Category: giveaway

Daughter of the White Rose Sees the Light of Day

February 16th was Daughter of the White Rose‘s book birthday!

It’s my first historical novel — and actually, one of the first novels I ever wrote. When I completed the earliest version of the book, it included flashbacks (now gone), a third-person narrator (now first-person), a prologue (gone, gone), a different title, and a different ending. Also, it was really pretty bad.

It took decades to whip the story into shape.  As I revised it or let it languish on a hard drive, I had a son — and he grew up. I moved twice. I lost both my parents. I found a fabulous agent. I had six other novels published. I despaired about getting this one published, and I figured out how to deal with the despair. I’m not suggesting that any writer should purposely take this long to publish a novel, but my experiences did, I think, enrich my writing, both directly and indirectly.

I love this book now, for so many reasons: its subject (Wars of the Roses! Imprisoned princes! a brave girl facing terrible danger!); the things it taught me about writing and revising; the opportunity it gave my husband at long last to say I told you so; the fact that it’s been a constant throughout my publishing life that I’ve returned to again and again, improving it, or so I hope, with each rewrite.

I’m excited to see how Daughter of the White Rose does out there in the world and how readers react to it. If you’d like to be one of those readers, you can buy copies here, or you can go to YA Books Central and try to win a copy in their giveaway (and also read an interview with me about the book). And please let me know if you liked it!

There Were Never Such Devoted Sisters

#31: Whatever it is ….my sister did it! – Anonymous

#30: To know a sister is to know a paradox. — Patricia Foster

#29: Between sisters, often, the child’s cry never dies down.  “Never leave me,” it says; “do not abandon me.”  — Louise Bernikow

#28: Lord, confound this surly sister, blight her brow with blotch and blister/cramp her larynx, lung and liver, in her guts a galling give her. — J. M. Synge

#27: How can an intelligent woman with any delicacy so humiliate a sister? — Leo Tolstoy
(Anna Karenina)

#26: Bless you, my darling, and remember you are always in the heart – oh tucked so close there is no chance of escape – of your sister.  — Katherine Mansfield

#25: Sister, dear sister, come home … — Jessamyn West

#24: For there is no friend like a sister/in calm or stormy weather/to cheer one on the tedious way/to fetch one if one goes astray/to lift one if one totters down/to strengthen whilst one stands. — Christina G. Rossetti

#23: Help one another, is part of the religion of sisterhood.  — Louisa May Alcott

#22: A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves – a special kind of double. — Toni Morrison

#21: Sisterly love is, of all sentiments, the most abstract.  Nature does not grant it any functions.  — Ugo Betti

#20: Be kind to thy sister. Not many may know the depths of true sisterly love. — Margaret Courtney

#19: There can be no situation in life in which the conversation of my dear sister will not administer some comfort to me.  — Mary Montagu

#18: The mildest, drowsiest sister has been known to turn tiger if her sibling is in trouble.  — Clara Ortega

#17: I would like more sisters, that the taking out of one, might not leave such stillness.  — Emily Dickinson

#16: Sisters is probably the most competitive relationship within the family, but once the sisters are grown, it becomes the strongest relationship. — Margaret Mead 

#15: We acquire friends and we make enemies, but our sisters come with the territory. — Evelyn Loeb

#14: We must stem the tide of malice, and pour into the wounded bosoms of each other, the balm of sisterly consolation. — Jane Austen

#13: Never let an angry sister comb your hair. – Patricia McCann

#12: My sister! My sweet sister! If a name dearer and purer were, it should be thine. — Lord Byron

#11: I had known, from the time when I could speak, that my sister, in her capricious and violent coercion, was unjust to me.  — Charles Dickens (Great Expectations)

#10: It’s a great comfort to have an artistic sister. — Louisa May Alcott

#9: Never praise a sister to a sister; in hope of your compliments reaching the proper ears.  — Rudyard Kipling

#8: With a sister, one can never fear that success will go to one’s head.  — Charlotte Gray

#7: Is solace anywhere more comforting than in the arms of sisters? — Alice Walker

#6: Two scorpions living in the same hole will get along better than two sisters in the  same house. — Arabian Proverb

#5: You know full well as I do the value of sisters’ affections: There is nothing like it in this  world.  — Charlotte Bronte

#4: A ministering angel shall my sister be. — William Shakespeare (Laertes)

#3: Of two sisters one is always the watcher, one the dancer. — Louise Gluck

#2: Big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life. — Charles Schultz (or Linus)

#1: Lord help the mister who comes between me and my sister… — Irving Berlin (White Christmas)220px-Smithsnowred

 

Are you a sister? Do you have a sister? Have you ever longed for a sister — or longed to lock your sister in a closet so she would leave you in peace?

 

Sleeping Beauty’s Daughters is, among other things, a story about sisters. That’s always a complex relsisters2ationship, as you know if you answered Yes to any of the questions above. And since it’s one month until the book’s publication, I’ve decided to hold a contest dedicated to sisters. It will go like this:

 

 

♦Each day until August 27th, I’ll psisters3ost a quotation about sisters.

♦To be entered in the contest, you can post your own sister quote, or simply write a comment on this post.

♦On the 27th, I’ll pick a random winner for a SIGNED HARDCOVER copy of Sleeping Beauty’s Daughters!

 

(One caveat: I’ve only found about 20 good quotes so far. So if I like one of yours, I get to use it!)