by Roseanna White | Sep 30, 2011 | Uncategorized
Today let’s give a big welcome to Jennifer Slattery, who is here with a guest post on faith. Jennifer is a lovely woman who has followed the Lord into various avenues for her writing, and I have great admiration for all she’s doing. I hope you are blessed today by her words. Please see the end of the post for information on this month’s giveaway.
And now, here’s Jennifer!
Shining In the Dark
By Jennifer Slattery
It is easy to live in self-protection mode. It is comfortable to surround ourselves with Christians, seated in a nice, safe, predictable church pew. But as I read the Bible, I never see God calling Christians into seclusion. Consider Joseph in an Egyptian prison. Egypt was a pagan land. How many prisoners, enslaved by darkness, watched Joseph pray day after day? And what about Paul? One of our favorite stories is of Paul singing in prison. How brightly did his light Shine surrounded by inmates?
When our daughter was young we lived in Southern California. Life in California is unique in many ways. It is not uncommon for a child to go through life without ever touching snow. You can live on top of your neighbors and not know them. You’ll spend hours in your car, not moving (rush-hour traffic). You’ll drive forty-five minutes to find the hiking trails cut in center of the city. You’ll sit in your back yard, which will likely be covered in cement or gravel, and stare into the night sky in search of those ultra-bright stars that somehow manage to outshine the city lights.
One evening, we wanted her to see the night sky without the “dimming” city lights, so we drove to the desert. We lived on the edge of the Mojave, so it didn’t take long, but once we got there, the view was spectacular! The stars that appeared so faint at home blazed, and numerous stars that were previously out-glimmered by streetlights, dotted the sky.
This image often comes to mind when I pray for guidance. As new opportunities come my way, my first reaction is always self-protection—to remain tucked in my nice church pew, surrounded by brightly shining Christians, waiting…just waiting for that occasional non-Christian to trickle in. And yet, where does our light
Shine the brightest? In the dark. God’s love is extravagant, initiating, self-sacrificing. God’s love penetrated the darkness.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:1-5).
The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness cannot, does not, will not overcome it. So, carry your candle and run to the darkness.
~*~
Jennifer Slattery is lives in the midwest with her husband of fifteen years and their thirteen year old daughter. She prefers peanut butter sandwiches to juicy burgers, likes eating ice-cream for dinner, and devours “issue” novels with authentic characters. She writes for Christ to the World Ministries, The Christian Pulse, and Samie Sisters and is the marketing manager of the literary website, Clash of the Titles. You can find out more about her and her writing at http://jenniferslatterylivesoutloud.com
~*~
Please leave a comment for Jennifer in order to be entered in this month’s giveaway for the 2011 WhiteFire lineup. You can also enter by leaving a comment here.
by Roseanna White | Sep 29, 2011 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
Back when I worked in the Admissions Office of my college, I made friends with one of the (non-student) staff who manned the office. Patricia was a total sweetheart, and we had many a laugh together over the four years I worked there. At 6’1″ tall, Patricia towered over me. She was more than a decade older, with a teenage son. But we had a great relationship.
One of the things that struck me early on about Patricia was that she offered compliments so freely, and so often. Every day when I walked in, she would have something sweet to say. “Oh, your hair looks good like that.” or “I love your shoes.”
Is there any better way to make friends with someone? LOL.
It didn’t take me long to figure that secret out, so I would start finding ways to compliment as well. Sometimes in creative ways, sometimes in those same simple observations. But you know what? Those who give them freely don’t often get them as regularly, and Patricia was often surprised, her thanks startled and genuine. I began saying in response to baffled thanks, “Hey, compliments are easy.”
It became a bit of a joke between us, this genuine complimenting and then laughing response.
At the ACFW conference last week, I was thinking a lot about Patricia. Not that she was a writer or anything (grins), but because those lessons she taught me about complimenting came back to visit. In a situation where one meets a lot of new people, or people one usually only sees online, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by it all, or to feel a little lost in the crowd. But it takes so little to make someone feel comfortable.
“Wow, that’s a great skirt.”
“You have the most perfect hair.”
“Well aren’t you adorable!”
Easy things to say. Simple to come up with. But not so simple to the person hearing them. To the recipient, a compliment can settle, can lift up, can encourage, can edify.
I received a few at ACFW that made me smile. And I tried to give some that would do the same for others. Because compliments are easy. They don’t cost me anything, they don’t take any effort. It’s no sacrifice at all to say something nice to someone. So why don’t I do it all the time?
Because the one thing compliments DO require of us is to look away from ourselves long enough to notice someone else.
I make a concerted effort to do this, but it took a bit of training. I couldn’t tell you how often I thought nice things but didn’t say them before I learned this lesson from Patricia. Why did I hold my tongue? Couldn’t tell ya. Probably because it was easier not to engage someone at all.
But that’s not who I want to be. I want to be someone who can make you smile, make you laugh. I want to be someone who brightens your day, just as so many of you brighten mine. We can all be a little self-focused now and then, and to a point there’s nothing wrong with that. But I really, really hope I never forget this lesson. That every time someone says something nice to me, it serves as a reminder for me to give even more.
So a big THANK YOU! to all of you who lift me up day after day with your comments and emails, to those who made me grin at the conference with the nice things you said about me. And while I can’t exactly offer individual encouragement to y’all here and now since I have no idea who is reading this (ha ha), I can tell you this: your words make a difference. You’re appreciated and loved. You make my life richer.
Now, accepting compliments graciously, humbly, but without denying them and thereby calling the giver a liar . . . that’s a whole other post. 😉
by Roseanna White | Sep 28, 2011 | Remember When Wednesdays, Uncategorized
Having just returned from the ACFW conference in St. Louis, and having spent the last few days chatting with my fellow historical writers about all we gleaned and learned while there, I thought it would be fun to take today to talk about historicals. Specifically, which ones are your favorites?
Do you tend to gravitate toward a particular era? A particular setting? What draws you to it?
Just a few choices to get you started. Do you like:
* Biblical / Ancient times
*Medieval
*Elizabethan / Tudor England
*Colonial / Revolutionary America
*Regency England
*Early Federal America (post-Revolution through War of 1812-ish)
*Civil War
*Reconstruction
*Victorian England
*European (which country, time period do you love?)
*Western
*Turn of the Century
*World War I
*Twenties – Depression
*World War II
Any of these jump out at you as your all-time favorite? Does your favorite not fit? (Gotta say, one of my favorites is Christine Lindsay’s Shadowed in Silk, which is India of 1919, so it’s kinda between WWI and Twenties with a totally unique setting. Feel free to expand my list!)
Let’s getting chatting about our favorites!!
by Roseanna White | Sep 27, 2011 | Uncategorized
Every so often, I find one of those books that just takes my breath away as I’m reading. Every so often, I find one whose characters stay close to my side even when I’m not reading it, going through my days hovering in the corner of my mind. Every so often I find a book where the not-kisses are intense as the kisses, where the emotion is so high I feel taut as a bow while reading, where I savor each page.
The Colonel’s Lady by Laura Frantz is one of those books. I’ve never done a rating system, but I’m tempted to come up with one for this just so I can give it maximum stars.
Roxanna Rowan has lost everything she knew in Virginia. Her mother has died, her betrothed has broken their engagement. The only promise left in her life is her beloved father, who is serving as a scrivener to the fearsome Colonel Cassius McLinn on the frontier in Ketucke. Not knowing what else to do, Roxanna packs up everything she owns and heads into the unknown–only to arrive at Fort Endeavor and discover her father is dead. Trapped at the outpost, surrounded by natives that are working for the British, Roxanna has little choice but to stay in this terrible place, where her father’s memory haunts her home and the towering Irish commander haunts her mind . . . and soon her heart.
Cassius McLinn has been given charge of the western frontier, but it is punishment rather than honor. He ought to be in the east, serving General Washington. Fighting the British outright, just as he had given up his inheritance in Ireland to do. But he is instead in this godforsaken wilderness, with too few supplies, too few men, and now a passel of women to care for–including the too-alluring, too-generous daughter of the man he accidentally shot in the shadowy twilight on their last campaign. He cannot explain why Roxie Rowan burrows so quickly into his heart. What he does know is that when she discovers her father’s death came at his hands, she will hate him. His Irish premonition tells him he will die out here, perhaps even at the hands of the spy Roxie’s father had discovered before his death . . . but is there a chance he will know happiness before he does?
The Colonel’s Lady is . . . just WOW. It’s heart-wrenching. It’s beyond beautiful. It’s complicated and engaging and memorable. It’s absolutely everything a book needs to be, and I can honestly think of nothing I would change about it. As I read it, I could feel the danger lurking in the forests just beyond the fort’s walls. I could feel the tension stretching the characters to their breaking points. I could sense the resignation of Cass, the desperation of Roxanna. Which made the love story all the more poignant.
This book can boast the most intense not-a-kiss scene I think I’ve ever read. The actual kissing scene is awesome too, but I have to note the first because it’s far harder to find. 😉 Buy boy howdy! The book would be worth reading for that alone.
I’ve given up wasting time on books I’m not enjoying, so pretty much anything I review on here is going to be one I like and fully approve. But I have to say that The Colonel’s Lady holds a spot on my favorites list. It is truly a masterful combination of wordsmithing and storytelling, of real, torn characters and a high-stakes plot.
Go get your hands on this book. Now. Seriously. GO. You’ll thank me for it. =)
by Roseanna White | Sep 21, 2011 | Uncategorized
It’s conference time!! I’m currently en route to St. Louis for the ACFW conference (or there, depending on when you see this), so not blogging. Nope, instead I’m looking forward to a few days of immersion into the industry I love. Some awesome classes, the chance to chat with some professionals, and best of all, the fellowship of my like-minded colleagues. Yay!!
I’ll be back to my normal schedule next week. Hope everyone has a great one–and if you’ll be in St. Louis, I hope you see you there!
by Roseanna White | Sep 20, 2011 | Uncategorized
I was chatting with my 14-year-old niece over the weekend about classics. She’s reading Great Expectations in class right now, and while she finds some parts of it good, overall she’s come to the conclusion that it’s boring. She said, “Modern books are just better. By which I mean books written recently, not necessarily set recently.”
In a lot of ways, I think she’s right. Fiction writing has evolved a lot over the centuries. We have a craft, and we study on ways to improve it, to fully engage our readers. And the readers have changed! A TV generation isn’t prepared to wade through all those descriptive paragraphs. Or backstory. Or info dumps. Overall, I think this is an improvement, certainly for the world we’re writing for.
But of course, I had to tell her that not all classics are as difficult as Dickens. =) Now, I’ve read some Dickens I like. But I must confess–I sat down one summer during college with my Complete Works and said, “I’m going to read Dickens this summer!”
I got about three chapters in and went, “I’m not going to read Dickens this summer!” LOL.
But I could read Pride and Prejudice over and over again. The wit is just amazing. And as I told my niece, Jane Eyre is shockingly modern. When I read that right after college, I couldn’t believe how similar it was in style to modern books. L. M. Montgomery (who wrote around turn-of-the-century, so is borderline modern in my opinion) will always remain one of my favorite authors.
I’m glad fiction writing has come as far as it has, but I definitely still love–and have immense respect for–classics. What are you favorite pieces of classic literature? Authors, titles? Why do you love them? And which ones do you think translate best to today’s teens?
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.