Not Blank Slates
A couple years ago, a newsletter email came into my inbox from Tricia Goyer. It was on New Year's Day, I believe, and was introducing a new Facebook group she'd created, called Write That Book! (Great group, by the way). But part of her intro was a musing that has stuck with me all these years....
Word of the Week – Vacation
It's summertime in the northern hemisphere, our kids are out of school, so many of us are thinking about one of our favorite things...VACATION! But have you stopped to wonder about the history of the word? I actually first took a look at it back in 2012, but it was definitely time for a revisit! I...
Thowback Thursday. . . Book Lovers
***Today's Throwback post was originally published January 7, 2010*** I will never forget my shock. There I sat, an innocent, in the admissions office at my college. All around me were the usual people that made up my day--the admissions counselors, the office manager, the director and associate...
Word of the Week – Motivation
I actually first looked at the etymology of motivation back in 2012, but...that's been a long time ago, LOL. And since summers can be a weird time of either little motivation or super-charged motivation, I figured it was a great time to revisit. Did you know that motivation wasn’t in use until...
Other People’s Problems
We've all heard some version of this wisdom, whether it's an anecdote, an object lesson, or a punchline: if you want to feel better about your problems, just look at someone else's. You're going to be far happier with your own than theirs. The irony, of course, being that the same is true in...
Word of the Week – Infant
We all know what an infant is--a newborn baby. Pretty simple. What I didn't realize was that it actually comes from the Latin in meaning "not" and fari meaning "to speak." So it literally means "unable to speak." Who knew? Historically, infant in Latin meant a babe in arms, but then in languages...
Approaching the Throne
Way back in the day, when I wrote Jewel of Persia, I had to study not only the book of Esther and Old Testament history, but Persian history as well. It was interesting to learn that Xerxes was called "the king of kings" because of the vastness of his empire, and the fact that he had so many...
Word of the Week – Delight
You know how I often begin these posts by telling you about how my family was talking about this or that word, and I guess as to how it evolved, and I was right? Yeah...not the case this time at all. 😉 As it turns out, delight has nothing to do with light, as I was trying to guess. 😉 It's...
The Right Gospel
When you read through the epistles, there's a common theme to many of them: Paul is admonishing them for following after false versions of Christianity. Listening to teachers or prophets who said Christ wasn't fully man or fully God . . . getting tangled back up in the law . . . denying the...
Word of the Week – Cobbler
Ever wonder how two very different meanings get attached to the same word? Cobbler is a perfect example. Historically, a cobbler is someone who mends shoes and has been such since the late 1300s. Cobbler and cobble (the verb) seem to have evolved together in English, the verb meaning "to mend or...
About Me
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award nominated 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.