by Roseanna White | Jan 4, 2016 | Announcements, Book News, Sales
First of all, thanks to all my fabulous readers for sharing about the 1-day-only sale of The Lost Heiress on the 2nd. In unprecedented awesomeness, it skyrocketed to the top of its lists and even cracked the top 100 on all Kindle books! If you heard any strange shouting for joy, that was just me. 😉
And now that the 1-day-only sale is over, I want to share about another sale, this one for my Culper Ring Series (digital editions). These prices will run until January 31st–your chance to snatch up the whole series for under $5!
Otherwise, it’s back to the grind today. School will begin at our kitchen table promptly at 9…and I’m going to use the time until then to work on Giver of Wonders, which is thiiiiiiiiis to “The End”!
See y’all back here soon for some more special stuff I’ll be focusing on this week!
by Roseanna White | Jan 30, 2012 | Announcements
If you want a word of the week today, I’d have to with “surreal”–which is how this big news feels to me. (But did you know it wasn’t a word until 1927??? I guess before that people may have just used unreal. But that doesn’t quite capture it, so special thanks to Monsieur Apollinaire for coining it in French.)
Many of you probably saw my announcement on Facebook on Friday, but if not, I can finally announce the big news I’ve known about since October–
Harvest House just bought a three-book series from me!
Now, here’s why this is so surreal. Some of the first Christian fiction I read was by Lori Wick. I discovered her books when I was twelve, and my mom and I would both read all of them, even sharing them with my piano teacher. Those books were what inspired my first novel (finished at age 13). And as I finished that first novel and started dreaming of publication, my eyes naturally moved to the spines of those books I so loved.
Harvest House. Oh, the wonders of a publisher like Harvest House! It seemed everything on my shelf was either from Harvest or Bethany. Surely, surely I could find a home there!
But as the years went by and I learned more about the publishing world, I started to think that, while I would find a great publisher (surely!), it probably wouldn’t be those ones I’d dreamed of for over a decade. And that was okay.
Still, when I had the chance to meet with an editor from Harvest House at the 2009 ACFW conference, I was excited. I pitched to her a contemporary romance, and she read the first few pages right there in the appointment, and declared that my writing was great. I was now excited but also guarded. I knew how long these things could take, and how an enthusiastic editor didn’t always mean anything.
Sure enough, a year went by without hearing anything. I got in touch with this editor and discovered that she’d misplaced the manuscript, so I resent–along with a slew of other proposals for historicals she’d asked to see when I inquired about historical romance possibilities.
But after many months, I got the bad news on that contemporary–they just weren’t doing straight-up contemporary romance. So I said, “Well, what about a historical romance set around George Washington’s first spy ring, during the Revolution?” I’d just had this idea, you see, knew it would be a great follow-up to
Annapolis, which had recently been contracted.
She said, “Oh, I’d be interested in looking at that!” So after finishing up a couple other projects, I got to work researching this idea I had. I titled it
Ring of Secrets and came up with one of the best one-line blurbs I’ve ever managed:
For a Patriot daughter in Loyalist New York,
opening her heart could mean a noose around her neck.
I sent it off totally unsure that those first three chapters were any good, but I said, “Eh, it’ll take her a good while to get to it, anyway. I can always send her a revised version . . .”
An hour later I get an email from this editor. I opened it up thinking it would be, “Thanks, got it!” But no–it said, “Call me!!!” Uh . . . okay. 😉
In short, she loved it. Loved it so much that we agreed then and there to meet at the conference we’d both be attending in Oregon in August, and that I’d deliver whatever I had finished at the time. She warned me she wasn’t the type to take things to committee before she’d read the whole thing, but I was so excited to hear her talking of taking it to committee that that didn’t bother me at all. 😉
So in August, she read the 75% of the book I had finished, and her enthusiasm for it left me giddy. In September, she told me when the committee meeting would be, in October. The day of, she emailed me several times making sure she had every detail of information right, and to tell me to pray. Warned me it would be two weeks before I heard.
Then it came–the email from her, to me and my agent, with the words I’d waited 15 years to hear: “Harvest House wants to buy this series!”
My first three-book deal, with a publisher I’ve admired since my introduction in Christian Fiction! I could hardly believe it then, and I can still hardly believe it now, three months of negotiations later. =)
But it’s real.
Ring of Secrets (assuming the title doesn’t get changed, which is always a possibility), a fictional account following the real-life, documented activities of Washington’s most trustworthy spies, will release 1 January 2013. Just less than a year from today. Here’s my unofficial description. =)
Winter Reeves is a Patriot daughter forced to hide her heart amid the Loyalists of the City of New York. Though she has learned to don a mask to hide her thoughts, she has also learned to keep her ears open so she can pass information on British movements to her childhood friend and his Culper Ring. Never before has she had a problem hiding her true heart behind an image of brainless beauty. But then, never before had someone seen straight to her soul.
Bennet Lane returns to New York from his Yale professorship with one goal: to find Washington’s spy hidden among the ranks of the elite. Romance was supposed to be nothing more than a convenient cover story for his search, a way to gain entrance to the world he had so long shunned—though women are terrifying, baffling creatures that inevitably render him bumbling. But when he meets Winter, with her too-intelligent eyes under her too-blank face, he finds a mystery too intriguing to be ignored.
In a world where loyalty can be bought and sold, where no one can be trusted, and where threat dangles ever before them, Winter and Bennet must find a way through the snares of intrigue . . . before their secrets can swallow them whole.
Winter and Bennet (and Robert Townsend, Benedict Arnold, and a host of other historical figures) will be a reality soon. Followed every six months by their sequels, which will follow the next generation of both Culper Ring and the family in the War of 1812, and then next-next generation in the Civil War. 😉
Yep . . . definitely surreal. But oh, how I praise Him for it!
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning 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.