by Roseanna White | Sep 9, 2010 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
I can think of nothing else to talk about yet, so y’all are going to get the story of my last evening.
Okay, so let’s set the stage. Xoe (she’s 4, almost 5 for those of you who don’t know), fell asleep on the couch yesterday afternoon. This inevitably means she has trouble falling asleep at bedtime, but I was hopeful–she kept saying she was tired all evening.
But as expected, she was up at 8:30 or so asking to go to the bathroom (ah, stall tactics). In the bathroom, she spotted a teensy tiny little spider. The kind so small it barely even freaked her out, and she’s the master of over-reacting to any bug. (I say that with all love, LOL.) Then I tucked her back in, thankful Rowyn (who’s 2 1/2) didn’t wake up.
Half an hour later, shrieking. “Spider! Mommy, there’s a spider on my pilloooooooooooowwwwwwww!”
Riiiiiiiight. I’m thinking, “Okay, so she fell asleep, dreamed about the spider, woke up freaked out.” Something I would have done. So I calm her down, hold her for a few in the living room, make a show of checking her pillow and bed, and then tuck her in–for half a second before pulling her out of bed, barely containing a shriek of my own as a HUGE, thick spider (as opposed to our usual granddaddy-long-leg) scurries over the toy box right beside her pillow. (Rather than sleeping on her top bunk bed, she’s been on a mattress on the floor since July. Which I will not go into right now.)
So I hustle Xoe back to the living room, grab a flashlight (Rowyn’s still sleeping in the bedroom, so no overhead lights) and a shoe, and go spider hunting. But the thing must have gone into the toy box. (Can you see me shudder?) I can’t find it and squish it, which means no body to show Xoe.
We move her little bed to the other side of the bedroom, but of course that doesn’t work. A few minutes and she’s freaking out again, insisting she saw one on Rowyn’s dresser now (at her head), and trying to convince me that she’ll be fine if I just let her stay up until I go to bed. Which, at this point, is only a few minutes away anyway. So I let her help me make my coffee and watch me wash my face, then go back in with the flashlight. We check everything, and I leave the light with her so she can Shine it if she thinks she sees something.
A little bit later, I go to bed. Three minutes after settling in . . . wanna take a guess? That’s right, Xoe’s flying up the stairs. Obviously she’s not going to be able to sleep on the floor in there. So first we try the top bunk. No go–she hasn’t mastered the ladder yet, so . . . Our other option is what we try next–pulling her little mattress on the floor into the schoolroom.
Thankfully, that worked. She settled down and went to sleep. At 11:00. Three hours after bedtime. Argh!
After that the night was peaceful (though I was dreaming of bugs–go figure). Unfortunately, when I snuck down at 6 in search of some quiet time before the kids woke up, the kids woke up. So Mommy’s a little grumpy, and while Rowyn (who got a solid 10 hours, miraculously) is his usual chipper self, Xoe’s also grumpy–not surprising. Seven hours of sleep is not enough for a 4-year-old. And grumpy me is thinking, “She’s going to fall asleep again this afternoon and then repeat the whole can’t-sleep-at-night-thing . . .”
Here’s hoping for a smoothing evening tonight though, eh? Sigh.
by Roseanna White | Sep 2, 2010 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
Last weekend, we had dinner down at my grandparents’ farm. It’s nestled in a bend of the Potomac River, a little outcropping of West Virginia completely surrounded by Maryland. Mountains rise up all around their couple-hundred-acres of relative flatland, creating a vista I enjoyed for most of life from the nearby hill, where my parents lived.
On another relative-flat section on top of the hill, there’s a little regional airport. Right across the river there’s Cumberland’s train yard–and a four-land highway. So on this pretty little farm that you might think is isolated, you can hear and see all the signs of civilization. One of my friends once commented, “You can’t walk anywhere but to the nearest tree out here, yet I’m afraid an airplane’s going to hit me in the head.” =)
The kids were all outside playing after dinner–but it was hot, and that didn’t last long. Not for most of them. Rowyn, however, refused to come inside when the girls called it quits. Though a safe area, I didn’t want to leave him out there alone simply because the boy has no fear–who knows what he would chase to who-knows-where. So Mommy sucked up her distaste for extreme heat and went outside.
Rowyn was standing with head craned back. After greeting me, he pointed to the sky. “Airplanes up there,” he informed me.
I grinned. “Yep, there are airplanes up there.”
He kept on looking. “Rowyn go up there too.”
I chuckled. “Oh yeah?”
He nodded and turned his attention to . . . the top of the house? “Rowyn go on roof to see airplanes.”
Visions of two-year-olds scaling the siding in my head, I shook my head. “How are you going to get on the roof, Rowyn?”
Picture an exaggerated toddler shrug. “Don’t know either,” he said. (“Either” is a new word for him, and he uses it lavishly.) “Climb ladder. Where’s ladder, Mommy?”
Mommy, praising her grandparents for hiding all large tools and equipment away in the garages and sheds and barns, looked around and was happy to pronounce, “I don’t see a ladder.”
Rowyn sighed and stomped over to the side of the house. After studying it for a minute–the little wrought-iron bench, the chimney, the plants–he pointed to a high-reaching flowering bush. “Rowyn climb flowers up there.”
I laughed–I couldn’t help it. And I delighted in the imagination, the determination of a toddler. But more, it brought me back to that feeling of no limits. That feeling that the world is yours for the taking, if only you find that magic beanstalk leading you up to the clouds.
Yes, we have limits. We learn, we experience, and we realize that some things are impossible. We just can’t climb a flimsy flower up to the roof–and if we got up there, we still wouldn’t be close to the airplanes. But how often do we use that experience and idea of limits to not even try to reach our dreams? How often do we leave it at “Nope, can’t get up there this way” and not consider that we could take this other path, and arrive at the airport? That we could dig a ladder out, if the roof was our goal?
I think when the Lord called us to have childlike faith, this is what he was talking about. How like my little boy do we look to God? Trying to use our reason, our logic, to get to a goal, when reason and logic won’t get us anywhere close? How often does He shake his head and smile at us, knowing that even if He gave us the ladder we asked for, it wouldn’t get us where we want to go? But if we trust in Him–if we hold fast to the dreams He’s given us–maybe He’ll send a car to take us to the airport we didn’t know was there. Or show us, if we make it to the roof, that that was where we needed to get to all along.
The world has limits . . . and it has history that shows us they can be broken and overcome.
My prayer today is that we all recapture a bit of that two-year-old wonder and find a flower to climb up to our dreams.
by Roseanna White | Aug 19, 2010 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
I intended to wax philosophical and thoughtful this morning–not that I knew what I was going to be all brilliant about, but I figured I was due for some profound thoughts. 😉 Then I thought maybe I’d mention my friend Kimberly who’s coming up this weekend, perhaps link y’all to her awesome toy-making blog, Lord Circus (the toy-making’s awesome–the blog just started).
But then friend Dina ruined those goals by sending me an email telling me to look up Christian Agha Photography on Facebook, as he has apparently volunteered to take the photos of the young woman who also volunteered to model for my book cover. Now I’m far too excited about the shoot happening over the next few days to be concerned with wowing you all with my deep thoughts.
Because, let’s face it, book covers are crucial. I am super-duper excited to be working with Tekeme Studios again, because George did a fabulous job with A Stray Drop of Blood. But since I can’t very well beg his wife to model for every single cover WhiteFire has him design (snicker, snicker), finding a new model was my worry this time. So special thanks to above-mentioned friend Dina for finding me not one, but THREE girls willing to volunteer their time for the sheer fun of having their face on a book cover. And for finding an awesome photographer working for a song, too! How in the world did you manage that, Dina?? 😉
Basically, Roseanna is excited. And, as always, a little nervous. My hubby said something about the weirdness of relying on volunteers for all this, but to me, it’s confirmation that we’re on the right track, that these fellow believers are taking of their time to help me out–and you can bet if there’s anything I can do for them in return, I’ll be quick to offer!
That’s what I love about the Church, which we see so often in the Christian publishing world–we help each other. We love each other, even when we don’t know each other. We’re working for a common goal, and so we don’t mind giving a little in order to get the message out to others. We promote each other, work for each other, serve each other, just like Jesus instructed us to do. So thank you, all you wonderful people helping my dream become reality. Thank you for helping me get my stories out there. And thank you, Lord, for leading me to the right people at the right time.
God rocks, doesn’t He? =)
by Roseanna White | Aug 5, 2010 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
I just realized that my one-year anniversary of this blog passed at the end of July without me paying a lick of attention. The nerve! Why, I oughta break up with me for such an oversight . . . 😉
Yesterday I realized I’d crested the 300 post mark and thought, “Wow, my one year ought to . . . have just passed. Argh!” Here I thought I’d come up with some brilliant giveaway and launch it on that day. Ah well, I’ll come up with something belated. =)
Anybody have any brilliant ideas? Something you’d really dig as a giveaway? I can always do books (mine and others’), but would anybody be interested in something more unique? A black and white drawing? A critique? A Stray Drop t-shirt? Candy? Maybe I’ll check in with some of my friends and see if anyone wants to pitch in some fun!
I’ll take suggestions on this through the weekend and announce my Anniversary Shindig Giveaway on Monday. So speak up! Give me an idea of what you’re just dying to win, and you might see it . . . then might win it!
Three cheers for a year of blogging!
by Roseanna White | Jul 29, 2010 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
I remember thinking, sometime between ages 12 and 14, that I could never write a story that took place before Christ. Or which dealt with people after Christ who never heard his message. “I just couldn’t do it,” I recall thinking. “I’d be wondering about their salvation the whole time.”
Well, I stuck by that for a long time. And when I began writing Jewel of Persia, that aspect didn’t really occur to me–until my husband, reading along as I wrote, said, “There’s just one thing that concerns me–you’re targeting Christian readers with a book that isn’t going to mention Jesus once.”
Too true. Kinda hard to mention someone still 450 years away from being born. But as I studied the books of the Old Testament I was appealing to, it struck me: salvation isn’t a theme unique to the New Testament. The people in the OT prayed constantly for salvation–duh, right? Read the Psalms. Yes, most of the time it was for immediate salvation–the saving of life, or even of the nation, so that it be preserved for future generations.
Last night at Bible study (I had recommended this topic months ago, and love that we got to it the week after I finished Jewel of Persia, LOL), the most awesome example we found, though, was how Moses crafts the bronze serpent and holds it up, so that anyone bitten by a poisonous snake can look at it and be saved. Then in John 3, Jesus references that to say (in the Roseanna-paraphrase version) “Just like Moses lifted that snake up, so is the Son of Man being lifted up. The people were already bitten, already dying. They had to have faith to look up and be saved, and it’s the faith that saved them. Well, people, you’re already bitten. But God loves you so much that he sent his son–and just like that bronze snake, if you believe enough to look toward Me, you’ll be saved. I’m not condemning y’all–you’re already condemned. Already bitten. But I’m here for your salvation.”
Oo, I love that. Love that Jesus himself took this Old Testament idea of salvation and moved it into New Testament, eternal realms. Awesome, isn’t it?
In my book, I’m constantly tossing my poor heroine into situations she needs saved from. Each and every time, she cries out to the Lord her God, and Jehovah comes through. Then at the end, the whole people of Israel are calling out for salvation from the scheming of Haman. It’s a theme for me–more of one, strangely, than it’s been in A.D. books, perhaps because I was so aware of it. And you know, even though they’re still looking forward to Jesus, they don’t know his name, they don’t know when he’ll come, it’s still a matter of faith. Kasia must have faith that the Lord will preserve her, and that she’s where she needs to be. Faith that her God can use her love to move the mountain of a stubborn man. And Esther, of course. Esther must have faith that this is her purpose, and that even if she dies, God will still use her to save her people.
My last sentence has the word “salvation” in it. I end on that note hoping it’ll leave people thinking about it and moving naturally in their thoughts to the ultimate salvation, the One who came and updated our definition of the word, who offered it to our souls. “Jesus” is never in my book. But the Spirit is–and just as He speaks to us now, he spoke to my characters. (Maybe not exactly like, but He did.) It’s the same spirit, the same God. Which means the same Jesus was there, waiting. Waiting, ready to offer himself for these people.
Some things transcend time.
by Roseanna White | Jul 22, 2010 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
For the past month or so, I have been in the “Whatever” stage when it comes to publishing. This isn’t a negative place, though it might sound like it, given the name. But that’s an abbreviation. Really, it’s the “Whatever You Want for Me, Lord” stage.
See, the industry has always been tough. Right now it’s nearly impossible. Yes, there are still successes, and I rejoice with every single one of them. But they never seem to come my way. I’m still getting those “this is solid, she writes well, but . . .” rejections. Or, more often, nothing at all. My agent is understandably frustrated with the lack of responses. There are projects we submitted nearly a year ago upon request that we’ve still hear nothing on.
And I’m okay with that. The optimist in me still thinks, “Something’s going to click with one of those. I feel it.” And the realist says, “But if it doesn’t, then whatever, Lord. Whatever.”
Because I’m promoting a book I love. A Stray Drop of Blood is such a huge part of me that I love dedicating myself to it, to getting it out in the world. And I’m working on a book I love. Not since Stray Drop has a book demanded so much of my mind as Jewel of Persia, perhaps because it’s on the same epic scale. I’m loving what I’m doing, which is something I couldn’t do for a major publishing house.
With my agent’s go-ahead, I’m going to focus on my projects for WhiteFire while we wait for the incredibly slow wheels of the major publishers to turn toward the proposals and manuscripts I submitted to them. And I’ve got this incredible peace and excitement about that. This feeling that “Whatever, Lord,” has led us to a place where WhiteFire can grow and expand and start helping others’ dreams come true.
Writers, you might want to check out WFP’s new and improved site. There’s some fun news on the Submissions page. We also just started a blog with one whole post, LOL. For news as we have it, you can check out that or subscribe to the newsletter on the main site.
Because “Whatever, Lord” is leading to new things these days. Though in some ways the changes in the publishing industry are terrifying for unestablished authors, in other ways they’re freeing and fun. I, for one, am going to focus on that side of things.
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.