The people become family, and Father Isaac helps her see that God still loves her, and Jesus matters.
Until war breaks out.
Oh. My. Goodness. What starts as a really nice, touching story gets churned up into a cauldron of humanity’s darkest instincts when May finds herself in the middle of the genocide that took place in Rwanda in the 90s. What she goes through is just beyond reckoning–that it changes her goes without saying. But the how . . .
Had someone told me this book was about an old farmer, a young woman without direction, an African priest, and a death-row convict (I know, I haven’t mentioned him yet–consider this your mention, LOL), I would have scratched my head and gone “Huh?” Although if you told me it was by Lisa Samson, I would have added an “Ohhhhhhhhh. Lemme at it.” And I would have been right.
This book is good all the way through. Great as you dig into the meat of it. And excels into truly amazing in the latter part of the story, when said death-row convict enters the scene. Resurrection in May is way more than a look into the heart of a woman. It’s way more than a story of redemption and renewal. It’s a book about the awesome power of a God who brings the dead back to life every day, every year. Sometimes we see it in the blossom of a flower killed by frost a few months earlier . . . and sometimes we see it in a heart unfolding in the sun after life has frozen it to the core.
Humanity is capable of so many atrocities. But our Lord–He’s capable of healing them. Resurrection in May is a book that doesn’t just make you ask “Why does God let this stuff happen?” It helps you understand how even in the worst of cases, the answer is always, “Because He loves us.”
My recommendation? When Resurrection in May hits the shelves this August, get your hands on it. Read it. Be changed. Send me a note thanking me for telling you about it. 😉
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.