A Day in the Oh-So-Glamorous Life of Roseanna

My days, when I'm writing, begin at about 5:30. I have in the past set the alarm for this lovely, dark hour, but lately my cat has been playing the role of alarm clock and revving her engine right in my ear at that time every morning--even on weekends. Sometimes at 4:30. But I digress. ;-)

I'm a morning person, so I don't stumble out of bed, I bounce. (Don't hate me, LOL. I start stumbling at about 9 p.m.) I tiptoe down the stairs, praying with every creaking step that my also-morning-person five-year-old son doesn't wake up. As I pass through the darkened living room, sweeping my foot out lest I step on said engine-revving cat or her sister, I nab my laptop from the end table that doubles as my desk. A few more steps and I'm in the kitchen, squinting against the sudden light. I put Mr. Laptop down on the counter and instruct Mr. Coffee to dispense his life-giving brew. Then I pull over a stool and get to work.

My actual desk, before I got the flag, set up for the creation of
Love Finds You in Annapolis, Maryland (Summerside, 2011)

I have a desk. Really, I do. It's in the former-nursery that's now our family school room, and it's lovely. Antique (a.k.a well worn), with my Jane Austen action figure perched happily on top, and a Betsy Ross flag hanging right above me. But the wi-fi signal is terrible, so I rarely use it when writing. Which means my home school binder has taken up residence there, and that sucker is HUGE! Where would I put the laptop anyway?? ;-) Later in the day, after the kids are up, the computer will therefore move to the aforementioned end table in the living room. And by the end of the day, the kiddos will have amassed a pile of toys on my few inches of space there, LOL.

My little boy usually wakes up at a 6, which begins the scavenger hunt of my day. Breakfast for him, drink for him, toy for him, second breakfast for him...then his sister will usually fumble her way down the stairs, and we get to repeat the process. When I remember, I exercise at 7:30. When I look down at my clock and realize it's already 8:24, I say "Shucks. No time..." Shower, and then the school day begins.

I have a vague awareness of the fact that other writers count on those school hours for work. As a home school mom, it's the other way around for me. I count on the morning hours, our breaks, and sometimes the evenings for making progress on those word-count goals. I've gotten pretty good at getting writing done in five minute chunks. It sometimes makes me cranky, LOL, but I manage.

My end table desk...absent the laptop solely for the purpose
of taking a picture when I signed the contract for Ring of Secrets.

But writer/teacher/mommy aren't my only hats, and usually at some point in the day, I'm slipping into my editor's role. I'm an acquisitions editor and designer for WhiteFire Publishing, which means emails, designing covers and promo material, reading submissions, chatting with the other editors, and, oh, editing. 

The awesome thing about this arrangement is that everything's right here, and I can bounce back and forth between the things needing my attention, be they kids, cats, husband, authors, or my editors. The drawback, of course, is that everything's right here, and I can't ever focus on just one thing, LOL. But I love my jobs--all of them. To the point where I don't say things like, "I need some time off!" I say, instead, "I need some time to work!" Evidenced by the fact that my five-year-old has taken to saying, "Pretty pretty please with work on top?" ;-)

I'm pretty constantly wondering what new task will prove too much...but thus far, I'm doing pretty well just giving it all to God, begging my mom and mom-in-law to babysit every now and then, and hanging on for dear life. 

Glamorous? No. But oh, how blessed I am to be doing what I love!

Order from Amazon | Order from B&N | Order from ChristianBook



Editor's Note: Roseanna is giving away a free copy of her new release, Ring of Secrets. Stop by tomorrow to enter. In addition, everyone who participates tomorrow will be entered in a bigger drawing (to be held on March 30) she's conducting for lots of exciting prizes valued at a total of $150. Don't miss it!

Read More

A Writer's Notion by Roseanna White

A Writer's Notions

by Roseanna M. White

I don't know about you, but I tend to make assumptions. Not just about people, but about the ways things are...and the way things were. For a historical writer, that can be dangerous, LOL.

Back in the day when writing was just fun, when it was my way of winding down and expressing pent-up emotions, I didn't always bother researching like I should. And that's okay, since it was just for me. But one of the reasons I sometimes let that slide was because I would find things that contradicted my assumptions...which changed my story...and I had no clue what to do with that.

Once I determined to write for publication, though, that laziness had to go. And when I found contradictory information, I had to learn how to integrate it into my plot. Sometimes it's a simple matter of tweaking this or that. It changes things, yes, but nothing huge. Other times, though...other times it affects the whole premise.

I ran into this in the early days of Ring of Secrets. When I got the first niggle of an idea to base a book around the historical Culper Ring, America's first spy ring and the most trusted intelligencers of George Washington during the Revolution, I had these ideas. And honestly, my first scratches of research bore it out. That they were low-tech action heroes. James Bond with earlier gadgets. Jason Bourne during the Revolution. I rubbed my hands together and though "Oo, this is going to be fun!"

Then I got down to the serious research. As in, reading books instead of 200-word articles online. And as this portion of research is for me, it frankly involved some disappointment. Because I read actual documentation of the Culper Ring, you know what I found? That these weren't super spies. They weren't even trained. They had no history with espionage, their codes were flawed, they had nothing to do with the biggest event of the Revolution--Benedict Arnold's capture--even though those websites had led me to believe they had, and all the things they did help with were fairly small to my way of thinking, and spread out over a year. That doesn't exactly qualify as high-action for a romantic suspense.

So as I read my primary research book, Washington's Spies by Alexander Rose, my mind had to churn through my whole premise again. Did I want to write this book in a new way? Did I want to let go of my assumptions? Could I write the book under the banner of the facts, or should I forget the historical basis and make up my own spy ring?

There was some waffling in my mind. Because at first, I really didn't like reality, LOL. But I have this deal I make with myself when writing historicals: facts are sacred, motivations are up for grabs. I never, ever let myself change actual history, the events recorded by observers. (Okay, so I might fudge the phase of the moon now and then, but I beg forgiveness for that, LOL.) But I do let myself alter why people did the things they did, figuring that historians are only guessing about the reasons anyway. Even when people record their motivations, are they always honest? Who knows. So I can do with those what I will. But here? Could I work within those parameters here?

I kept reading, and the more I read, the more I got a grasp on what would become my absolute favorite part of Ring of Secrets. The very thing that made me moan and groan became my new, better premise. Because I realized that I didn't need super-spies in my book. I needed people. Normal, everyday people who were doing something extraordinary. And that is what the Culper Ring turned out to be. They were sickly farmers, they were nervous shopkeepers, they were over-confident sailors and soldiers with absolutely no grasp on how to accomplish this task assigned to them. They were creative and inventive and determined...and terrified. 

And that, with this book as with many other I've written, turned out to be the most amazing thing. Because my assumptions tend to simplify things. My vision starts out so narrow. But when I embrace the facts and let go of my notions, I discover what God's vision had been at the time. And needless to say, His is so much richer. So much fuller. So much better than my imaginings. 

It's my prayer that Ring of Secrets can show readers just a portion of what the real, original Culper Ring accomplished during the Revolution. That they were people just like us who stepped up, who fell to their knees, who put aside their fears...and who changed history forever.

~*~

Roseanna M. White pens her novels under the Betsy Ross flag hanging above her desk, with her Jane Austen action figure watching over her. When she isn’t writing fiction, she’s editing it for WhiteFire Publishing or reviewing it for the Christian Review of Books, both of which she co-founded with her husband. 

www.roseannawhite.com | www.facebook.com/roseanna.white | www.twitter.com/roseannamwhite

Order from Amazon | Order from B&N | Order from ChristianBook

Come back on Friday when Roseanna teams up with The Borrowed Book to give away a copy of her latest release!