by Roseanna White | Oct 27, 2009 | Uncategorized
I’d been wanting to read one of Janice Thompson’s novels (I read one she co-authored a few years ago), so when Revell sent me a review copy of
Fools Rush In it promptly went to my to-be-read stack instead of my give-it-to-another-reviewer stack. The blurb made it sound hilarious, and I couldn’t wait to dig into this story about a Tex-Italian wedding planner who’s in over her head with a boot-scootin’ wedding, given that she knows nothing about country-western stuff.
What I’ve found is a book that gets me where I least expect it. There are a few lines that had me chuckling, but also a few gags that I rolled my eyes over. Until something super-funny came of them later in the story, which then had me breathing a laugh. My husband asked me what was so funny, so I started to explain the whole gag to him, which took it from eye-rolling to hilarious. Ever have that happen? When you’re suspending disbelief while in the pages of a book, something’s silly or a little funny, but then when you try to put it into verbal words, you see how truly hilarious (and ridiculous) it is? We spent quite a few minutes rolling over one of these.
The premise is that Bella Rossi, whose family is a transplant from first Italy, then New Jersey, just took over the reins of a wedding planning business in Galveston, Texas, and she has the brilliant idea to offer themed weddings. But the first theme is Boot-Scootin’, and she’s got no clue. And music? Her brother, the usual deejay, is off to Houston, in love, and knows nothing about country music anyway. Thankfully, the Lord drops a cowboy-deejay in her lap . . . only, he drops a knock-her-down-in-a-dead-faint (literally) surprise along with him.
This is a great story, full of fun and love and faith. I have a couple chapters left (had to go to bed rather than finishing it off last night, thanks to a little tummy bug), but will gleefully finish it today. There are a few places where it feels like the author lapses into telling, rather than showing me what’s going on, but it’s usually when a character is rambling, so that may be kindness on Janice’s part, LOL. Overall, I’m really enjoying this read. My favorite part is the family dynamics (and feuds). There’s nothing like a great Italian clan, and this bunch will keep you grinning.
Now if only I can figure out how I ended up with THREE copies of this book . . . =)
by Roseanna White | Oct 26, 2009 | Uncategorized
Thanks to a hubby who’s remote-happy, we watch a lot of random stuff on TV. This guy cannot leave a channel alone unless he’s watching hockey. But since scripted shows don’t make a ton of sense in small snippets, during commercials of our “real” shows, we tend to watch a lot of Travel Channel, History Channel, Discovery, etc.
During one cruise through the Travel Channel, we came across a show on super yachts. Never heard of them? They’re what they sound like: yachts, but super-sized and super-fancy. This things are awe-inspiring. The woods . . . the art . . . the design . . . the amenities! Amazing, I’m telling you. So luxurious you sigh in pleasure just watching about them. I’d love to just take a tour through one someday so that I can gawk for an hour.
The first time we saw this special, I started thinking, “How can I someday use one of these in a plot?” Having a main character own one seemed a little over the top. I mean, I don’t usually do the whole gazillionaire thing. But maybe I could have a character who worked on one? Maybe? But that just seemed way too . . . simple. Still, it had possibilities. The owners of these beasts are notoriously picky, so if someone worked on one as the chief stew, they’d be in charge of all these details–from pillow placement to the flowers in particular vases to making sure the guests had their every whim met.
We caught another part of the same show a couple months later, when I was thinking up a series that would be a spin off of my Outer Banks Trilogy. Suddenly it clicked. I could have my heroine working there, yes, but she isn’t what she seems. Throughout it, we’d see her doing furtive things, and given the series she’s in, we’d know who she should be, but it’s a few chapters before we’re absolutely sure. And of course she totally falls for the yacht owner’s little brother, who can’t quite believe he’s falling for her, the Plain Jane chief stew who should just be another employee . . .
I’m now really excited every time I think about this story, even though it’ll be years before I get to write it. It’s one of those things that popped into my head so perfectly that I know the story will work well. And it’s cool enough an idea that it’ll make a great finale to this second trilogy I have in mind.
And maybe by then I’ll be able to afford a little tour on one of these fantabulous ships. Be still, my heart!
by Roseanna White | Oct 23, 2009 | Uncategorized
I didn’t have a My Friend Friday post already planned, and today’s my baby’s 4th birthday, so I’m gonna take a break from the regularly-scheduled programming and chat about my awesome little girl and all she’s taught me.
First, it must be said: I can’t believe she’s 4 already! It seems like a week ago that I sat in the hospital, jumping every time she made a noise and thinking, “Is she okay, is she okay?” Now she stubs a toe or bumps a knee about 20 times a day, screams, and I’m like, “Eh, yeah. You’re fine, kid. Shake it off.” 😉
Those first two months with her, she got fondly dubbed The Little Monster by my husband. She was one of those babies that screamed from dinner time until, oh, about 2 in the morning. No reason. Just screamed. Then voila! She found her thumb and two months and became an angel. (Now we gotta work on UN-finding that thumb.)
Xoe amazes me in so many ways. She was pretty average developmentally as a baby; didn’t talk early or walk early or anything . . . but now? The kid shocks my socks off daily with the things she comes up with. You ought to have heard the backhanded insult she gave her grandmother yesterday, LOL. She was wearing a t-shirt her Nonna had gotten her, and when Nonna said, “Oh, I love your shirt,” Xoe replied with, “Oh, I’m only wearing this because I was playing in the mud.” I rolled. My girl is not a t-shirt wearer–she’s a fancy-dress, tights, hair up, jewelry, and maybe a crown for good measure wearer.
She made my friend Stephanie’s day by pointing to the model on the cover of her book and saying, “Oh, Skylar’s pretty. I wish she lived in our world so I could be her friend.” (“Our world”=our town.)
She won’t go ANYWHERE without her brother, unless it’s with me–and even then, she usually wants him to go too. Not that they don’t fight constantly when they’re together, but for some reason he equals security for her. Ever since he was born and we snuck her into the NICU to see him (because “My little brudder’s crying. He needs me. He needs me! Let me in!”) she has been protective and totally gone over the little guy.
Though she can pull an attitude that drives me halfway to insanity, she also has the sweetest disposition and the gentlest heart. When we go to see my grandmother, who’s recovering from back surgery, she refuses to leave the house until she’s made her a card. When we go to a birthday party for her cousin, she insists on picking out a toy from her shelf and putting it in a gift bag to take to her (in spite of the present we spent money on, LOL). When the day’s too boring, she’ll gather up some leaves outside, through them over your head, and yell, “Surprise! It’s your birthday today, Papa! You didn’t know that, did you?”
As any mother with a toddler or preschooler, I could go on and on about the adorable things she says, but I’ll save those for Facebook updates;-) For now, I’ll just say that I constantly learn so much from this precious little creature the Lord gave me. Yes, I lose my patience on a daily basis with one or the other of my kids, and often I wish for just one hour of quiet. But they enrich every aspect of my life. They’ve taught me how to see the world differently, how to appreciate things I never noticed before. And to better use my time, oddly, since I don’t have nearly so much of it free.
So Happy Birthday, Xoë-girl! I love you way up to the moon and back again.
by Roseanna White | Oct 22, 2009 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
I confess. I’m one of those writers that just wants to
write. When I was first informed that I’d have to market, I said something like, “Grooooooaaaaaan.” I’ve mostly gotten over that, but I still had a few pockets of Hold-Out in my little brain.
For some reason, one of them was discussion questions. I moaned at the very thought of someday maybe needing to write them. Then at the conference in September, someone said something about feeling similarly . . . until they got a piece of reader mail saying that one of those questions changed the reader’s life. Now I’m saying, “Well, huh.”
Given that I’ve already had people express interest in using A Stray Drop of Blood for bookclubs, It occurred to me that discussion questions might be a good thing. I said as much to my husband, who replied, “Better still, put together a bunch of the stuff that you drew on to write it. You know, behind the scenes stuff or information they can read to understand the culture of the day better. Encyclopedia Roseann-ica.”
This sounded cool, so I started taking notes on ideas. And thanks to my obsessive nature, it’s approaching completion on my website. I’ve now got both the Companion Guide and the Discussion Questions online (yes, the questions are also in the back of the book). If you’re curious but haven’t read Stray Drop, you’ll want to avoid the discussion questions (which might tip you off on some plot points) but you still might find the Companion Guide interesting. I’ll hopefully be finishing off my sections today. There’ll still be a few topics without links, though, which will be written by guest-experts. Just go to www.RoseannaMWhite.com, click on the Books tab, and voila. Companion Guide and Discussion Question links are front and center.
And since this is on my mind because I need to go do it, I guess I better, you know . . . go do it. =)
by Roseanna White | Oct 20, 2009 | Uncategorized
A week or so ago I was opening the mail and got to a package from a publicist. I opened it, glanced at the book, and thought, “Hmm. ‘Kay.” Flipped it over, read the back, and further thought, “Ahh . . . now this sounds like a really nice love story!” I was reading another book already but was only in the first chapter, so I didn’t feel too awful guilty crackin’ this baby open.
Seaside Letters by Denise Hunter is a Nantucket Love Story that sets a gorgeous stage and drags you deep into the characters’ hearts from the first page. It had me asking questions right away, like “How does she know that? What’s going on?”
For me, though, one of the best things was that a book with this premise could have been frustrating. It’s all about the guy looking for this girl he found online, Sweetpea, who won’t tell him who she really is. He hired the heroine to help him find her. It could have gone a few ways: he could have fallen in love with Sabrina without ever knowing she was Sweetpea. She could have not been Sweetpea. I was fully prepared for the frustration of “Just open your eyes, dude!”
I was pleasantly surprised to see really early on that the author avoided this. Go, Denise! Instead, we’re pulled into a deeply emotional pull-and-tug as the characters work to reconcile what their heart says with what their heads say.
I’m not finished yet, but I’m really looking forward to diving back into Seaside Letters tonight and letting this awesome love story wash over me.
by Roseanna White | Oct 19, 2009 | Uncategorized
Since last week we talked about beautiful characters, I figured I’d continue in a similar vein and talk about the particulars of a character’s looks. I remember someone once complaining about all these gorgeous blond heroines. Then someone more recently added feisty redheads to their list of overdone descriptions. I figure next they’ll take issue with the brunettes, right? LOL.
The problem is that there are only so many options, and that we have to use the same words to describe innumerable people. We’re all either blond, brunette, or redhead. Sure, there are a gazillion shades, but if an author describes them too much, it gets into purple prose–or else we revert to words that people might not even know. Tell me, what’s the difference between someone with chestnut hair and someone with auburn? Or raven versus ebony? Where’s the line between golden blond and platinum?
I ran into an interesting problem with this recently. Years and years ago I wrote a contemporary aimed at the secular market which I knew when I finished it would probably never be published. It was too long, not a strict romance . . . but I liked my characters. The heroine was kinda Snow White-ish–black hair, fairest skin, rosy lips, and gray eyes. Right after finishing it, I started another book, this one aimed at CBA. For some reason I cannot now recall, I decided to make this heroine also have darkest-brown hair and silver eyes. Now, that is where the similarities end. The first was petite and curvy, the second tall and willowy, one and artist, the other a scientist. One talkative, the other all but a mute. I never expected this to be an issue, because I knew I’d never do anything with the first book.
Then last year I had the brilliant idea to snitch the characters from it and plop them down in a totally different plot with a Christian theme. The characters took to it well. No problems. And since I was now not doing anything with the other book with a similar heroine, it didn’t much matter.
Except that a few weeks ago I decided to revive it. One of the first groans I encountered was that this heroine has the same description as the other. Which may not have been a huge problem had I not been targeting the same publisher. LOL. I tweaked her appearance so she didn’t sound so stinkin’ close to the other, but still it gave me pause.
Descriptions are tough things, and we writers give them a ridiculous amount of thought. Have I already had a blond heroine in this trilogy? Are my brunettes too similar? Should I give him brown eyes or blue? This one was tall and this one short, so should she be of middling height?
Does anyone really care? LOL. We go to great lengths to paint our readers a picture of our characters, but what it comes down to is imagination. My husband once argued with me about what one of my characters looked like. “She’s brunette,” I told him, pointing at the page. “See? Sarah’s the blond one.”
He just shook his head and said, “You might have written it that way, but you got it all wrong. Sarah’s a redhead. Cadence is blond.”
At some point, I just rolled my eyes and let him think that. =)
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.