by Roseanna White | Apr 5, 2017 | 20th Century, Remember When Wednesdays
Confession: when we went to England in September and spent a night in London, I wasn’t happy about it. I’m not a city girl. I don’t enjoy the hustle. Or the bustle. Or the traffic. Or the tall buildings. Or the pace. Or . . . pretty much anything about city life. So my goal was rather to avoid London during the trip, and we did a rather good job of it, but for when an early train to Paris required an overnight stay beforehand.
Which was fine, because I intended to avoid London in my books as much as possible too.
You can imagine my surprise when I realized that my third Shadows Over London book, An Hour Unspent, would not be set anywhere else.
Me: What do you mean, book? I’m your creator! I call the shots!
Book: Mwa ha ha ha.
First I thought, “Oh, I’ll just start it in London like the other two books, then go somewhere else. Somewhere I’ve been. Somewhere beautiful and rural and slower paced.”
My plot disagreed.
So I thought, “Well, I’ll at least take my crew out of London for a while. A nice trip to, say, Devonshire. We passed a lovely day in Devonshire on our way to Cornwall.”
My plot rolled its eyes at me. And just waited for me to realize that this determination to leave London was totally unnecessary and wouldn’t work at all. It would feel tacked-on.
Sigh.
So here I am, a mere 10,000 words into my book, and ready to admit defeat on that score. London is my hero’s world, and my heroine’s too. It’s where they belong. Where all the action needs to take place (well, aside from the end, which will travel to the western front of the war, into France).
Which left me with the problem of learning London. A rather large city to just become familiar with through books, etc. I’m sure I’m nowhere near fluent in its intricacies and details, especially for 1915. But when I realized I had to actually pin down details now about, say, what section of town my characters live in, I quickly thanked the Lord that I’d had the foresight (let’s call it that, shall we, rather than “whim,” which might be more accurate, LOL) to order a couple books on London in general and Edwardian London through photographs.
This one seriously saved my bacon.
This lovely book goes through the city section by section, following the Thames–which means that not only do I learn the quirks and interesting tidbits about each part, I also get a nice idea of which are close to which. It includes fun details like which writers and artists of centuries past made their homes in which part of the city; which neighborhoods Conan Doyle visited as research for Sherlock Holmes’s network of homeless spies; which areas evolved over the decades and became trendy but used to be far different.
Hopefully, with the aid of my, er, well-planned purchases, I’ll pull this off. Even if I am thinking with longing about all those other lovely stories I’ve written, set in Yorkshire and Scotland and Sussex and Cornwall and Wales. And narrowing my eyes at the stubborn Barclay Pearce, who refused to leave the city for more than a few days at the end.
Tyrant.
Speaking of which, I need to go write the scene in which his little sister accuses him of being the same. 😉 I hope everyone’s having a lovely week!
by Roseanna White | Feb 15, 2017 | 20th Century, Remember When Wednesdays
This week marked my self-appointed deadline for beginning my next book. I just realized that An Hour Unpsent is not only the third book in the Shadows Over England Series (which begins July 2017), but it will also be my 16th published novel…and my 34th finished novel (we’ll just assume I’ll complete it, LOL). Which means that, assuming I finish writing it before my birthday, it’ll have the distinction of making it so that I’ve written a book for every year I’ve lived. Looking forward to outdoing that number. 😉
But as I began writing, I quickly realized that while I have my plot largely figured out, I had only a vague impression of my characters. Very vague, which is unusual for me lately. Especially given that the hero, Barclay Pearce, has been in both of the first two books of the series. But my only physical descriptions of him are that he’s average looking until he smiles, at which point he’s nearly too-handsome to blend in–and blending in is always his goal.
So last night, I recruited my husband, who pays more attention than I do to all things TV, to help me find the perfect actors to play my characters. Sometimes it’s fun to pretend like I’m a casting director. So here we are. Casting for An Hour Unspent.
First up was finding an actor to play Barclay. After much thumbing through IMDB on his phone and hemming and hawing and joking, he pulled up the Downton cast and said, “What about him?” to Dan Stevens.
Now, I’d watched the first season at Downton, so I knew him as Matthew Crawley…and he wasn’t quite it. But when I looked up his images on his own and saw the photos from the new Beauty and the Beast, I changed my tune.
Yep. This is how I’d been picturing Barclay. Thin face, sandy blond-brown hair. Not given to smiling, though he’s a joker. I hadn’t yet nailed down his eye color, so we’ll just go with Dan’s blue. 😉
But I had even less of a clue about my heroine Evelina, who’s new to the series. I know she’s rather pretty. That she’s a suffragette. Sweet, but also with a backbone of steal and a fierce independent streak. After a bout of polio as a child left her with a limp, she’s had to fight tooth and nail for that independence, too.
So what would she look like? No. Clue. I’m still not 100% sure I’ve nailed it, but . . . well, this morning I was browsing images of English actresses. I honestly hadn’t even chosen a hair color for her, so I had nothing to go on. I was just looking for images that caught my eye and found one of Jane Levy that said, “I am the daughter of clockmaker who’s always running late.” 😉
Something in her expression caught me, so at the moment I’m casting Jane as my Evelina Manning.
Auburn hair and blue eyes? Sure. Why not. 😉 (Interestingly, this will mark my first series where I didn’t have a blond, a brunette, and a redhead as my 3 heroines, LOL.)
So what do you think? Any other suggestions for Barclay, my thief extraordinaire who has patched together a dozen orphans over the years to call his family? For Evelina, my suffragette who sees herself as the only out-of-balance gear in the perfect clockwork of the Manning household?
Regardless, stay tuned for more hints about the story as I get deeper into it!
The challenge:
to steal an hour from Big Ben’s clock
The means:
a distracted clockmaker with a fascination with weaponry
The complication:
the perpetually-late clockmaker’s daughter
who isn’t about to let a little thing like war get in the way of her cause
by Roseanna White | Jan 18, 2017 | 20th Century, Remember When Wednesdays
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| Photo courtesy of Stephanie’s editor–the first to get her hands on the hardback |
You’ll be seeing more about this book from me in a couple weeks, when it releases. But I had to give y’all a sneak peek now, because there are some extras you can get if you pre-order, and they’re fun enough to make it worth clicking that button a few weeks early. 😉 (You just email your receipt to LostGirl@harpercollins.com and they send you some fun downloads.)
So a couple years ago, my best friend, Stephanie Morrill, (author of The Reinvention of Skylar Hoyt Series and The Ellie Sweet Series) said she had an idea for a historical YA.
Insert Roseanna laughing maniacally and saying, “I knew it! I knew you’d come over to the dark side of historicals eventually! Mwa ha ha ha!”
Ahem.
Her idea was set in 1920s Chicago, which is an awesome setting. One which I’d in fact used before in a MS called Mafia Princess which still sits, sad and forlorn, in my folder of finished but unpublished manuscripts. (Sniff, sniff. Be patient, Sabina and Lorenzo–you may yet find your time…) Happy as a clam that my best friend was finally seeing reason and writing historicals, I promptly sent her all my research books, bought her a book on historical fashion for her birthday, and solemnly swore to answer any questions she had on the history in particular or historicals in general, if I could.
The result: The Lost Girl of Astor Street.
I cannot gush enough about this book. This book is awesome. This book is beautiful. This book is fun. I am happy beyond measure that Blink has picked it up, and thoroughly jazzed at this: HARDBACK!!!!!
I’m eagerly awaiting my pre-ordered copy to arrive in February, but in the meantime, I’m gearing up to help promote. So eventually, you’ll see my full review. For now, this from me is on the back cover:
“Morrill delivers a story that has it all – mystery, the mafia, and a heroine you can’t help but root for. If Veronica Mars met the Roaring Twenties, you’d end up with The Lost Girl of Astor Street.” ~ Roseanna White, author of The Lost Heiress
Here’s the official blurb:
When her best friend vanishes without so much
as a good-bye, eighteen-year-old Piper Sail takes on the role of
amateur sleuth in an attempt to solve the mystery of Lydia’s
disappearance. Given that Piper’s tendency has always been to butt heads
with high-society’s expectations of her, it’s no surprise that she
doesn’t give a second thought to searching for answers to Lydia’s
abduction from their privileged neighborhood.
As Piper discovers
that those answers might stem from the corruption strangling 1924
Chicago—and quite possibly lead back to the doors of her affluent
neighborhood—she must decide how deep she’s willing to dig, how much she
should reveal, and if she’s willing to risk her life of privilege for
the sake of the truth.
Perfect for fans of Libba Bray and Anna
Godbersen, Stephanie Morrill’s atmospheric jazz-age mystery will take
readers from the glitzy homes of the elite to the dark underbelly of
1920s Chicago.
by Roseanna White | Sep 7, 2016 | 20th Century, Remember When Wednesdays, The Great War
If one researches art in Wales, one will come across two sisters–a lot. If one researches music in Wales during World War I, one will come across them again. If one researches how soldiers adjusted to life back at home after the war . . . you get the idea. You’ll yet again end up reading about the Davies sisters, Margaret (called Daisy) and Gwendoline (Gwen).
So naturally, they have to be in my Welsh-set A Song Unheard.
Actually, they’re what inspired it. When I was doing my initial research for how the arts were put to use during WWI, I ran across part of their story, and it intrigued me. It inspired my entire plot.
You see, in the first weeks of the war, Germany invaded Belgium–a country who only existed because it had sworn to neutrality. To violate those terms wasn’t just a blow to the Belgians, it was a blow to civilization. No one could quite believe that the German leadership had so blatantly scorned an agreement made and signed. It wasn’t how gentlemen behaved–it wasn’t how war was waged.
The invasion of Belgium proved to Europe that Germany had no respect for the heretofore “civilized” way of doing things. It horrified the world when the troops marched in and began burning villages, beating priests, and killing innocent civilians. Refugees flooded into friendly nations like England.
And in Wales, these two sisters didn’t just wait for refugees to come to them. They sought them out. Within a few months of the invasion of Belgium, Daisy and Gwen had sent friends into that devastated country to recruit Belgium’s top musicians to come to Wales.
Musicians? you might say. Why??
The answer is two-fold. First, the Davieses were first and foremost always looking to better their “dear principality.” They loved Wales and wanted to better it. They wanted to bring culture to the area often deemed a bit too rural. But that wasn’t their only reasoning.
They also wanted to help. You see, everyone knew from the start that if Germany didn’t relinquish its hold on Belgium, it would soon spell utter disaster for the small nation. Their food supplies wouldn’t last beyond a few months. And with all trade cut off, its citizens would soon be starving. Aid was being organized within weeks of the invasion, much of it spearheaded by Americans (who were thus far otherwise staying as far from the war as possible).
Well, Gwen and Daisy wanted to help with the relief effort. So they put together a symphony orchestra of Belgian refugees and toured Wales, raising money for the Belgian Relief Fund.
This, of course, is where A Song Unheard was born. My hero is a violinist previously with the Brussels Conservatoire, now part of this orchestra touring Wales.
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| Gregynog |
But even after organizing this, the sisters were by no means ready to sit back and say they’d done their duty. A few years later they moved to France, not far from the front, to run a cantina for the soldiers. And a few years after the war, they purchased and opened an estate called Gregynog, whose primary purpose was to rehabilitate soldiers returning from the war, to teach them art and crafts and music to help soothe the ragged edges wrought by violence.
These were sisters described by all who knew them as devout, faithful, focused always on the Lord–and on helping their fellow man. Today, the largest collection of art in Wales is on display because the sisters donated them to the university museum upon their deaths. Theirs is a legacy known far and wide in their dear principality.
Here’s hoping my fictionalized versions of them can do them justice!
by Roseanna White | Aug 17, 2016 | 20th Century, Remember When Wednesdays
Today, for a change of pace, I thought I’d take you on a little virtual pre-tour of the sites of my books–particularly the ones I might get to see next month in England. =)
These first ones are places I won’t see, but which Brook and Justin, Rowena and Brice certainly did. To start our Ladies of the Manor tour, Brook would have arrived in North Yorkshire by steam train . . .
and then gotten her first view (eventually, not from the train, LOL) of Whitby Abbey.
Rowena, on the other hand grew up in a castle built out on a Highland loch…
…before moving to the Sussex countryside near Brighton–and also near the white chalk cliffs of the Seven Sisters.
Then we move on to the soon to release A Lady Unrivaled–and the places I get to go! For starters, the oh-so-picturesque Cotswolds villages…
I’ll be spending a few days near here and am so looking forward to it! This is where
A Lady Unrivaled is set almost exclusively, with the exception of two scenes in lovely Paris.
Then we’ll move on, as my stories do, to Cornwall. Next summer, you’ll meet Rosemary Gresham–thief–and Peter Holstein, who makes his home in the Cornish countryside, where I’ll be spending a lovely three days.
At one point in the story they venture to nearby St. Michael’s Mount–which is within sight of where we’ll be staying!
The climax of A Name Unknown, which I just rewrote, takes place in the Cornish coastal countryside, much like this.
We may also take a day trip (maybe) into Wales to visit Cardiff, where the book I’m currently writing, A Song Unheard, will take place. Perhaps we’ll get a peek at Castle Coch (The Red Castle) nearby…
I haven’t determined the setting for the final book in the Shadows Over England series…but my plan is to pick a place I’ve seen and loved during my trip. 😉
And after I get back, you can rest assured that I’ll take you on another tour, using photos I actually took! (Or that my husband did. I’m lousy with a camera.) All these photos were purchased from Shutterstock. 😉
Now back to the real work I go!
by Roseanna White | May 18, 2016 | 17th-19th Centuries, 20th Century, Ancient World, Remember When Wednesdays
I’m a historical fiction writer–and a historical fiction reader. I have always loved to learn history (or reinforce it) through a fictional story. For me, for my mind, that makes facts stick in ways that an article or non-fiction book seldom make it do. It makes it come alive. It makes it walk and breathe.
Over the weekend, I was hanging out with my family and with a man named Sascha–back in 1993, he came here from Germany for a year and stayed with my family as a foreign exchange student. We’ve seen him several times since, but the last was, for me, 16 years ago, when he came in for my high school graduation and stayed in for my sister’s wedding in July, traveling with friends for the weeks in between. Last year in May, he got married in Palermo, and my parents went to the wedding. Now he and his new bride came for a visit here.
Somehow, the talk around the dining room table turned to different parts of history as we ate. We talked about volcanoes, and I had to tell about the one in Mexico the kids learned about in Hill of Fire (by Thomas Lewis), an early reader about a volcano that came up out of a farm field and erupted in 1943.
We talked about the beautiful, intricate wood carvings he brought for us from the small German village where his father was born and raised, and I was reminded of the amazing carvings in The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs (by Betty G. Birney–a really, really cool book for kids, and which adults can enjoy too, if you’re looking for a read-aloud!)
Sascha brought chocolates, as well, including some Ferrero Rocher from Italy, in their shiny gold wrappers. My niece loves any chocolates in shiny wrappers–she refers to them as “chocolate balls of deliciousness” and collects those wrappers . . . which, of course, reminded me of the candy wrappers in The Kitchen Madonna (by Rumer Godden), and how the inventive children used them to create something beautiful and meaningful. And how the quest for each piece of paper, each scrap of material changed hearts and lives.
And those are just a few examples from dinner. Over the course of the weekend, various conversations also touched on the Baptist movement in Sweden (Gathered Waters by Cara Luecht), the Iconoclastic Fury in Holland (The Sound of Diamonds by Rachelle Rea), WWII in Holland (The Winged Watchman by Hilda van Stockum).
How the Russian Orthodox church was separated from the Western church (research for A Lady Unrivaled). We talked about the early church before the Bible was canonized, and I brought up what I’d learned when researching for Giver of Wonders.
It’s possible I talk about history more than the average person, LOL–it’s one of my passions, it’s what my writing involves, plus I homeschool my kids, so I’m reading it with them every day. But it’s history that I remember so well because of story. History that’s real to me because characters have made it so. History I rarely forget, because those stories have become a part of my heart, a part of my life.
I’m always baffled by people who don’t read fiction. Or, no–I understand those who just aren’t inclined toward it, whose minds work differently than mine. What I don’t understand are people who scoff at those of us who do enjoy fiction, especially genre fiction. Who deem it stupid or foolish or a waste of time, who call it “not real literature” and feel so superior because they only read non-fiction or so-called “literary” works.
To me, it’s the difference between a line drawing and a realistic painting. Between an indistinct statue and animatronics. To me, a compelling story makes what was real come to life again.
And so, whenever I come across those scoffers, I just smile. And I talk about whatever subject they’re talking about, the things I’ve learned about it . . . and the stories that brought it to life. I don’t ever apologize. I don’t really argue. I just prove the point. Yes, I write romance–and there are a ton of scoffers over that. I write historical romance. I read fiction of every genre and variety. Non-fiction when I must, to research, but it’s usually what I can weave into my story that I really remember. And I can talk intelligently. I know things they don’t, and I’m excited learn things I didn’t already. I can challenge them, and accept challenges in return.
And for me, it’s all thanks to fiction.
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.