Word of the Week – Wicked

Word of the Week – Wicked

by | Jan 27, 2025 | Word of the Week

With the proliferation of the book, musical, and movie Wicked, I thought it would be fun to look at the history of the word. (Okay, so in fact, I saw a fun article on it on www.EtymOnline.com and that 100% inspired me to borrow the topic, LOL. Click the link to read their very thorough explanation! This is a muuuuuuch shorter version.)

Did you know that wicked witch is actually redundant? They are, in fact, different modern spellings of the SAME Old English word. In Old English, we had the word wicca, the feminine version of which was wicce, which was pronounced like “witch.” Both spellings meant “witch,” and there was also the adjective wick to describe them, meaning “bad, evil, false.”

So why that -ed ending? That’s one of the things that make etymologists smile…or shake their head. The -ed ending implies a past tense verb, but in fact there never was a verb. Wicked, however, developed as if there had been that action word.

The words wicked and witch have of course been separated for many hundreds of years at this point, so it’s reasonable for modern speakers to put them together again for emphasis and to separate them from “good” witches like we see in The Wizard of Oz. Of course, theologians insist that “good witch” is an oxymoron. 😉 But in the realm of fiction, we can appreciate the choice between using power (of any source) for good versus evil.

Have you read or watched Wicked? I confess I’ve yet to see any of the productions, either film or stage. I have the book but haven’t yet read it…I’ve heard, er, conflicting reports on it, LOL.

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Cover Reveal of Awakened

Cover Reveal of Awakened

by | Jan 23, 2025 | Announcements, Book News, Books, Cover Designs

It’s Time!

For Another Cover Reveal!!

Up until now, all of my books have been either historical…or at least with a historical thread (like my Guideposts books). And I LOVE historicals, both writing and reading them.

But I have another literary love too. I’ve long been a sucker for a good fantasy romance, and in the past few years, that’s where I’ve often turned for my reading while I’m juggling a lot of contracts, in large part because it’s not my primary genre. Harder to compare and second-guess myself with reading that’s not too much like my writing!

Of course, when you read something a lot, as a writer, it’s not uncommon to decide to “play” with that new genre. I started playing with fantasy, and I loved this story so much that it was soon finished too!

I polled readers to help me come up with the title, Awakened, and I also did a poll for some cover options…none of which I ended up using. Why?

Because the winner by far was a photographic-style cover with a woman on it, which was fun for me to make, but…well, but NO successful fantasy romances in today’s market have a photographic image of people on them. While that’s what my historical readers expect, it’s not what romantasy readers expect.

So I went back to the drawing board. Or rather, had an artist friend go to the drawing board for me. And I am SO in love with what she created!

Let’s meet…

Arden Bleu

Arden is the daughter of the High Guardian of the Barrier Banks, but it’s her stepsister, Jade, who is the special one. And when Jade is kidnapped by the mer, Arden will do anything to save her, even if it means facing down the one man she’s long lived in fear of–King Seidon, who is the only person in the empire who could take her father away from her.

The mightiest king Daryatla has ever known…

Seidon

Seidon has already been king for 200 years, and it’s taught him a lot about judging people. He knows as soon as Arden demands help in finding her sister that she’s going to be a friend, just as her father is. What he doesn’t know is how to find the young woman the mer have seized…though he knows exactly why they took her. He felt her blood in the water during the scuffle, and the magic in it was more powerful than any he’d felt before. Is Jade the one he’s been waiting centuries for?

An evocative setting

Daryatla

In a post-cataclysmic Earth many thousands of years in the future, technology and gift from God have combined to create power over the elements that is called “magic.” In what used to be the eastern seaboard of North America and the Atlantic, a new empire has emerged–Daryatla, the land ruled by the Sea King. But under the waves, humans who have evolved to withstand the pressure of the ocean depths live in an undersea kingdom called the Sunken Cities. And the mer rulers are known for their ruthlessness. If they unleash the power they all suspect lies dormant in Jade’s veins, it could mean devastation for them all.

Roseanna’s first

Fantasy Romance

A unique take on mermaids, a powerful but down-to-earth king, an overlooked heroine, and a young woman desperate to just be normal all combine to bring you the world of Awakened.

Ready? Here it is!
The cover of Awakened!

What do you think??

I LOVE how this turned out! The beautiful drawing of Arden comes to us courtesy of the amazing Caroline Smith of Caroline Calligraphie (one of my P&P ladies). I added an overlay of ocean waves to her skirt, combined it with oceanic colors for the background, we super-imposed the Awakening mark (which appears on the palm of all Awakened people in the book), and then of course had the title in a fun gild.

Pre-Order Now!

“The speculative fiction bug has been awakened in prolific author Roseanna White, and her fantasy debut does not disappoint! With a refreshing and imaginative spin on mermaid lore, Awakened offers a richly woven tale of love and loyalty in the collision of two vibrant worlds. White’s masterful storytelling and vivid world-building will draw readers into an epic adventure that explores the depths of sacrifice and the power of unity. A thoroughly enjoyable and captivating read—I eagerly await her next foray into the fantasy genre!”

—Jill Williamson, Christy Award-winning Blood of Kings author

The Official Description

Where sea and land meet, two worlds clash in a fury of wind and waves.

Arden Bleu has always known that her stepsister, Jade, was destined for great things. In a world where beauty follows magic, she has no doubt that their upcoming Awakening ceremony will reveal that gorgeous, kind, compelling Jade is far more than a mere mortal. But when Jade is kidnapped by a mysterious sect of mer on the eve of the newly-returned king’s ball, Arden will do anything to save her sister. Even face down the man she’s always dreaded meeting because of the power he holds over her family, the man to whom her father swore loyalty long before she was born. The Sea King.

Seidon, the Sea King of Daryatla, has grown only more powerful as the centuries have gone by, but lifetime after lifetime have failed to give him what he most yearns for: a family. He knows that it will take a woman of extraordinary power to match him enough to create a child, and no such woman seems to exist…until he feels her magic calling to his one day in the water. And when Arden Bleu, daughter of his most trusted official, arrives to tell him about her missing stepsister, he knows this Jade, with a new magic so coveted that the mer would risk war with his kingdom to steal her away, may be the one he’s waited centuries for. But how can he and the determined Arden ever hope to find one young woman trapped beneath the waves? Perhaps the Great Golden Sea Hawk who has guarded the sisters all their lives holds the key.

In a world on the brink of war between the mer and the land-dwellers, friendship, faith, and love demand the ultimate sacrifice as both kingdoms seek to unlock the prophesied magic waiting to spring forth: the magic of wind and sky. To the mer, it would mean the freedom to return to the land. To Seidon’s court, it would mean safety from every storm. But how can any human hand wield the wind?

Word of the Week – Catalog

Word of the Week – Catalog

by | Jan 20, 2025 | Word of the Week

As someone who studied Ancient Greek in college, I occasionally get excited when I realize that an English word has its roots in that language…and especially when it’s a logos word.

Why? Because logos might mean “word” most specifically, but it means SO MUCH MORE. The logos of things comes up a lot in ancient philosophies. The Biblical Greek word for blessing is a logos word, for example. And of course, the Gospel of St. John begins with Christ as The Word, the logos, through whom all of creation was made.

I had never, however, drawn the connection between catalog and logos, perhaps because I usually favor the British spelling, catalogue. It’s been in the English language since the 1400s, always with the same meaning of “a list of items.” But my husband pointed out recently that’s literally “according to [kata] + the word [logos].” That just struck me as cool. Because a catalog is indeed a word-list of something, and that very word-list is what gives it order. Given that the logos is the thing by which the whole universe was ordered, that’s just cool.

And while I’m not physically the most organized person in the world, I’ve come to really love my catalogs of things like books, especially the ones I’ve read in a year. In 2025, I also started an actual TBR list, with pages for each genre. Do you keep a catalog of anything?

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Last Day of Radiation!

Last Day of Radiation!

by | Jan 16, 2025 | Cancer Journey, Thoughtful Thursdays

Today is January 16. Do you know what that means? It means it’s my last day of radiation therapy for breast cancer! I had 15 sessions beginning December 26, every week day other than New Year’s Day (and no weekends, of course).

It went well, overall. Though getting up at 4:30 every morning and driving the 90 minutes to the hospital through some high elevations with horrible winter weather got old fast, the treatments themselves were easy. I experienced a wee bit of pinkness on my skin and a slightly-itchy rash, but that was pretty much it for side effects. Not too bad!

The weather was definitely the biggest obstacle. We had to get a hotel several times so that I wouldn’t miss treatment, and I used the time to finish up the novella I was writing and get caught up on other work that the commute interrupted. This January has definitely been WINTRY around here! We’ve been having super-cold (for us) temperatures, with the lows often in the single digits and only one day above freezing in weeks, which means the snow we got nearly two weeks ago is still lingering…and though the forecast kept insisting there was 0% chance of precipitation even in the high elevations last week, we in fact drove through white-outs and horrible roads that had me joking about hiring a dog sled team. (Image below is what was supposed to be a 3-lane highway…)

Instead, we just got another hotel room for the last few days, and I have zero regrets! It snowed again yesterday despite not calling for it, and I’m very glad we weren’t driving through it in the dark on those sketchy mountain roads.

This marks the end of the BIG treatments. I still have 6 immonutherapy injections to go (these are every three weeks), but they’re no big deal–it takes 5 minutes and I have zero side effects from them. Final reconstruction surgery is also in my future–when that happens depends entirely upon how quickly my skin recovers from radiation.

But the completion of radiation therapy brings me one MAJOR step closer to being DONE with cancer treatment! And that is a cause for celebration!

Thank you all for the prayers that have been offered to our Lord on my behalf!

Word of the Week – Muffle

Word of the Week – Muffle

by | Jan 13, 2025 | Word of the Week

When we think of muffle and mufflers today, we tend to think of things that deaden sound…but that meaning didn’t actually come into English until the 1760s, and it was a direct result of the words’ first meanings: “to cover or wrap something to seal of protect it.” Muffle came to us from French, where moufle means “mitten or thick glove,” implying that the original “cover or wrap” was to protect against cold.

This meaning of the verb muffle dates from the early 1400s, and by the early 1500s, muffler meant a scarf or something worn to protect the face and neck from cold.

Of course, wrapping things up does help deaden sound, so it’s only natural that the meaning began to shift to include that side-effect.

Are you a fan of scarves and gloves? When the weather’s chilly, I rarely go out without them! (My husband and son, on the other hand…)

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