Word of the Week – Recruit

Word of the Week – Recruit

Ever wonder why we don’t cruit, but we cruit again (recruit)? Maybe you don’t, LOL. But as I was driving along the road a few weeks ago and saw text on the back of a tractor trailer that was wearing off, it got me to wondering. What’s the root of this word, where we use the “re-” prefix but not the word itself? Is that “re-” the one I expect or something different?

Turns out, it is indeed the usual “re-” meaning “again.” So where does –cruit come from?

The roots are Latin, from crescere, meaning “to grow.” So it’s literally “to regrow” or “to grow again.” Old French began to use a form of this to represent new growth, which is where our current meaning comes from. By the 1630s-1640s, it had worked its way into English as both a noun and a verb to mean “new supplies or military reinforcement.” It did get its start strictly in military things–soldiers or supplies for said soldiers–but it didn’t take long for it to expand to any new supplies (by 1660).

Although the idea of recruiting student athletes is pretty new, dating only from 1913.

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It’s Release Day! Awakened

It’s Release Day! Awakened

Welcome to the Launch Day Celebration
for Awakened!

It’s here, it’s here, it’s finally here!!!

I am so, SO excited to celebrate the release of my FIRST (but not last!) romantasy. Awakened came to me on a beach vacation and gave me first a delightful week of world-building and dreaming while there, then countless hours of fun as I wrote the book between other projects, just because I had to.

It’s a story that consumed me in a way few books have done. A story that kept growing and expanding into a whole world, filled with origin stories, spin-offs, and new things to discover. It’s a story with a big-big romance that I hope makes you swoon as much as it did me.

Of course, this book is DIFFERENT. Nearly everything I’ve written is either historical or at least with a historical thread. Awakened, however, is pure fantasy-romance. I absolutely understand that not all my historical romance readers are going to want to dive into a fantasy world. And yet…I’d of course love it if you gave it a try. So I wanted to share some responses from other early readers who don’t often turn to fantasy but fell in love with Arden and Seidon’s story. =)

What Early Readers Are Saying

Even when they don’t usually read fantasy…

Halee Porter

Adventure, suspense, romance, and spirituality – Awakened is one of the BEST books I’ve read by one of my favorite authors, Roseanna M. White. There’s such beauty in every aspect of the book’s plot and its characters. In a mystical world surrounded by magical beings, you get a real love story filled with depth and conviction. I couldn’t put the book down and was sad to see the end of the story.

Shaleen Howard

This is a beautiful love story full of excitement, peril, stunning settings, themes that are relatable and touch your heart, and of course, there are mermaids! The realistic world and characters were creatively woven together with fantastic elements to provide a truly thrilling and immersive read. I loved every bit of this book and highly recommend!

Margaret N.

I am always amazed when an author is able to create a whole new world that makes sense to me in the speculative fiction/fantasy genre. I quickly fell in love with the characters and the world White has created. If you enjoy a good story with great characters, spiritual insights that apply to any age, and the fun of imagining swimming with a mermaid or riding an eagle, I think you’ll really enjoy this book!

Bethany Aich

Everything White writes is amazing, but I was interested to see if she could pull it off in a different genre. Boy howdy, did she. Awakened may be her debut fantasy, but it was riveting from first to last. There were some things I predicted and a lot I didn’t. I loved the world and the main characters and the magic system: basically, if it was in here, I loved it.

Laura Heagy

While fantasy fiction is not my usual go-to genre, Awakened proved to be the exception to my rule. Roseanna brings a brand new world to life through her amazing imagination and brilliant writing skills while not sacrificing the depth of her characters or the substance of her story. I was captured at the beginning of the story and captivated until the end. If you are one to hesitate where fantasy fiction is concerned, let Awakened take you on a fantastic voyage. Come on in… the water’s fine.

Candice W.

Awakened was an amazing romance in a fantasy setting! It has everything we love about Roseanna’s historical books (mystery, suspense, faith, intrigue, plot twists, character growth and development) just set in a wonderful world Roseanna created herself. I highly recommend reading this book to take you on a journey of romance and imagination – like all good books do!

Danielle Grandinetti

Roseanna M. White’s new romantasy highlights her quintessential ability to immerse the reader into a whole new world—whether historical or fantastical—and craft her tales with heart-touching romance and faith arcs. Whether you’re new to romantasy (like me) or it’s already a favorite genre, you won’t want to miss Awakened. I loved it!

Caroline Smith

(My illustrator!)
Awakened is a breathtaking new fantasy novel by Roseanna M. White. Following the diverging journeys of two sisters as they navigate self-discovery and the Lord’s purpose for their lives was both captivating and deeply moving. There were moments that made me laugh aloud and others that brought me to tears. Roseanna’s prose is as beautiful as ever, and her faith is woven seamlessly into this new genre—an inspiring and humble debut in fantasy for her. If you’re not sure about fantasy, but love Roseanna, I promise, you will not be disappointed!

A Reader

I loved this book. It grabbed me from the beginning and I could not put it down. I am new to the fantasy genre. This book has so much happening. The characters are amazing and you will be cheering for them and will be tuning the pages quickly to see what happens. I can’t wait to read the rest of the series.

Live Event!

Join me for a Facebook Live video NEXT Tuesday, June 10, at 7 pm Eastern! (You can watch it afterward too, and I’ll try to answer any questions in the comments!)

  • Behind the scenes
  • Fun facts
  • Short author reading
  • What’s coming next

The speculative fiction bug has been awakened in prolific author Roseanna White, and her fantasy debut does not disappoint! With a refreshing and imaginative spin on mermaid lore, Awakened offers a richly woven tale of love and loyalty in the collision of two vibrant worlds. White’s masterful storytelling and vivid world-building will draw readers into an epic adventure that explores the depths of sacrifice and the power of unity. A thoroughly enjoyable and captivating read—I eagerly await her next foray into the fantasy genre!

Jill Williamson

Christy Award-winning Blood of Kings author

Awakened 

Where sea and land meet, two worlds clash in a fury of wind and waves.

Arden Bleu has always known that her stepsister, Jade, was destined for great things. In a world where beauty follows magic, she has no doubt that their upcoming Awakening Ceremony will reveal that gorgeous Jade is far more than a mere mortal. But when Jade is kidnapped by a mysterious sect of mer on the eve of the newly-returned king’s ball, Arden will do anything to save her sister. Even face down the man she’s always dreaded meeting because of the power he holds over her family, the man to whom her father swore loyalty long before she was born. The Sea King.

Seidon, the Sea King of Daryatla, has grown only more powerful as the centuries have gone by, but lifetime after lifetime has failed to give him what he most yearns for: a family. He knows that it will take a woman of extraordinary power to match him enough to create a child, and no such woman seems to exist…until he feels her magic calling to his one day in the water. And when Arden Bleu, daughter of his most trusted official, arrives to tell him about her missing stepsister, he knows this Jade, with a new magic so coveted that the mer would risk war with his kingdom to steal her away, may be the one he’s waited centuries for. But how can he and the determined Arden ever hope to find one young woman trapped beneath the waves? Perhaps the Great Golden Sea Hawk who has guarded the sisters all their lives holds the key.

In a world on the brink of war between the mer and the land-dwellers, friendship, faith, and love demand the ultimate sacrifice as both kingdoms seek to unlock the prophesied magic waiting to spring forth: the magic of wind and sky. To the mer, it would mean the freedom to return to the land. To Seidon’s court, it would mean safety from every storm. But how can any human hand wield the wind?

Sand meets sea and Disney’s The Little Mermaid meets Robin McKinley’s beloved classic The Blue Sword in this beautifully written and wonderfully original YA science fantasy. Seidon and Arden stole my heart and Roseanna White’s gorgeous world-building, imbued with rich spiritual themes and symbolism, enthralled me from start to finish. Highly recommend!

J. J. Fischer

award-winning author of The Nightingale Trilogy, The Soul Mark Duology, and Regency & Regicide

Bonus Content that comes with Awakened

If you order Awakened before June 17, 2025, you don’t just get the book.
You get some bonuses too!

(If you order straight from me, you’ll get this automatically; if you ordered elsewhere, just email me the purchase confirmation/receipt at roseannamwhite@gmail.com with a subject line of “Awakened Pre-Order”)

  • ALL print copies from my shop will have printed edges!
  • Free short story, Captivated, in either PDF or epub (after June 10, this will be purchasable for 99¢)
  • Bonus story, Foretold…once I finish writing it. 😉 (I thought this would be a novella, but um…it might be longer than that.) Ebook format is the bonus.
  • An early peek at the world of Book 2, Aflame, including character art and descriptions and the first two chapters.

Roseanna White combines technology and fantasy to create a compelling world in Awakened. I enjoyed the unique take on mermaids, magic, and cultures. The characters were well crafted and relatable, and the blend of everyday faith she brought to the story felt natural. I could not put the book down!

Morgan L. Busse

award-winning author of the Ravenwood Saga and the Nordic Wars

More from the world of Awakened

There’s So Much to Explore!

Imagine a world thousands of years in the future, where the Lord has tarried in His return…

Awakened is an unforgettable journey filled with magic and heart-pounding heroism. This  fantasy masterpiece grabs you by the collar and doesn’t let go. With richly imagined worlds, fully developed and interesting characters, and twists that will leave you breathless, this is the kind of book that reminds me why I fell in love with fantasy in the first place.

Tabitha M. Corvin

author of the Beyond Wonderland trilogy

Giveaway

US entrants, enter to win a print version of Awakened with printed edges
(or another book of your choice) + a $25 gift card to my shop!

International entrants, enter to win an ebook!

Wow, what a riveting read! Much-loved Historical author Roseanna White plunges into the fantasy genre with aplomb! Awakened takes a deep dive into intricate family and kingdom dynamics that had me on the edge of my seat. This story has it all—sisters who champion each other, a swoony hero, and a strong heroine! I loved this book and could not stop thinking about it long after the last tail—er, page!

Ronie Kendig

award-winning author of the Droseran Saga

Word of the Week – Fantasy

Word of the Week – Fantasy

Tomorrow, my first romantasy releases!! My copies have already arrived, and I am SO excited to welcome Awakened into the world. So of course, how better to celebrate than to look up the history of the word fantasy? (I mean, ice cream works too…)

Fantasy came to English via French around 1400, meaning “illusory appearance,” from the French fantasie/phantasie, which means “vision, imagination.” French, in turn, got the word from the Latin phantasia, which itself came from the Ancient Greek word of the same pronunciation, both of which meant “power of imagination.” The Greek word shares roots with other words having to do with vision and light.

The idea of a “whimsical notion” actually pre-dates the main 1400 definition, and “fantastic imagination” followed by the 1530s.

What about the notion of “a daydream based on desires”? That’s pretty new, going back only to the 1920s. And the genre of fiction (obviously what we’re concerned with today, LOL) was established by 1939.

Are you a fan of the genre?

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Surprise! The Island Bookshop!

Surprise! The Island Bookshop!

Book

The Island Bookshop

Contemporary Romance with a Historical Thread

AVAILABLE NOW!

Surprise!

While I’ve known that The Island Bookshop would be coming out this summer, I wasn’t honestly sure when…until it arrived on my doorstep before I’d even seen the cover, LOL. So instead of my usual cover reveal and pre-order, you just get to learn about it NOW, all at once, and can snap it up now too, either directly from me or from Guideposts! (Paperback will be available wide at other retailers in July; ebook is available now.)

So what’s it about?

ABOUT

The Island Bookshop

When Kennedy Marshall sets off for a prestigious career in the city, she leaves behind the sunlit shores of North Carolina’s Outer Banks—and runs from a love she believes she can never have. With her sister, Lara, managing their grandmother’s beloved island bookshop, Kennedy feels confident she’s escaped the past. But when Lara is suddenly injured, Kennedy is drawn back into the island’s warm embrace—and bittersweet memories she thought she’d buried forever.

For Wes Armstrong, the Outer Banks is more than home—it’s his anchor. Building a successful family business was supposed to bring stability, but life has been anything but steady since his wife’s passing. Haunted by past regrets and facing a life-changing decision, Wes is determined to make the right choice for his family’s future. Yet Kennedy’s unexpected return stirs up old emotions and mistakes he thought he’d put to rest.

As hidden family secrets surface and long-buried truths come to light, Kennedy and Wes must navigate the delicate tides of forgiveness, second chances, and the unspoken love that still lingers between them. Can they find the courage to rewrite their story and create a new future on the island’s shifting sands?

Perfect for fans of clean, wholesome romance and gentle mysteries, The Island Bookshop is a heartwarming story of love, family, and the enduring power of second chances.

 

Let’s meet…

Kennedy Marshall

Kennedy has made a career from rare books—their preservation, grading them, and authenticating them. She’s finally got the job she always dreamed of at the Library of Congress in DC, plus a YouTube channel ever increasing in popularity that’s beginning to pad her income. Life’s perfect…until her sister falls off the ladder to the attic in the bookshop they co-own in the Outer Banks, and Kennedy has to go home to Hatteras Island to help out. She thought she’d escaped all the memories—and the best friend she does not want to be in love with anymore. But facing them—and Wes—all summer? This isn’t at all what she’d planned. And what had Lara even been doing up in the attic? More alarming still: Why is the deed to the bookstore in the name of a stranger?

The Boy Next Door

Wes Armstrong

Wes loves helping his family run their real estate company and bringing paradise to people a week at a time—especially since it keeps him busy, keeps him from dwelling too long on his wife’s death two years ago…and the fact that he’ll never get to fix everything that had gone wrong in their relationship. But when Armstrong Realty gets an offer from a national vacation rental chain, suddenly everything’s up in the air. He’s glad Kenni’s home to work through it with him…except that when Kenni’s home, he can’t help but wonder about all the could-have-beens.

In 1938…

Ana Horvat

In 1938, Ana Horvat arrives in Avon to join her husband, Marko, who’d immigrated a few months ahead of her. Their goal: to build a life for their coming child in a land of promise, rather than under the oppressive regime of Mussolini in their native Dalmatia. But though Ana is quick to find a friend in Caroline Armstrong, not everyone on the insular island is so quick to accept someone different. Can the books Ana loves build a bridge between her and her new community while Marko is away on a fishing trip…or will it be the very thing to drive in a wedge she’ll never be able to overcome?

This is the book I wrote entirely while undergoing chemo last year, and focusing on a fun beach read, with plenty of family secrets and drama but also a setting I know and love and a book-theme that made me sigh in delight, was such a treat! Avon is one of a cluster of little villages on Hatteras Island near the famous Hatteras Lighthouse, and it’s where my family vacations almost every year. I love visiting Buxton Village Books a few miles down the road, and that shop served as the inspiration for the bookstore Kennedy and her sister, Lara, run in this story. With a little bit of Books to Be Red on Ocracoke thrown in too. 😉 (Thanks to both bookshop owners for answering my questions!)

There is a light historical time-slip element (about 1/3 of the story), but it’s mostly contemporary. And while historicals still hold my heart, it was definitely fun to get to write in the modern world. And especially to get to pick names without looking up if they’d have been use in a particular region at a particular time. 😉 LOTS of my P&P ladies have characters named after them in this one!

The Secret Garden plays a key role in the book! Which means I had an excuse to buy the pretty Wordsworth Collector’s Edition and reread this favorite childhood classic last summer. It was every bit as delightful as I remembered!

Kennedy and her sister Lara co-own the Island Bookshop, which they inherited from their grandmother, who converted her family home into the store when they were girls. The perfect place to stop by for your beach read!

And of course, some secondary Characters you’ll be seeing more of in the next books!

Harper Dailey is one of Kennedy’s good friends. She just moved home from Savannah to help out in her family’s bakery, and though she’d always known her parents meant for her to inherit and run Sunshine Bakery, she hadn’t intended to take it over quite so soon. After her dad had a heart attack though, he couldn’t keep up. So here she is.

Beckett “Beck” Mills moved to Hatteras after his stint in the Navy and runs a fishing charter during the summer months…and is happy to be a recluse during the winter. He, Wes, and Asher have been a solid trio, in part because they know to leave him alone and not press him for the history he has no interest in hashing out.

Asher Whetsone owns a beach equipment rental shop specializing in bicycles and anything else with wheels. He’s all about the therapy we can get from spending time out in nature…and likes to think that the countless hours he’s spent cycling along the shore has taught him patience. He certainly prays so…because he’s going to need it.

Kennedy’s sister, Lara, has always been content to run the Island Bookshop. But when a Traumatic Brain Injury from a concussion leaves her unable to handle reading or working on screens, all her dreams come to a screeching halt, and she’s forced to ask herself what comes next, when nothing is what she wants it to be.

The Island Bookshop

Contemporary Romance with a Historical Thread

AVAILABLE NOW!

Word of the Week – King

Word of the Week – King

Since we just featured queen, it seemed appropriate to look next at king…even though the history of this word, which traces its roots back to prehistory (seriously!), is less straightforward because of that long history.

What we know is that our current English formation, king, is a contraction of the Old English version, cyning. It meant “ruler” and is derived from the original Germanic language’s version, kuningaz. But where did that come from? That’s where things get murky, since it’s been around so long.

There are theories that the word is related to Old English cynn, meaning “family” or “race of people.” In which case king would be literally “leader of a people group.” Or it could be related to an old Germanic word that means “of noble birth,” which was originally linked to being descended from the gods, back in pagan days.

And have you ever noticed the similarity between king and kin (family)? Yeah, the experts are certain that’s no coincidence, but they can’t actually trace the connection there either.

But back in the early days of Britain, king was used to denote what we would now more call chieftans–leaders of small groups of peope that made up one or a few families. It wasn’t until the rise of Europeans nation-states as we know them now that the word in English took on the more formal, austere tones we associate with it today. And even when the notion of king grew a bit more high-faluting, the same word was still used for chiefs or tribal leaders for many years.

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