by Roseanna White | Sep 7, 2009 | Modern Mondays
I was going to post the Title Contest results in a weekend blog, then I thought, “Nah. Monday’s a holiday, I can be lazy and do that in place of my normal post.” Mwa ha ha ha.
So pooling all the votes from the different sites my blog posts too (ShoutLife and Facebook, by the way), Yesterday’s Tides won by two votes, with The Storm Still Raging coming in second and Deeper than the Sea getting third.
The winning title was inspired by Sandi Rog, so I will be emailing her shortly with a choice of three out of the four books, and send the other to our third place winner, Mary Proctor. (Second place is my mom, and she said “No books, please.” Perhaps because she has little shelving. Perhaps because she’d already read most of them, lol.) So congrats to these two lovely ladies who will soon be enjoying some fine reading!
I had a lot of fun with this and am going to keep it in mind for future brainstorming needs. You all rock! Now, off to enjoy my lazy holiday. Hope everyone has a good one!
by Roseanna White | Sep 4, 2009 | Misc.
Instead of spotlighting an author friend today, I’m spotlighting my awesome readers, who have rocked out the title contest. I was truly amazed at the creativity y’all showed, and the lists a few of you came up with.
Several people said they had no interest in the free books, just wanted to play, and some of their suggestions were oh-so-good. So here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m going to pick some finalists. You all are going to vote. The books will either go to the winner or, if the winner was one who didn’t want the books, I’ll divvy them up between the other finalists.
Ready? Drumroll please! . . . .
The Storm Still Raging (my mom)
Awaken the Dawn (Kristen)
Deeper than the Sea (Mary)
Yesterday’s Tides (a rewording of one of Sandi’s)
Tempest of the Heart (Debbie Lynn, though I took out a word;-)
So get voting! And lemme just say . . . you guys warmed my heart with your enthusiasm for the story as well as the contest. This is totally how I’m going to decide on titles from now on, lol.
by Roseanna White | Sep 3, 2009 | Thoughtful Thursdays
Many, many moons ago I started writing a book. Well, it started as a short story, which pivoted around the crucifixion. As I went through college, I kept bringing it out over holidays and summer breaks, writing, writing, writing. I had a hard time writing it when class was in session, because both school and the story were so intense that I couldn’t hold both in my little brain;-) But because the first two years of my college focused on the era, I absorbed. Sponged. Took notes. I finally finished the book within a week of my college graduation.
Now, my hubby had spent the past for years working in printing and felt led to start a print shop of his own. Only, he didn’t want to print business cards. He wanted to published books. So naturally, we decided that I was the only possible person to use as a guinea pig, lol. Hence why A Stray Drop of Blood was the launching title of WhiteFire Publishing. He has since added other titles to the WFP lineup, learned a lot . . . and I’ve learned a lot about writing. So. My publisher and I (ahem) have decided it’s time to do Stray Drop justice and start over. (Okay, partly because we’re running out of hardbacks [woo hoo!] and don’t want it to go out of print, so have decided to release a paperback. And since that requires a new ISBN anyway, I might as well improve the book too!)
For my husband, this decision is a lot of logistics, most of them nightmarish. For me, it means going back through a book I love and hacking it to pieces. I love it the way it is. I do. And if the only people to read it were readers, I’d leave it as it is. But I have a lot of writing friends now, and I’m totally embarrassed to let them read my headhopping and adverbs and . . . lol. So I’m going to take a few weeks and “correct” my manuscript. Trim it down. Make it tighter. And, please Lord, improve the story I still adore, which I believe in to the core of my being.
That said, I’m going to need endorsers (already have a few) and influencers (ditto), a new cover design (have a few ideas but lack the skill to do them), and time to work (don’t know where I’m gonna pull that from). If anyone is interested in taking on one of the first three slots (or play babysitter, lol), let me know! Cover designer will obviously be paid. Influencers and endorsers will receive a copy of the book and my eternal gratitude. 😉
You can see info on the book at my website to get an idea of what it’s about and if you’d find it interesting.
by Roseanna White | Sep 2, 2009 | Remember When Wednesdays
First, don’t forget the TITLE CONTEST, detailed on Monday! Now, onto the real post . . .
In my ’20s research for Mafia Princess, I checked a book out of the Library that got into very detailed descriptions about the time. One of the most interesting things I came across was drawings for houses that you could order from the Sears catalogue. I mean, lol. Housewares, sure. But houses?
The layout of houses changed greatly around that time. Back in the day, rooms were small and many because of the heating source–keeping them small cut down on the transfer of smoke and dust from one room to another. But as cleaner fuels and electric heating gained prominence, rooms opened up. Got bigger, but fewer in number. Interesting, huh? I didn’t realize until then that that’s why really old houses have so many teensy tiny rooms.
In the same (or nearby, anyway) section of the book, it talked about the extreme dichotomy between rural and urban life. In the country (read: where I live), it looked like it had for the last century. Horses, buggies, no electricity . . . indoor plumbing wasn’t a must. (I shudder at the thought.) In the cities, everyone had electricity, cars were more numerous than horses, and I daresay the advent of bathrooms that included toilets were welcomed with open arms.
When I eventually sit down to write the sequel to Mafia Princess, which will be titled Gangster’s Girl, part of the book will travel to my hometown of Cumberland, Maryland. I’m looking forward to this–I get to go to all the historical stuff around here and try to get an idea of what this place looked like in the ’20s, when it was a booming railroad city instead of one barely larger than a town. Back then, we’d earned our nickname of Queen City, being the second largest in the state. And I can just see my bobbed blonde sauntering down the brick streets!
by Roseanna White | Sep 1, 2009 | What We're Reading
First, don’t forget to enter my TITLE CONTEST! See Monday’s entry for details and a chance to win some awesome books. Now, on to new thing.
My week has been full of new things, actually. . . and hence getting the hang of them. Particularly the laptop, which can go to the couch with me in the evenings–my usual reading time. So I’m still reading the (very good!) Prisoner of Versailles I wrote about last week, and I haven’t gotten far enough to offer more on it.
So this week I’m going back to an awesome book I read a couple months ago. Marlo Schalesky’s Beyond the Night is a fabulous love story, evocative and heart-wrenching. This is one of those rare books that brings tears to my eyes, and when I turned the last page, I immediately went and told everyone I know that they HAD to read it.
The story begins with a car crash, and the rest of it is a combination of a hospital scene and memories of the couple’s love story. Madison Foster knew she was going blind, but dealing with it was another matter. She above all didn’t want her mother to find out–and she didn’t want the pity of her best friend, Paul. Maybe romance had been about to bloom, but now they’d never know. Because she wasn’t going to do that to him. And he didn’t know how to fight her about it.
I love the way the past was interwoven with the present in this book, and especially the huge twist that I obviously won’t give away–the one that had me crying.
I didn’t know when I picked it up what I’d think about it. Stories set in the ’70s don’t usually do it for me, since it’s from that era just before I existed–not long enough past to seem mysterious or whimsical, not familiar enough to feel like “home”–but from the first pages, I couldn’t put it down.
Beyond the Night is one of those stories that deserves every bit of acclaim it can get, (like the Christy award it just won–woo hoo! Congrats, Marlo!) and then some. This is a fabulous book, well told and beautiful. It’ll leave you with tears in your eyes and a band around your chest that makes you think, “Wow. That is love.”
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.