by Roseanna White | Jul 10, 2013 | Remember When Wednesdays, Uncategorized
Day 9’s winner of Ring of Secrets is:
Amy Campbell!
And as a reminder of what you’re entering for this week…ta da! 😉
Now. It’s “Remember When” day around here…but I’m excited. So we’re tweaking. 😉 You see, this arrived from FedEx yesterday:
How exciting is that?? My first order of business was to pull out a few for my family, closest friends, and critique partners. They all got personal thanks for their part in this crazy writing journey.
But then I got to thinking. What am I going to write for autographs in general? See, I’ve given each of my books a little message that I write in them when signing.
A Stray Drop of Blood, which pivots around the life-changing events of the crucifixion and resurrection, says:
May His touch leave you forever changed.
Jewel of Persia, which is about how our faith can save us when we’re surrounded by the enemy, says:
May the Lord be your Light.
Love Finds You in Annapolis, Maryland, which touches on the price of liberty in a nation newly formed, where freedoms were still as tenuous as peace:
May you find true Liberty in Him.
And most recently,
Ring of Secrets uses a line from the book itself, appealing to how we find the Lord in our quiet moments, often where we least expect Him:
May you hear Him in the echoes of silence.
So now, here I am with
Whispers from the Shadows in hand (squeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), and I need to come up with my little note for it. I could use your help!
Whispers has a couple themes. I wove the title all throughout it, a very subtle but always present illusion to the spiritual battles going on around us. Whenever evil is at work in the book, there are shadows lurking. Sometimes the heroine hears the whisper of voices trying to destroy her, and then finally she hears the whisper of the Lord, giving her hope. And my hero has finely tuned his spiritual ears and is guided more by that awareness of the Holy Spirit’s urgings than his own intuition or skill. Trust is another huge theme–these two are on opposite sides of a war, but have to trust each other to survive someone who threatens them both.
I was considering something like “May you learn to know His whisper” but that might be too close to
Ring of Secrets”’. I like them to be a sort of benediction or prayer for the reader though. (Hence why they all thus far begin with “may…”) Thoughts? Suggestions? I hope so, because that’s your question for the day:
What message should I use when signing
(Special bonus: if I decide to use yours verbatim, I’ll send you the first one I write it in!!)
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by Roseanna White | Jul 3, 2013 | Remember When Wednesdays, Uncategorized
And the winner of Day 2’s Ring of Secrets is:
Elizabeth Sarah Hartwig!
Everyone else who has entered before is still entered today, PLUS for the weekly drawing on Friday of the $15 Bath & Body Works gift card! So keep on wracking up those entries! On Saturday, a whole new drawing widget will be there, so the daily drawings will start fresh too.
I’ve so enjoyed hearing everyone’s favorite reads of the year thus far! Some of them I’ve read, some I have on my TBR pile, some are new to me, but all sound great!
Now, Wednesdays on Writing Roseanna are for “Remember When.” So today is:
Remember When . . . Plots Were Dastardly?
One of my primary sources of information for my latest manuscript,
Circle of Spies (Culper Ring Series Book 3), was a diary from one of the conspirators in the Lincoln Assassination. He, along with Booth and the other conspirators, was a member of the Southern-sympathizing secret society, Knights of the Golden Circle (K.G.C.).
In the diary, there’s a single line that grabbed my attention. It had no bearing on my story, so I didn’t actually look it up until after I’d finished my book, but it was something I couldn’t forget: the yellow fever plot.
The wha?
Yeah…that demanded some research. Which led me to information about Dr. Luke Blackburn. He was a physician. He was a philanthropist. He was governor of Kentucky from 1879-1883. He spent most of his life working to stop the spread of yellow fever and is credited with the first successful quarantine against the disease.
He’s also reportedly guilty of attempting to infect the Union troops with diseased clothes and linens. Modern medicine tells us yellow fever doesn’t in fact spread this way, but there was in fact an outbreak of the fever in New Bern in the fall of 1864, and the K.G.C. were quick to credit it to a successful plot…though they were disappointed it didn’t spread to Washington as they had planned.
And was that all of their terrible plans? Oh no. Another that they tried on several attempts was the planned burning of every major Northern city on a single night. They had agents placed in every major city, all of whom were supposed to ignite a blaze at a given time on a given day. Only…
Yeah. The plans fell through, and the K.G.C. who hadn’t been assigned an active role were left baffled at why this “foolproof” path to victory was abandoned. Perhaps the members backed out…perhaps telegrams got lost…who knows. But can you imagine what might have happened had they succeeded?
My question to you today (you can pick which, or answer both):
What’s one thing that you think would be different today
if the Confederacy had won the Civil War?
or
Would you have wanted to live in the hoop-dress era?
Why or why not?
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by Roseanna White | Jun 26, 2013 | 17th-19th Centuries, Remember When Wednesdays
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| Who Shall be Captain by Howard Pyle |
Is there anything more fun (especially when we’re kids) than a treasure hunt?
Is there anything more fun, as we grow up and (some of us) turn to books for our adventure, than a story that includes a lost treasure?
Allow me to answer for you: nope. 😉
My vacation book was one of Nora Roberts’ latest, and I gotta say, one of my favorite aspects of it was the lost treasure. And would Titanic have been the same with the Heart of the Ocean in it? Nope. Whether it be pirate gold or a legendary gem, we folks love our bling and love the stories of trying to find it. Maybe we’re not all out with our metal detectors, but come on–even if we don’t actually hunt treasure, we love hearing about those who find it!
So it was fun to integrate a treasure into
Circle of Spies, which I’ll be turning in here in another two days or so. Best of all, a treasure people really are hunting today!
I don’t remember the first time I heard about the lost Confederate gold. I suspect it was on television. Possibly that movie with Penelope Cruz and Matthew Connelly. Then an episode of Brad Meltzer’s Decoded (the same show that inspired me to look up the Culper Ring to begin with) did one on it. They’re the ones that pointed out it’s not just about lost Confederate gold–it’s about hidden Confederate gold.
In
Circle of Spies, my bad guy is a captain of the Knights of the Golden Circle. The K.G.C. is a Southern secret society that boasted 300,000 members in the height of the Civil War. For most of those it was probably nothing but a social club, but to the higher ups…it was serious. As in, in regular communication with the Confederacy’s President Davis, receiving instructions on how to undermine the North SERIOUS. And one of the things they were charged with–burying Confederate gold.
Yep, that’s right. They hid it on purpose. Only, it wasn’t supposed to be lost. And it wasn’t just gold. These dedicated Southerners hid everything they would need for a second uprising after the Confederacy surrendered. Gold, yes. And clothes, rations, medical supplies, ammunition, weapons. You name it. There are supposedly caches of this buried all over the South. Booby trapped. And the maps–secret codes hidden in the landscape.
Folks have been searching for these burial spots for decades, and have found enough to keep them searching. How fun is THAT. So in my book, I posit that someone hid some of this treasure in my neck of the woods. In a cave in Western Maryland. Likely? No. But possible. And oh so fun to imagine. =) Because yeah, I love a good treasure story.
What’s your favorite treasure story, be it real or fictional?
by Roseanna White | Jun 19, 2013 | Remember When Wednesdays, Uncategorized
It’s time. Nearly. Time for my brain to move on to a different time, a different era, a different story. I have another week of work on
Circle of Spies, and then that baby needs turned in. There will be edits yet from Harvest House, but then…
That’s it. The completion of a book. The completion of a series. The Culpers will rest. (In my brain at least, though obviously these books still need to hit the shelves. 😉 And I have another novella to write this summer about them, but still. You get my point.)
My little mind has to start working on the next one, the next series. To England of the Regency, then of the Romantic era. Then…well…I haven’t actually figured out the plot of the third book in my next series yet, LOL. I might set it in Italy while Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning were there for the sake of her health. Maybe. Who knows.
But as I was contemplating it yesterday, wondering where I might go and who my characters might meet, I just had to smile. Because it’s so fun to explore history in all its obscurity. I’m going to miss my Culper characters a lot…but I get to meet new ones. And they’ll get to interact with some new snippets from the past.
Who knows what they might be? Pirates, lords, outcasts…writers, artists, inventors…revolutionaries, leaders, critics.
And it occurs to me that that is what I love about writing historicals. That discovery, that exploration. I love finding pieces of the past I didn’t know about, or hadn’t learned fully, and finding the life within them. I love putting people I’ve created into the world of a given era and figuring out how they would survive.
But then, you know what? I hear about other people’s stories, and I go, “Wow! I’d never thought about that portion of history!” So much out there, and so little of it that I’ve considered!
So I thought it would be fun today to pause and think about some what ifs. Some but thens. Some there was a time ideas.
I absolutely love it when friends and readers send me challenges, like “You should write a book about modern-day pirates” or “Have you considered writing a Civil War novel set in the South?” So let’s play!
I’ll start. I have no story idea for this, but I would love to read a book following modern-day missionaries to China, where the underground church is expanding so quickly.
What about you? What fun bit of obscurity would you like to see or write a story about?? Do share!
by Roseanna White | Jun 10, 2013 | Remember When Wednesdays, Uncategorized
I’m on vacation this week at the gorgeous beach with my awesome family, and I didn’t have time to schedule posts last week. So you’ll just have to get along without me for a few days. 😉 But if you haven’t stopped by for a while, here are some recent posts you don’t want to miss!
It’s time for me to build my list of influencers for Whispers from the Shadows! If you can help me spread the word, let me know–but hurry! I only have a couple spots left! Read the Full Article
~*~
I’m so very blessed to have a husband who chases dreams with me. If you don’t know the story of how we started a small press, come by to read about how we meshed our dreams! Read the Full Article
~*~
I got to research outside my norm for the setting of Fairchild’s Lady (which is still free! Find all the links here!). Come learn a tidbit about those early days of the French Revolution! Read the Full Article
See y’all back here next week!
by Roseanna White | Jun 5, 2013 | 17th-19th Centuries, Remember When Wednesdays
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| Versailles, the setting of Fairchild’s Lady |
Since I’m still celebrating the release of this free novella, I thought today I’d chat a bit about its setting. A departure from my American-set historicals that take up the rest of the series, this one follows Isaac Fairchild, a character everyone seemed to love in
Ring of Secrets, on another covert assignment–in France, on the eve of revolution.
Being a history lover, it was fun for me to find another war to set this little book around, one that has certainly been the backdrop of its fair share of books! In a novella I obviously didn’t have the time to explore much of the revolution that turned into the Terror, so I decided to keep it simple and have Fairchild travel to Versailles at the very beginning of the uprising, climaxing at the storming of the Bastille.
France, you see, was in rather dire financial straits. Bankrupt. They tried to balance things out a bit by raising the taxes on the rich, but the nobility simply refused to pay them. (American-me has a hard time imagining an entire class just saying, “No thanks. I think I won’t pay that higher rate.” LOL) Which means the poor had to take up the slack…but couldn’t. So while the rich were partying in style at Versailles, their villeins were starving mere miles away–and because the court was so cut off from the rest of the country, being ensconced as they were in the palace, many of them didn’t even know.
The class system in France were broken up into Estates. The First Estate being the priests, the Second the nobility, and the Third the commoners. Well, right about then a special meeting was called, called the Estates General. They were all getting together to figure this thing out. Revolution, officially, wasn’t on the agenda. But the Third Estate had had enough. They rejected that name, called themselves an assembly instead and basically held the court hostage, saying they wouldn’t budge until they were given a constitution.
Though the Revolution quickly escalated and turned far bloodier than America’s was, at the start, they had no interest in ousting their king–they loved him. They merely wanted him to recognize them as something more than a servant class, something deserving of a fair chance. And for a while after they stormed the old prison (which was more armory than prison at that point), they were happy with Louis’s overtures…until they weren’t anymore.
Fairchild’s Lady ends soon after the rioting in the streets of Paris that day when the Bastille was fired upon, but hovering over the story is that certain knowledge that in the coming months and years, anyone with noble blood had to either flee…or face the guillotine.
I also got to weave this into the next full Culper Ring book,
Whispers from the Shadows, which CBD will have in stock in less than a month (woo hoo!!!). Not only is my heroine the daughter of these folks from
Fairchild’s Lady, but my hero’s best friend came from a family of French nobility who fled to America at the start of the French Revolution. Alain Arnaud was a lot of fun to write, and I hope everyone enjoys his brooding Gallic attitude as much as I did. 😉
Vive le France!
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. 