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.”
by Roseanna White | Aug 31, 2009 | Misc.
Help me rename my contemporary romance (set at the beach, woo hoo!) and win FOUR BOOKS!
Paper Roses by Amanda Cabot
Love Finds You in Humble, Texas by Anita Higman (signed copy)
Love Finds You in Treasure Island, Florida by Debby Mayne (signed copy)
Ruby’s Slippers by Leeanna Ellis
I’ll run this contest for a week (or as long as it takes to find a good one, lol). Vote for someone else’s, volunteer your own . . . if I decide to use one, the creator will be the winner. If I don’t use one, then the most popular will win.
Here’s some info on the story (summary reflects current title and hasn’t exactly been fine-tuned):
She says her love is forever. He says she’s stuck in the past.
Louisa hates being a statistic, but one bad decision has forever changed her life. Branded as a biracial, teenaged mother, it’s easy to forget over the years all the potential she once had. And she doesn’t for a minute regret giving up on college to raise the twins . . . but sometimes she wishes she had the courage to tell their father they exist. And when they finally start asking about him the summer before third grade, she knows it’s time.
Rem has a comfortable life in D.C., a great job in the tech department of the CIA, and a beautiful fiancé. But when Louisa sends him a note asking him to come to North Carolina, he knows he has to go. He’s long regretted what happened between them nine years ago. But when he arrives in the Outer Banks and meets his kids, he can’t deny that God had a plan all along.
It doesn’t take long for him to turn Louisa’s world upside-down. She knows she’ll never fit into his, but he wants to give her back some of her dreams. All well and good—except that the thing she wants most is the one thing he won’t give: his love.
As one storm after another rolls through her formerly-peaceful coastal life, Louisa begins to wonder what the Lord’s plan is for her. The man she’s loved so long won’t let her close, her best friend is still determined to make her his wife, and her kids are feeling torn between their world in OBX and Rem’s in D.C. She wants to believe this long night of her heart will soon be over . . . but does anything better wait for her in the morning?
by Roseanna White | Aug 31, 2009 | Modern Mondays
Okay, I confess. I’m a beach-nut. (Not a beech-nut, mind you . . . 😉 My family has vacationed at the beach nearly every year of my life, and it’s done something to me. Gotten the ocean into my soul.
Every year since I was 10, we’ve gone to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. (Anybody not know where they are? It’s the home of Kitty Hawk, where the Wright Brothers flew the airplane, and where most of Nicholas Sparks’s books are set. A barrier island chain off the coast.) It’s relatively quiet, gorgeous, and has that certain something that speaks to me.
Right after I graduated from college, I had this idea for a book set in the Outer Banks. (Probably inspired by the two weeks we’d just sent there in celebration of graduating.) It kept me up all night–seriously. I think I slept three hours that night. I rose in the morning when David did at 5 (he was, at the time, traveling to Baltimore for work every day) and got out my laptop.
That day, I wrote 50 pages. As I did the day after that. And the day after that. 150 pages in 3 days! Then the next 150 pages in, well, three months. LOL. When I first envisioned the story, I wanted it to be simple. Love triangle, long-lost love, that sort of thing. But as I wrote, it got complicated. (This always happens to me . . .) The characters I’d intended to be antagonistic were nice. Lovable, even. Which means my heroine and hero couldn’t be antagonized by them. They had to work through a far more difficult issue and deal with them while liking them.
This is coming up here because my critique partners are currently reading this story and have called it my best–which means I may want to pitch it at conference. I’d originally titled it Unrequested, Unrequited. Too much, right? So I changed it to Blue Skies in the Morning. Not exactly brilliant, either. So. I’m searching for a new title before I pitch it.
So let’s have my first blog contest! Recommend a title sometime this week. Vote for someone else’s. The most popular/my favorite will be the winner, and the person to recommend it will win . . . books. See the following post for details!
by Roseanna White | Aug 28, 2009 | Author Interviews and Guest Posts
One of the very first writing-friends I made was a sweet-as-pie lady named
Sharlene MacLaren. I volunteered to influence for her first two books, and I loved them so much that I wanted to run a special promotion. I put together a game revolving around the setting for
Loving Liza Jane, and through that I spent quite a few emails getting to know Shar. Unbeknownst to me at the time, my review made it into the book, and by the time I reviewed the last book in her Little Hickman Creek series, my endorsements had made it onto the cover.
Around the same time, I joined Shoutlife, which was then pretty knew. Shar and I chatted quite a lot over there, exchanged stories about our families, and promised to exchange hugs at the ’07 ACFW conference. Since then, we just assume that I’m on the list for influencers for all of her new books, and we still keep in touch through the social networks and the occasional emails. And every time I see her name on the ACFW loop or one of the sites we’re both members of, I get a grin on my face. Shar is one of those people who leaves you with a happy sigh in your heart after talking to her. She is so friendly, so caring, so loving . . . she genuinely wants to know what’s going on in your life, and you walk away from a conversation with her feeling like you matter. Is there any better kind of person?
I asked Shar to share a bit about her story. I already knew some just by piecing together our conversations, but she filled it out a bit.
After a teaching career, Shar faced retirement and a question: now what? What did the Lord want her to do with her life? She started having dreams in which she’d written a book, but she dismissed them. After all, what did she know about that? But the dreams persisted, and finally Shar surrended her heart and sat down to write. The ideas came pouring out, and her journey began.
She started along the bumpy road with a Publish America novel. When that didn’t really sell, she learned the craft and found a home as one of Whitaker House’s premiere novelists. With two contemporaries and five historicals (currently) under her belt, Shar in thrilled with her position at Whitaker and looking forward to many more books with them. Next? The rights to that Publish America novel finally reverted to her, and she rewrote it, renamed it, and it’ll be coming out from Whitaker soon. I personally can’t wait!
I’ve done a Story Time Tuesday on Shar, so regular readers probably know how much I love Shar’s writing style. She writes from the heart, with characters deep and beautiful, stories with just enough suspense to heighten the romance, and always some soul-searing truth that strikes you right in the heart. I have read and loved each of her books thus far, and I know when I pick up a new one that it will be even better than the last.
If you want a good read–and a good friend–check out Shar MacLaren. Her books will touch you, and if you look her up and drop her a line, I guarantee she will reply and win you over with her charm, love, and sweet spirit. She is one lady I can’t wait to hug again!
(I’m putting her book info below. Click on the pictures for my reviews!)
Contemporaries:
Historicals:
by Roseanna White | Aug 27, 2009 | Thoughtful Thursdays
This has been a landmark week. For a family whose method of budgeting is usually “Don’t spend any money!” we’ve gone on a spending spree. A necessary one, granted. But still.
A goodly little while ago, our fridge started leaking. Leaking rusty water, that is. My solution? Put an old towel there to catch it, lol. Then a week ago I noticed that food was spoiling about four times faster than it should. So we finally bit the bullet and went fridge shopping. Found a fabulous deal in the scratch and dent section at Lowe’s (not that you can even see the ding), and my beautiful, black, side-by-side with dispenser fridge showed up on Tuesday.
This after a very successful shopping trip with my MIL on Monday. Only clothes (belated birthday shopping) but still exciting. Then yesterday we ordered a laptop to replace the one that died back in the fall. So many new things! Needless to say, I’m thrilled.
My daughter, on the other hand, stood there in the kitchen when we got the new fridge in and the old one out, and pouted. “I’m gonna miss our old fridge,” she said. “It was so beautiful.”
Now, the old fridge was far from beautiful. It had rust stains all over it, the finish was coming off the freezer, it didn’t seal right . . . the thing was undoubtedly older than I am. I asked her if she thought the new fridge was pretty too, and she said, “Yes, but I want the old one.”
Part of me thought, “Wow. This girl is so resistant to change–something I guess we all can be sometimes, even when the change is obviously good.” And then I had another thought. Aren’t we glad we have a God who loves us even when we’re old and ugly and not working right? When we’re rusty and spoiled and left to sit out in the elements? I think we all go through times in life when that describes us. And not only does the Lord still call us beautiful, He also loves us so much that He’ll painstakingly restore us–not just replace us with shinier model;-)
It’s been a few days, and my girl-o definitely likes the new fridge. But she’ll still look outside to where the old one is awaiting the return of the Lowe’s guys and say, “I miss the old fridge. It’s so beautiful.” And even while I think, “Not me!” I still smile at the sweet spirit of my little tyke and praise the Lord for that kind of love.
and when I turned the last page, I immediately went and told everyone I know that they HAD to read 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.