by Roseanna White | Nov 9, 2009 | Uncategorized
Since my Biblical fiction, A Stray Drop of Blood will be releasing in four weeks, I’m going to use the month of November to build up to it as much as possible. So while I’ll still try to stick more or less to my setup, much of it’s going to be getting a Stray Drop spin.
One of the big differences between historicals and contemporaries are the characters, and how the settings and cultures of their times affects how they must act or respond. The ladies on my historical loop have had many a conversation on how frustrating it is to read a historical where it feels like the author took a modern woman and plopped her down in Regency England or whatever–the fact is, women had been raised very differently then, and they therefore didn’t look at things the same way.
This is without-a-doubt true, and I strive to make my characters have outlooks consistent with their times. On the other hand, basic humanity hasn’t ever really changed. People still have the same yearnings, the same instincts–just hewn by different tides. One of the things I most love about writing is putting myself into their heads and seeing how they will act in a situation.
I have no doubt that Abigail, my heroine in Stray Drop, will be understandable to modern readers. At her heart, her core, she is a woman like any woman through history. But I also hope it’s the differences that draw you in–the way she must act because of her station, the fact that her very pride must take the form of humility. In all her life, she is only given one choice that she can make for herself–to believe that Jesus is the Christ.
Can you imagine how important that decision is when it’s your first?
by Roseanna White | Nov 6, 2009 | Uncategorized
I can’t believe I’ve yet to highlight
Miralee Ferrell on here. Unbelievable, because I worked quite closely with her two years ago, and she was one of my first writing friends. So I’ll make up for that oversight now!
Many moons ago, a request came through the ACFW loop asking for endorsers. By this time I’d appeared in a book or two, so I figured I’d volunteer. A while later I received Miralee Ferrell’s debut novel,
The Other Daughter. It’s an engaging women’s fiction novel about a family
nearly torn apart when a girl shows up on their doorstep claiming to be the husband’s daughter.
I met Miralee at the ACFW conference in ’07, after reading and endorsing the book, and enjoyed getting to hug her and talk about some promo for her book. We ended up planning an online scavenger hunt that went really well, was a ton of fun, and which helped me get to know this awesome lady even more, since I read through about ten different interviews with her to get the questions and answers for the hunt, LOL.
Between the time when the scavenger hunt was held and a wedding I was in, I got a small package in the mail from Miralee. Inside, I found that she had sent me a tube of colored lip gloss, perfect for
the wedding. A small token of her appreciation for my hard work, but it was something that really touched me. Not just because I love lip gloss (I’m such a girl), but because I’d worked with a lot of authors, and she was the only one who had gone that extra step to say thank you. To me, it spoke to a generous, gentle spirit that makes Miralee the insightful writer that she is.
More recently she had a historical romance come out from Summerside Press, Love Finds You in Last Chance, California. I loved this book even more than her contemporary women’s fiction–ah, historicals! And I was thrilled to learn that there will be a stand-alone seq
uel to Last Chance coming out from Summerside too. Bring it on, Miralee! Finding Jeena, the sequel to The Other Daughter will be coming out from Kregel in spring of 2010 too. And I for one cannot wait to see what she has in store for her readers.
by Roseanna White | Nov 5, 2009 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
When I was younger, one of my favorite songs was “The Potter and the Clay.” I had the sheet music for it, and I would sit down and play and sing that song until my family was probably ready to snatch it from my piano and toss it out the window.
In high school, I got a little bit of experience with actual clay, the kind you shape and model and fire in a kiln. The kind that, as my art-teacher BIL pointed out the other week, is muddy and dark when you’re working with it, but which emerges from the flames a pure white. All sorts of spiritual significance in that, huh?
But these days, I’m in Play-Doh World. It happens when babies grow into toddlers and need to be entertained at a seat for ten minutes now and then. =) Now, I’m a big Play-Doh fan. Bright colors, non-toxic, not too messy . . . until it starts to dry out. Inescapable, right? Eventually, the modeling compound get dry and crumbly and cracked.
Gee, no spiritual significance in that. Ha. Ha ha. Seriously, I can’t count the number of days I’ve felt like that–like I started out this wonderful, bright, innocent thing, able to be shaped into whatever the Potter wanted. But then life sneaks in, disappointments and rejection keep coming, and there are days when I just feel dried out, crumbly. It doesn’t usually last long (for me–I’ve yet to successfully re-hydrate the Play-Doh), but still.
Then last year, I discovered a kind of RoseArt clay. Bright, colorful, non-toxic, and smells good to boot. And on the bucket, it says “Never dries out!” Yeah, right. Right? I didn’t believe it, and I didn’t figure I should try to test it out. Until one day, my daughter hid some when I wasn’t looking. I found it a week later, sighed, picked it up prepared to throw it away . . . and was amazed. This clay was still malleable. Still soft. Still bright, colorful, non-toxic, and fragrant. Unbelievable!
So as my kids sit here playing with this clay, which has been sitting out for who-knows-how-long (my daughter is an expert hider–I had no clue she had put some in her music box! Oy!) I realize I want to be like this clay. I don’t want to have the excuse of “dried-out days are inescapable.” I don’t want to think that of course things will crumble eventually. Why should they? Why should I? I serve an expert Potter, one who uses a secret formula of life to create the clay from which I’m made. Why should I assume He made me of stuff that can’t survive long in the fresh air?
Play-Doh is still awesome, don’t get me wrong. But I don’t want to be Play-Doh. I want to be made of a clay that can always be reshaped into the image the Potter has in mind, no matter how long I’ve been out in these winds and heat of life. I want to be molded by Him daily. I don’t want to sing about the Potter and the Modeling Compound. I want to be the clay.
by Roseanna White | Nov 4, 2009 | Remember When Wednesdays, Uncategorized
Jumping back to the Law of Moses today, and to one of the subjects of the utmost relevance to
A Stray Drop of Blood. Slavery. Or, perhaps more accurately, bonds.
According to Moses’ account in Deuteronomy, Jews cannot actually enslave their own people. Now, he admits that the poor will always be among them, and that there will therefore always be servants. But if said poor neighbor comes to the Rich Dude and offers himself up as a bondservant, it isn’t permanent. It’s a six-year contract, after which Rich Dude must not only release him, he must release him with a nice severance package so Poor Dude can make a name for himself.
Now, if Poor Dude loves Rich Dude and wants to serve him forever, he can opt to bind himself to the family for life. At which point they’ll pierce his ear as a symbol of his commitment.
Obviously, nothing is so simple in Stray Drop, LOL. I complicate matters by making my main character a slave to a Roman. He observes Hebrew law whenever possible, but his family and colleagues obviously don’t. So while in the Visibullis house the slaves are treated as equals, in the eyes of Rome, they’re still just slaves.
Now, my setup is that Abigail’s mother’s second husband sells her after her mother’s death. I imagine this sort of thing happened, but the Law really, really frowned on Hebrews selling each other to Gentiles. Even more unthinkable is something I have later in the book, that a desperate mother sells her six-year-old boy. This is unlikely because without a son, a woman has nothing in that day. But my setup is that the woman already has nothing, and the son is to young to provide for her, so she pretty much gives up. (Not to mention she’s just a you-know-what. Not that we see her in this book, but I’ve developed her dubious character in the planned-out-but-unwritten sequel.)
During the main part of the story, Abigail is in her sixth year of service. I don’t talk about this outright, but an undercurrent in the plot is that Abigail wants to serve her mistress forever. Said mistress is determined to give her a brighter future and arrange her marriage. Cause for all sorts of troubles when the arrogant son who thinks like a Roman arrives back on the scene. =)
Also cause for all sorts of imagination when Roman law and Hebrew law clash on the issue. I have no idea what would actually have happened in the situation, but I guessed as best I could, LOL.
by Roseanna White | Nov 3, 2009 | Uncategorized
I don’t often read “in” books. Not that I have anything against NYT Best Sellers, I just don’t often have time to read anything but the CBA books I get for review. But my best friend threatened to disown me if I didn’t read Twilight and even brought me the first two books in the series when we saw each other in Denver in September. So when I was sick last week, and not up to doing anything else, I cracked open Twilight, telling myself I could even write a review on it for the Christian Review of Books, since I know a lot of parents wonder if they should let their teens read it.
I readily confess–within a few chapters, I didn’t much care about any excuses or reasons. I didn’t care about the pounding in my head or the nausea in my stomach. My sole concern was keeping my kids happily snuggled in beside me on the couch so that I could keep my eyes glued to that book.
Twilight is the story of Bella, a klutzy seventeen-year-old who just left her home in Phoenix to go live with her father in the rainy town of Forks, Washington. After being invisible in her huge school in Arizona, she’s unprepared for how interested in her everyone seems to be in Forks. But her attention is snagged by the too-beautiful Cullens, particularly the brother named Edward. A more beautiful creature she has never seen–but when she has to sit beside him in their lab class, he recoils from her as though she just rolled out of a garbage can . . . and then doesn’t show up at school for the next week. Surely it can’t be her fault, right? How could he possibly hate her when they’d never even spoken? And when he comes back, he acts perfectly normal. Friendly even. Even kindly saves her life the next morning–in a way that brings a few things into startling clarity for Bella.
Edward Cullen is more than he seems.
Okay, so I figure everyone knows these are vampire books, so it isn’t too hard to figure out that the Cullens are the vampires. That’s not what makes these books so awesome. For starters, Bella is a character whose head you will love to be in. She’s delightfully insecure, refreshingly honest with herself, lands in the emergency room constantly with her clumsiness, and has that certain something that sets her apart without ever cluing her into the fact that she’s more than the norm. And then there are the other characters–the noble vampires, fighting what they are every day because they don’t want to be monsters.
For those parents who are very strict about this sort of thing, here’s what you might take issue with: there are vampires, both the noble ones above and the evil kind. There are werewolves (in the later books). There’s a certain amount of sneaking behind her father’s back, particularly with Edward being in her bedroom, though there’s no sex of any form. Barely any kissing, even. (Though what there is is oh-so-filled-with-tension. Very nice;-)
Here’s what makes these books totally awesome for anyone, especially teens: the whole point is about fighting lust, about denying your baser instincts and striving to be better than what “nature” may say you are. It’s about putting love above your own happiness, about sacrificing for those you care about. The characters remain pure sexually; for all her occasional-sneaking, Bella respects her parents and makes many a decision to love and protect them, even at a cost to herself. I noted a few mild curse words in New Moon, but I don’t recall any in Twilight.
And, the most important thing, these are just wonderful, well-written, fully engrossing books. I read the first two in two and a half days, and I would have devoured the second two right afterward if my niece had had them handy. 😉 I’m not “into” vampires, and I can promise my love of these books won’t lead to the vampire-obsession that seems to be going around, but WOW. I can’t remember the last time I’ve read anything so consuming. I highly recommend these books–and recommend you wait until you have time to neglect everything else, because trust me. You won’t be putting them down.
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.