Author: Roseanna M. White
Located in: Keyser, WV
Submitted: January 30, 2015
Tell us a little about yourself. I'm a homeschooling mom, historical author, editor at WhiteFire Publishing, cover designer, and blatant neglector of housekeeping.
What was your motivation behind this project? When I was 12, I decided I was going to write a book. I sat down with a story of a girl who thought she was a princess, but who then learned she was actually English...and that the secrets of her parents' death was hidden in something she'd had with her all these years.
I finished the story when I was 13 and promptly sent it out to my dream publisher, Bethany House. Who shockingly turned it down. Fast-forward 20 years, and I've rewritten, retitled, and re-set this story about a gazillion times...but the heart has remained the same. And on my third pitch to Bethany House, they bought it.
The Lost Heiress is my tenth published novel but my first ever book, and I am beyond thrilled that it's finally out--and from the first publisher I ever submitted it to!
What do you hope folks will gain from this project? Family is the key to this story, and what it really means to find yourself in a world that would have you follow a certain code. I hope that through this story, readers realize along with the characters that it isn't about your station in life--it's about what's in your heart.
How were you personally impacted by working on this project? The growth of this story in many ways follows my growth as a person and a writer. I love the fact that I started it in my most awkward time of life, and that now the final version is written when I'm established in the life I always dreamed of. My heroine started out as the ideal of what I wanted to be...and now she's a combination of old dreams and newer realizations.
