Roseanna White - Roseanna M. White

Cover Reveal! A Portrait of Loyalty

by Roseanna White | Feb 14, 2020 | Book News, Books, Cover Designs

Happy Valentine’s Day!

And how better to celebrate love … and love stories … than by putting a face to my next book. 😉 Ahem. Or at any rate, when I was told I could share this week, I decided that doing a Valentine public reveal would be super fun!

I can’t quite believe that The Codebreakers series will be coming to an end already in September, but I’m so excited about how this final book, A Portrait of Loyalty, has turned out. For those of you following along, this is the one that I completely rewrote back in November. As in, totally. But I love how it turned out, and so do my editors, so phew!

If you’ve read On Wings of Devotion, then you’ve already met Lily Blackwell and Zivon Marin, who will be our main characters in A Portrait of Loyalty. Lily is a volunteer at the hospital where Arabelle works…and is also a photographer employed by the Admiralty to alter photographs for the war effort. Zivon Marin is a Russian cryptographer who flees to England in the wake of the revolution in Russia.

Here’s a general idea of the story:

Zivon Marin was one of Russia’s
top cryptographers, until the October Revolution tore apart his world. Forced
to flee after speaking out against Lenin and separated from his brother along
the way, he arrives in England driven by a growing anger and determined to
offer his services to the Brits.

Lily Blackwell sees the world
best through the lens of a camera—and possesses unsurpassed skill when it comes
to retouching and recreating photographs. With her father’s connections in propaganda,
she’s recruited to the intelligence division, even though her mother would disapprove.

After Captain Blackwell invites
Zivon to dinner one evening, a friendship blooms between him and Lily. He sees
patterns in what she deems chaos; she sees beauty in a world he thought
destroyed. But both have secrets they’re unwilling to share, and no one is quite certain where Zivon’s loyalties really lie—until his enemies are discovered to be far closer than he’d
feared, and only Lily’s skills can save him.

Now the moment you’ve been waiting for. The cover!

Ready?

Set!

Voila!

Don’t Forget to Enter the Valentine’s Day Giveaway!!!

Enter via the Rafflecopter link below!

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The Be Our Valentine Giveaway!

by Roseanna White | Feb 10, 2020 | Giveaways and Contests

It’s Valentine’s Week!

So how better to celebrate than with six English-set historical romances? I’m thrilled to be teaming up with some of my favorite authors to bring you an amazing giveaway!

How It Works

It’s beautifully simple. =) Just enter the giveaway form below; there are two possible entries for each author, so do as many or as few as you like!

The giveaway runs from Monday 10 February until Saturday15 February. It’s open to anyone, no matter where you’ll from. One winner will be sent all six books!

Please share with your friends who enjoy historical romances as much as you do! 😉

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Thoughtful About . . . Busy Weeks

by Roseanna White | Feb 6, 2020 | Thoughtful Thursdays

It’s birthday party week in my house–not only my son’s 12th, but my mom’s 60th, so I’m going to be up to my elbows is cakes and cupcakes and icing and cleaning and . . . you get the idea. =)

So I’m taking the easy way for blogging this week and just sharing some fun announcements with you.

First, there will be some fun coming your way next week!

I’m participating in a multi-author promotion for Valentine’s week, so come back here on February 10 for that!

Next, there will soon be a COVER REVEAL of book 3 in the Codebreakers series, A Portrait of Loyalty! I can share that on February 11, and it will go out first to my newsletter subscribers, so make sure you’ve signed up!

Third, the next Tea Party Book Club dates are live on my website! February will be one more for On Wings of Devotion for those who couldn’t make the January dates but who wanted to attend. March will be A Name Unknown. Though those are the only ones you can currently reserve, I do have the next three months listed on my website too, so you can be thinking of which ones you may want to attend. And we’re also going to be doing some social media contests for those who participate–photo challenges, to be precise, where you take a picture of your package when it arrives. The winner will get a discount code for a future party!

Finally, T-shirts! I did add a crew neck to each design last week, so if you’re a crew neck gal, I’ve got you covered. And as of when I’m writing this, I only need TWO MORE orders to put them into production! That’s to meet my overall minimum threshold (aka not lose money on them), but I’d really love to get 5 more orders each of 18, Black Heart, and Woof. So if you’re a fan of one of those, please share these memes to encourage others to order them too! 😉

And just thinking ahead for T-shirts…I’ll soon be launching some general bookish ones too, for all the readers out there! First one will say something along the lines of “I don’t have too many books…I just need more shelves.” Wording may be tweaked slightly as I debate the catchiest way to say it. 😉 If you have an idea for a fabulous book-themed shirt, please let me know!

Word of the Week – Stable

by Roseanna White | Feb 3, 2020 | Word of the Week

This one was a question my son asked the other day. Why do we use the same word for the two different meanings of stable–the adjective and then the noun? Are they from the same root?

(Why yes, my children do ask questions like this regularly, LOL.)

The short answer is yes, they’re from the same Latin word. The longer answer is that both adjective and noun came to English through Old French, the adjective–meaning, at the time, “trustworthy, reliable”–predating the noun by a few decades, though both were in the English language from the 12th or 13th centuries. The meanings really haven’t changed that much over the years, either. The noun has always been a building or stall where domestic animals are kept. The adjective shifted ever so slightly from “trustworthy” to “steadfast, constant, secure.” (And was applied to isotopes in 1902!)

The Latin root from which both meanings come is sta– (with different suffixes applied for noun and adjective), meaning, not surprisingly, “to stand.” Hence why it applies both to a building and to an upstanding character.

So there we have it, O son of mine. ?

Thoughtful About . . . The Power of Words

by Roseanna White | Jan 30, 2020 | Thoughtful Thursdays

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

Familiar words, right? We’ve all read those verses a million times. I was pretty sure I’d examined them from every possible perspective. But last time I read them, a new little seed of inspiration was planted that I’ve been keeping an eye on. ?

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

I’m a writer (which you obviously know). I love words. I love philosophizing about them. I love making art with them. I love harnessing them to express Truth and Light. And I LOVE when God talks about them–and about their power. Power which John 1:3 states in a way that sheds new light on the nature of those words I so love.

In Genesis, God SPOKE the world into existence. “And God said, ‘Let there be…'” Here in John, Jesus IS that Word through which all things were made. Have those two pieces clicked in your mind before? I can’t believe it took this long for them to click for me, LOL. That our Savior is the thing by which and through which creation happens. And THAT is why John calls him the Word. (To which my husband said, “Well yeah…” proving that I’m definitely late to this epiphany, LOL. But I’m going to keep talking about it anyway.)

So what does that say about the true power of words?

Words are the creative force. It is through words that things happen.

Photo by Louis Hansel on Unsplash

I need to think about that for a minute. I use words for a living–I create a lot with them. Whole worlds, one might argue…but imaginary ones. When it comes to actual building, I guess I always thought that the ACTIONS were the more important thing. The other day my husband and son were building a desk together from some scrap wood (a.k.a. an old bookshelf that had collapsed, LOL), and if you ask me what effected the creation, I’d say “screws, wood, and a screwdriver.”

But do you know what else I noticed while they were building? The words exchanged. This is the first real building project they’ve done together, and I loved hearing the instructions float out to me in the kitchen. “Now this is how you do this…” my husband would say. And, “How do you want this part?”

Then would come my son’s answer. “Yeah, that looks good. Let’s put this piece here…”

Photo by Vance Osterhout on Unsplash

A simple exchange between a very earthly father and son who were repurposing something already made. The desk could have been built without those, right?

Maybe…because they are a very earthly, physical, corporeal father and son. The Father and Son, on the other hand, at the brink of our creation…they’re something different. They are, the Bible tells us, Spirit. That’s why it was such a miracle that Jesus wrapped himself in flesh and became one of us.

Pure Spirit doesn’t have hands like we do, or like we’d recognize. Pure Spirit certainly doesn’t have (or need) an electric screwdriver or cheap particle board. Pure Spirit does not interact with this physical world as we physical beings do. How does it?

Through words.

Let that sink in–I know I am. How did God create? With words. How did God interact with man from the dawn of time through each of the prophets? With words. What did God-Made-Man do when he began his ministry? Teaching and preaching–WORDS. Yes, he healed too. I know he did. And how did he often choose to heal? With words. Sometimes he touched, yes. But did he have to? I’m reminded of what that faithful centurion said in Luke 7:7. “But say the word, and my servant will be healed.“

Photo by Ravi Pinisetti on Unsplash

The fact that God shared these with us–gifted them to us and then exchanged them with us…that’s pretty amazing. More, it’s not only a gift, it’s a responsibility.

He gave us the very tools of creation. And what are we doing with them? How often do we use them to tear each other down instead of build each other up? To complain instead of praise? How often are our words careless, thoughtless, unbridled?

What might change in our lives if we could see what each of our words did, like we can see what God’s words do? We’d see the harm that thoughtless verbal jab really did to our coworker or spouse or child. We’d see what worlds were built in them instead when we instruct or praise or encourage. And I have a feeling what we chose to say would be very different.

Well, my friends, our physical eyes may not be able to see it–but it’s no less real for that. So perhaps our new prayer ought to be, “Lord, open our spiritual eyes, so that we might see the true power of our words…and use them for You.”

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