Word of the Week – SPF

Word of the Week – SPF

SPF might not seem terribly mysterious. Anyone who wears sunblock is accustomed to seeing the abbreviation, and it’s no mystery what it stands for “Sun Protection Factor.”

But did you know that the first sunblock was not, in fact, created for sunny summer days? Nope! It was invented by a Swiss chemist with a love of mountain climbing, named Franz Greiter. He was tired of getting sunburned during his treks up and down the mountains, so in 1946 he invented the first sunblock…which he called “glacier cream.”

I just love irony like that.

It didn’t take long for those who loved the sun to pick up on his invention and start to use it for other outdoor activities. By 1954, people were using the term sunscreen (already in existence for physical items that blocked the sun) for the lotion. In the 1960s, Greiter came up with the SPF rating for his lotions, and that rating system is still what we use today!

Well…sort of. The idea behind it is that however long a person can usually be in the sun without getting burned is your base number–so, say, 15 minutes or so. Then you factor in the lotion, and however long you can now go without being burned is your end number. So you divide to get the SPF. So if you can now go 30 minutes without a burn, then the SPF is 2 (which is fact what that original “glacier cream” was rated). Modern lotions with high SPFs still recommend you reapply more frequently than the rating would indicate. 😉

As for that original inventor? His company is still making sunscreen, and they specialize in high SPFs!

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Rearranged

Rearranged

When I was a kid, there was little I enjoyed more than rearranging spaces. There was only so much I could do on my own, of course, but as I got bigger, I loved extending it to furniture, not just toys. I couldn’t tell you how many times my mom and I shoved couches and chairs around in the living room…sometimes for a purpose, but often just because we were ready for a change.

As an adult with more things than room to put them in, I don’t rearrange as often, it’s true. But I still do for Christmas, to make room for the tree, or when I just can’t handle a current arrangement anymore.

A few weeks ago, our daughter Xoe came home from college for the summer. We love having her home, obviously, but it does mean that my lease on her room for my office expires for the summer, LOL, so I have to move back out to the tiny little desk in the kitchen that I’m pretty sure was meant for a ten year old.

I’ll be honest, guys. This area was a MESS. Yes, it deserves both capitals and italics. Total, complete mess. The desk had become the catch-all for mail and some of my work stuff that I carried out on Spring Break and then never did anything with. Under the desk, all my cloth shopping bags had been shoved in what began with order but had become haphazard. In front of the desk were a myriad of “good boxes” that we hadn’t thrown out yet, plumbing supplies from where my husband had just finished fixing the sink but hadn’t yet gotten around to storing the things again, and various new purchases that hadn’t yet found their home.

Let’s just say I wasn’t exactly looking forward to tackling it…and yet I couldn’t wait to tackle it.

So while David drove down to Annapolis to fetch Xoe and her dorm room, I stayed home to clear out of her bedroom and make space for myself again in the kitchen.

I started, oddly, not in the kitchen at all, but in the utility closet. Since we moved into this house, that utility closet had been dubbed “the cat room.” It housed the litter boxes, in addition to the water heater and softener and various other utility things. We’d at first hung some coats in there but quickly learned that coat rack + cat litter = dusty clothes no one wanted to wear. But it’s so out-of-sight that I pretty much forgot they were even in there, so yes, we still had coats hanging from ten years ago. Well, now that we are pet-less, I decided it was time to put this space to different use. I emptied the litter boxes, cleaned them, and stored them. Used some of the enzyme cleaner on the floors and walls. Took down those way-outgrown coats and gave them a nice washing so I could donate them. And then I began repurposing the space. Moved in all the tools and equipment just sitting around the laundry area and in the kitchen. Threw out all those boxes I didn’t need.

Doing that kind of work isn’t exactly fun, but it feels…restorative. Doesn’t it? And if we can find such satisfaction in clearing out our physical spaces, just imagine how we should feel when we do it in our spiritual lives too.

I don’t know about you, but I tend to let habits pile up. I let prejudices just sit there in their corners, rarely even noticing them anymore. I ignore the dust clouds of bias and judgment as they coat my heart. And sin? Yep, sin has a way of just creeping in and permeating, like the stink from who-knows-what in the back of the fridge or the “let’s not try to identify it” stain near where the litter boxes had been.

In our homes, our spaces, we can see these things. In our hearts? Our minds? Our souls? Maybe they’re less visible at a glance. But that doesn’t meant they’re not there. We just need the eyes to see them.

But we get used to the way things are. Have you ever noticed that? Once something is in one place for a while, we don’t see it anymore. It becomes background noise. We may even be perfectly happy with how things are, content with our arrangement. But a stranger coming into our house, they would see it. They’d notice.

Before we host things like birthday parties here, I always start at the door through which people will enter and really look at what they’ll see–and clean accordingly. I rearrange. I change.

What if we did that more often with ourselves? What if we really think about what people will see when they first meet us–not our hair or clothes, but our spirits? What are we exuding? Who do we show them? What if we honestly evaluated whether we display the love of Christ to everyone we meet, or if maybe instead they see first our biases, our judgy attitudes, or our self-righteousness?

But it doesn’t stop with the evaluation or even the cleaning, right? Once I cleared out all the clutter, it was time to really rearrange–to make things new. I started by moving a small shelf off the top of my tiny desk to underneath it, where the bags had been but now resided in the utility room. Then I enlisted the help of my engineering-minded son to build a little fake extension, so that I could use the funny-shaped triangular space between the end of my desk and a bookshelf (my space is in a little angular window nook) as extra desk space instead of just a place for things to fall and be lost to the abyss. Yes, I absolutely built this with cardboard and a stack of books, LOL. But hey, it works, and it gives me a place to put my pens and cell phone holder without using precious real-desk space that I need for my laptop, planner, and tablet.

After we clear out any lingering sins or bad habits or prejudices from our souls, we’re not done there either. We need to replace those things with better things. Remember when Jesus is talking about casting out demons, and he says that tidying the soul just makes it a more inviting place for that demon to return with friends? Yep. Cleaning out isn’t enough. We need to FILL ourselves. With what?

With Him. With Christ. With the Holy Spirit. With His love. With His light. We need to be so full-to-bursting with His presence that there’s no room for the clutter of pride or selfishness, greed or disdain to enter in.

Then, when people meet us, it’s like a visitor entering into your house and seeing not only spotless spaces, but smelling the fragrance of a lit candle or something delicious in the oven.

That’s who I want to be. The kind of person that people meet and are immediately left with a smile on their faces. I want to be the kind of person that makes others want to linger. I want to be the kind of person that draws others, not because of who I am, but because of Who is shining through me.

I still have some rearranging to do in my house. But honestly, I’m more concerned about my heart. What work do we still have to do inside us, to make us into places where Jesus can not only dwell, but through which His love can brightly shine?

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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