by Roseanna White | Nov 20, 2013 | Remember When Wednesdays, Uncategorized
Okay, so A Soft Breath of Wind is taking me longer to write than usual. Life right now is just not allowing much writing time. But I’m so, so excited to be at my big middle turning point right now. Might not be quite as interesting to you, who don’t know what’s going on in the story here (yet, LOL), but it’s all that’s on my mind, so…
So. For the first half of the book, my main characters are working toward and then in a four-year separation. The guys, Benjamin (the baby in Stray Drop) and Samuel (the slave boy who becomes a son), go off adventuring, one of them to recover from a loss and the other to slake his wanderlust. They’re visiting the churches. Main character, female lead Zipporah has always yearned to travel too–but that’s denied her. Instead, she get to stay at the villa outside Rome.
As in, at the villa. Within the walls. She’s forbidden to leave.
So now, finally, I got to bring my guys home. Which is joyful news…but as they bring with them the other female lead, Dara, who’s pitted against Zipporah, it’s getting real interesting. And a bit intense. =)
Yes, Roseanna is having fun. I finally get to start diving into the love story I’ve been itching to tell. I get to start exploring the difference between loving someone despite their faults and loving someone faults and all. And what happens when you marry the wrong person, disobeying what the Lord has told you.
And as a member of a family divided, how do you know what side to take? And how do you knit it back together in the wake of that rift?
In the part I just wrote, the whole church is basically given the same challenge: who do you believe, when two trusted sources tell you something different? When only one can be right and compromise isn’t an option?
Have you ever been in a position where family, either blood or church, is divided? Was it what you deemed a big issue, or were you baffled at why it became so important? Looking back, do you think you made the right chance in which side you took?
by Roseanna White | Nov 13, 2013 | Remember When Wednesdays, Uncategorized
Last week, going over edits for Circle of Spies with my editor, she mentioned at one point how she just loved that I made my Marietta match the cover photo so perfectly, especially how I described that single curl at her ear a couple different times. I also describe the dress at one point, which was a lot of fun for me. =) And as I said to her, “Well, it’s easy to make the descriptions match when you already have the cover!” (They got this one to me really early on in the writing process.)
I’m having the same fun with A Soft Breath of Wind. My Zipporah is modeled on the cover model, and I’ve even integrated her belt and necklace into the story–additions I never would have made without the picture as inspiration.
And now that I do some design too, I keep a lightbox at Shutterstock.com and iStockPhoto.com with photos I just like or find inspiring or think might work on some cover someday. That’s actually where the one on Soft Breath came from–I’d had it saved for months, and when I decided to work on the story and design the cover, I went, “Oo, oo, oo!!!”
So today, I thought it might be fun to just look at some pictures from these sites (with the watermarks so you know where they’re from–and the photos are linked if you want to check out the original), and see if you can come up with a story premise for them. (I did this once with my authors at WhiteFire, sent them a picture of a hunky knight and said, “Use this in a story. I dare you.” LOL One of them did!!)
Just tell me which option you’re thinking about and what idea might match it. Go crazy!!
by Roseanna White | Nov 6, 2013 | Remember When Wednesdays, Uncategorized
Hear ye, hear ye! All ye who have been awaiting news of the next free novella in the Culper Ring Series! The proclamation has gone forth!
Which is to say…I’ve got the cover for A Hero’s Promise, my next free novella, and was told to tell all my readers it’ll be up for pre-order soon! Releasing January 1, this one is about Jack Arnaud, the little boy in Whispers from the Shadows, and Julienne “Lenna” Lane, the daughter of our main characters in the same. They’re the parents of the heroine in Circle of Spies, so it was fun to delve into their story before plunging into the Civil War.
Now, this one is set in 1835. And I don’t know if you’ve ever searched for fashion from 1835, but it is t-o-u-g-h TOUGH to find any! So rather than give everyone involved a royal headache, this cover bypasses the heroine on the cover and goes straight for the images of import–I’m really loving it! They took an old black and white image of the Capitol from the correct time and somehow turned it into this beauty:
Isn’t it lovely? =)
I don’t have official back cover copy for it yet, but to give you an idea, anyway, I’ll make something up. 😉
Navy Lieutenant Jack Arnaud and Julienne “Lenna” Lane have already postponed their
wedding three times. Will their secrets–incendiary satires, runaway slaves, and
assassination attempts–foil their plans again? Or can they cling still
to the promise they made as mere children, to be together forever?
Yeah, that’s really rough, LOL. But you get the idea, I hope. And as soon as those links appear on Amazon, you can bet I’ll pass them along!
by Roseanna White | Oct 31, 2013 | Remember When Wednesdays, Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
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| An approaching storm front we captured in the Outer Banks this summer |
When you get bad news…or sad news…what do you do? It’s inevitable that we run into these times–they’re part of life, much as we wish they weren’t.
We’re going to have those days when we cry.
We’re going to have those days when we yell.
We’re going to have those days when we feel like the best course is to hide from the world.
Ever since I was a middle-schooler, I’ve pondered my own reactions to these times. I remember when we got the news that my grandfather had cancer. My parents cried. My sister cried. There was much hugging. There was much talk.
I closed myself into my room with a pencil and a notebook, and I wrote poem called, “Why Do I Smile?” I happen to have it on my computer, surprisingly, LOL, so I’ll copy it:
The days melt together in a turmoil of ache.
Their only distinction is a separate pain.
I feel that my future’s not mine to make.
So why do my dreams suspend–unslain?
Each person has their own losses;
Each deals with them in their own way.
Most cry as they carry their crosses.
Why do I smile and laugh it away?
My world has diminished to shatters,
But my eyes are as dry as the breeze.
As hope lies around me in tatters,
I sing as I fall to my knees.
Why can’t I mourn as my mother,
Or weep it away as my friend?
Why must I resort to another—
Stronger?—more miserable end?
I can’t see into tomorrow
So I don’t know that I’ll make it that mile.
Even I can’t see past my own sorrow.
So tell me, why do I smile?
Thirteen-year-old me didn’t really have the answer. Thirty-one-year-old me doesn’t either, but it hasn’t changed. I still, upon getting upsetting news, am more likely to smile and assure everyone I’m okay than cry and let them assure me it will be okay. And it’s not a facade–that’s my genuine, gut reaction. The eternal optimist. The faith, perhaps, holding me up.
But it always hits a month or two later. Every single time I’ve gotten a rejection on a project I thought was sold, for instance (which has happened way too many times, LOL), I’ve experienced this. I can smile and assure my critique partners it’s no big thing. I know that God’s got something better for me. That it was no surprise to Him. I know it, and so I can smile.
Until I can’t anymore. When it hits, it hits like a waterfall, tumbling over me without relent. Those are the days when I mourn for what was lost, or for what I know will be lost soon. I grieve for what cannot be. I look at the projects or dreams or loved ones snatched from me, and I ache. I whimper. I want to cry, but by then I can’t seem to find any tears. (This is why Roseanna cries maybe twice a year. Usually over something stupid like forgetting to pay a bill, LOL.)
It’s so hard not to be discouraged in those times. And in the throes of discouragement, what you know doesn’t often help, because you’re too overwhelmed by what you feel. If only the two could line up!
As you might guess, I’m having a delayed reaction this week, LOL. Nothing as terrible as the impending loss of my grandfather, just a bunch of disappointments adding up, and the old ones that I thought settled coming to add their voices to the mix. One of those days, one of those weeks.
And so I ponder. Again. I wonder why I deal with things the way I do. Is it the right way? The wrong way? The strong way, the weak way? I don’t know. But it’s my way. It’s my way to smile until it hits, to smile again as soon as I can. It’s my way to mourn quietly.
This time, I’m sharing the feeling if not all the reasons, not in a bid for sympathy, but in a laying-bare, to see if it helps in the healing. In a question of how you manage these days, these weeks, so I can listen for the whisper of the great Healer in the voices of my friends.
So please, share. What do you do when the tempest strikes?
by Roseanna White | Oct 30, 2013 | Ancient World, Remember When Wednesdays
Yes, this is posting way late. Because I kinda forgot it was Wednesday. Because I was kinda caught up in writing A Soft Breath of Wind. Which I kinda can’t apologize for. 😉 But here, belated, are some random historical thoughts, LOL.
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| Fresco of a Roman merchant boat |
We historical writers always run into some of the same problems, no matter what era we’re writing in. One of mine is “How long did it take to get from point A to point B?” By boat. Or horse. Or on foot. Or, eventually, by train. Where were the roads? The ports? Did they have docks? How did they get from boat to shore? How far would they have been from town?
These are the kinds of logistical questions that can drive me absolutely batty, because the answers can be hard to find.
Sometimes though, they come from the strangest places–like my daughter’s school books, for instance.
A couple weeks ago, we were reading through the assigned pages of The Awesome Book of Bible Facts, the pages about Roman travel. Xoe was not so interested–I, however, found it fascinating. Diagrams of their roads–details about their sea travel–time it took to sail from Jerusalem to Rome–BE STILL, MY HEART!
LOL.
Yes, we must take our information where we can find it, check it where we can, and run with it.
I’m running right now. Because, finally, Samuel and Benjamin and company are aboard one of Titus’s vessels, on their way from the port at Joppa to Ostia, the port near Rome. One month, give or take, it shall take them, and then they’re home.
I’ll get to write my reunion scene. Which also happens to be a pretty big explosion, my mid-point pivot. Of course, in the meantime I have a couple hearts to crush and character hopes to dash to set them up for this, so do excuse me. Much to do. 😉
by Roseanna White | Oct 23, 2013 | 17th-19th Centuries, Remember When Wednesdays
Who should be responsible for the poor? For the needy? Whose job is it to feed the hungry and clothe the naked?
And if one takes that responsibility…how should one go about it?
To the Quakers of Colonial Philadelphia, the answer to both was simple: this was a task that ought to fall to them, not to the government, and they were not going to feed mouths without feeding souls. More often than not, they felt, people arrived at low circumstances because of their own choices–often bad ones, morally speaking. And so, they needed to be taught. They needed to bettered.
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| A Quaker almshouse |
Quakers ruled the merchant class of Pennsylvania, and they had come up with an idea on how to at once raise the impoverished of Philadelphia from the murk and put them on a path of hope. The Bettering House was run by these merchants, with the goal to improve them in both body and spirit. Families moved into the House, where they were separated by gender. Once there, they received food, clothes, sermons, and gainful employment in the form of spinning, weaving, and dyeing cloth.
Up until this time, the city had been responsible for the poor, but their efforts were small–they provided a bit of food, what firewood they could. The Bettering House took this burden off the city’s shoulders.
But by the mid-1760s, unemployment was on the rise, and the weaknesses of the Bettering House became glaring. Families were separated, the work was hard, the pay was little, and the residents often resented getting “preached to.”
In 1775, a new idea formed, not by Quakers, but by well-educated but monetarily bereft men who shared a passion for bettering the plight of working men in general. With the ultimate goal of earning the common laborer a voice and a vote, James Cannon helped found a rival to the Bettering House–the United Company of Philadelphia for Promoting American Manufacturers…also known as the American Manufactory.
The Manufactory employed a radical new method–since British imports had been banned and the need for domestic-made cloth was on the rise, they saw a new way to provide fair, steady income to families without taking them from their homes and each other. Women could now work from home under the Manufactory’s authority, spinning and weaving at their own levels, and then delivering the cloth to the Manufactory for dyeing. The overhead for the company was low, so profits were high for all involved in the process. Families remained intact.
Though the Bettering House had a fine and noble goal, it’s no great surprise that its numbers started tapering off while the American Manufactory boomed. I love the idea of bettering the soul while tending the physical needs, but perhaps the elite misunderstood what those souls really needed–the love of their families, and the assurance that their voice was heard.
So. For the first half of the book, my main characters are working toward and then in a four-year separation. The guys, Benjamin (the baby in Stray Drop) and Samuel (the slave boy who becomes a son), go off adventuring, one of them to recover from a loss and the other to slake his wanderlust. They’re visiting the churches. Main character, female lead Zipporah has always yearned to travel too–but that’s denied her. Instead, she get to stay at the villa outside Rome.
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.