Entries tagged with ladywriter

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Single Medieval Women talk in Auslan!

This year at the Abbey Medieval Festival, my talk in the University Pavilion "Single Medieval Women: Who Were They And What Did They Do?" will have an Auslan interpreter, so I'm making some adjustments to my new talk to make it easier for our sign language person!

I was asked to provide a script of my talk, but often I don't stick to the actual notes. I made a version with more common language, rewording some academic speak into other words. I have made bold some phrases and quotes so the interpreter knows that these are specifically important.

It's not dumbing the talk down, but thoughtful rephrasing.

It also gives the interpreter a chance to ask questions beforehand if something seems unclear.

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Single Medieval Widows Travelled

Single medieval women in the form of new widows were often in a position to travel. In fact, one particular widow was told by her husband on his deathbed that as soon as he dies, she was to make all haste and not wait, and visit five shrines in holy places for the good of his soul. He not only named the places she was to go, but pre-paid her expenses for all the trips.

Our widow was instructed to not wait at home and observe the usual grieving practices, she was to leave right away! He felt that he hadn't made amends for his sins at these places personally, and so it was very urgent that his widow was to go post haste.

What could she do but pack her bags and comply? ... and here she was, a newly single woman out seeing the world and not a person could censure her for it. It was her husband's wish. She absolutely could not refuse.

Medieval ampulla like this one from my collection, which you can see here in The Gilbert Collection, were favourite pilgrimage souvenirs. They contained water blessed from shrines and it was hoped that the water would have protective qualities and cure sickness for those at home who could not travel to the shrines themselves.

In the case that a widow loved her husband dearly, forced travel at the time when she would have preferred to be at home surrounded by her loved ones and family, would perhaps have been just awful. In the case that it was an arranged marriage or the husband had not been a kind man, perhaps a trip away might have saved her the effort of pretending to grieve.

False grieving was commented on by clergymen who wrote that some widows force pretend tears at the funeral whilst at the same time looking for a new husband before the old is in the ground or, and this is a double edged sword here, wailing extensively because the husband has died and the widow and children have no source of income and no means to live without him.

Honestly, this is a legitimate concern, but was interpreted by some as being selfish. Thoughts should be firmly directed on the deceased, not on herself, was the feeling.

Without a doubt, one of the most famous of single medieval women who travelled is our literary Prioress, a creation of 14th century writer, Chaucer. An illumination of her can be seen here.

Her character inspired by a actual historical person, and the description of her lavish personal accoutrements and love of the finer things in life, and we find her in visiting dioces records where the nuns are furiously complaining about Eglentyne.

Whilst Chaucer's Madame Eglantine was a composite figure of some of the best and worst things associated with nuns at this time, our Eglentyne, the third daughter of a well-to-do person, became a nun at the tender age of fifteen and lived a reasonably civil life for ten years or so before being promoted to Prioress.

And this is where she got unruly.

The nuns under her were very unhappy. She was selling wood to outsiders, selling off the best silver spoons, dressing like a secular women, wearing far too much jewellery and taking so many trips outside their cloistered walls, that it was sending the establishment broke.

For more information about single medieval women who travelled, there's a chapter in my book, the Secret Lives of Single Medieval Women, out in most countries now or available directly from Mango Publishing in the USA.

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Book Signing at Sones Corner

Thank you Karen and Michael, my local Stones Corner bookshop for having me as their Author On The Sidewalk today! A big THANK YOU to everyone who stopped for a chat or bought books or both!

Books@Stones supports Australian authors and stocks a bunch of other cool things (the native animal puppets are so cute), games, and funky book related merch.

See you again here for a Book Event Night in the coming months!

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Guibert de Nogent has feelings.

In the Middle Ages, many men had many feelings about things that really were none of their business, like girls laughing. Guibert de Nogent was just one of many who felt young ladies should be ashamed about feeling good about themselves.

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Book signing!

This Saturday come down to Books at Stones at Stones Corner and say hi!!

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Mother's Day

Mother's Day is Next Sunday in Australia and it's OUT NOW!

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Museum Treasure Hunt!

I made a Museum treasure hunt!

A few weeks ago I had my official book launch for The Secret Lives of Single Medieval Women at the Abbey Museum of Art & Archaeology, and we had a short speech, lots of scrumptious food and I made this fun Scavenger Hunt for the Museum and Art Gallery for guests to really have a closer look at the displays!

While not all items are medieval, they are all things associated with the life of a single woman!

Here's our item card that I made! Obviously, you can't collect them. It was a find-and-photograph and first one back won a prize!

While not all items are medieval, they are all things associated with the life of a single woman! Writing implements, dress accessories, devotional literature and even the much beloved pet, the small white, fluffy dog! What might a woman do with a monk? Why, confess! (although players had lots of fun suggestions of things to do with monks! naughty! Naughty!)

Here's our item card that I made! Obviously, you can't collect them. It was a find-and-photograph and first one back won a prize!

The hunt itself was extremely successful with players racing around the museum and participants helping each other out with wild waving of arms saying "That way! That way!" and even museum staff dropping clues as to which cases to look in! All in all, much merriment was had, with people reporting that it was a lot more fun than they thought it would be.

The absolute funny part is that one of the items, the buckle and chape, was in a case which was out of display due to some water damage from a recent storm, and since people couldn’t see the exact item I had in mind, they were frantically looking for anything which might have been it. Answers included spotting a buckle on a suit or armour, in a painting, and on the clothes they were wearing themselves!

At the conclusion, there were two back at the same time with everything ticked off, so I decided that a runner up prize was in order and everyone left happy!

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The Big Day: Book Launch!

Book launch photos from "The Secret Lives of Single Medieval Women" on Saturday at the Abbey Museum of Art and Archaeology in the new cafe are now up on social media but here's my favourite one: the obligatory Author At The Book Table snap!

It was an absolutely wonderful event and it was a great opportunity for me to gather family, friends, colleagues and enthusiastic supporters all together for a celebration. Guests enjoyed the delicious catering the Abbey Museum events are well-known for, a short but lively talk about the making of the book and a guided tour of the new Art Gallery by Senior Curator Michael Strong. For the more adventurous, we had a Single Lady Scavenger Hunt within the museum and art gallery itself to find and photograph a number of historical lady items which a single woman might have used in her life!

A huge thank you to everyone who came and especially for the Abbey staff who made this little event so lovely!

Thank you also to Nate at Mango Publishing for getting a few books my way for our special day!

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An unexpected arrival!

I have books!!!!!

Before you get too excited, I have only 20 books for the official Book Launch event this Saturday, which may not be enough and certainly doesn't cover the order from the museum shop. Just 20 books.

Pretty darn excited about it, though. The cover looks really great!!

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Attempted launch woes

It's a crisis. I'm waiting to hear back AGAIN from the publisher who I spoke to less than a week ago...

Original launch date 25th March, which was moved when the Editor in Chief left to pursue her own Publishing Company, but the rest of the team remained the same, so not so much of a big deal, right?

It's now 8 days until the scheduled Book Launch Event in the Art Gallery Cafe at the Abbey Museum of Art & Archaeology, where catering is organised and people have changed their work shifts and other appointments to attend. Later weekends are very crowded and people really may not be able to come, especially since the publisher website now says MAY, which is completely news to me. This may or may not be correct, since the book is at the printer as we speak but they should know.

My options are:

1. Pre Launch Party in 8 days time. I could do pre-sales promo and have some kind of special so that everyone who pays for their pre-order gets a bonus thing? I'm thinking that since the food and staff is organised at this stage, and my sister has changed her Hospital roster to come and my niece and nephew have made space on their work rosters so they can come also, I should just go ahead. People at my work sorted their shifts to come. Organising re-enactors is like herding cats, and a number of them are on the guest list.

2. Delay the whole thing and see what I can wrangle later on about having the same kind of event, but finding a date that works will be a bit hopeless. Not to mention finding a place to have it on short notice. The museum was giving a good price to hire the venue too since I'm a Life Member.

3. Cancel it and don't have a nice launch.

I have already got stuff ready for it at that specific venue. I kinda feel like I'd like to just go ahead and have a Pre launch, but I'm wild that now I'm missing Women's History Month, Markets, AROW, Phoenix Phestival, Mother's Day and likely my Birthday- all times when I would have promo giveaways.

Of course people may feel it's just too stupid to have a launch without actual books.

ARGH!!!!!

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Getting all the promo together

Sorry for all the book spam of late, but as release day looms (the original day was 25th March, so any day now) I need to have a few little promotional items for giveaways (and a mug for me to shamelessly use at work) so here's the design for The Secret Lives of Single Medieval Women!

I really wasn't going to put actual me on it, but the lady and squirrel is a bit of a talking point and Scarlet Skwirl deserves some love! You won't be able to buy these; they're promo giveaways only!

I'm only doing 6 of these as they aren't on special to print at the moment, but they're almost identical to my blog footer and web page header, so I'm sticking with the theme!

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Busy day making new footers!

It's been a busy night last night making new footers and updating things on my author website pages, and just for fun, here are the themed new footers, which I'll use depending on the posts. I'm just posting them here to check the links work and are loading properly.

This one has the new updated cover for Single Medieval Women which is out very soon, but it looks pretty much the same:

This one has all the books on it and is my Author Books one:

and this one is specifically if I'm talking about ordering books and encouraging people to visit the website:

This one just for the Medieval Wisdom book hasn't changed:

and this one for just the Very Secret Sex Live s of Medieval Women book hasn't changed either.

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Official cover of The Secret Lives of Single Medieval Women

The final cover is released and the book is off to the printer!

I must say I'm extremely pleased with this. The colours are beautiful and autumnal, the single girl and her kitty is sweet, and the back cover text is really wonderful. It accurately reflects the book without over hyping it unnecessarily to generate sales. The review endorsements show that the book is not academic, but a good, interesting read for everyday readers who want to learn more about medieval life and some of the myths associated with medieval women.

I easily could have written forever and there are sections trimmed for word count, but there's an online colour image gallery and online source notes for those of us, like myself, who really do want to know where this information comes from to keep the printing costs and therefore the book price affordable.

Currently, it's available for preorder from many places including Amazon, and for those who wish to skip them entirely, will also be live on the Mango Publishing Online Bookstore very soon also.

If you'd like to read a little more about what the book is actually about, visit my author website here.

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Single Medieval Women Proofing complete

Looking over the interior style proof of "The Secret Lives of Single Medieval Women" which is already available for pre-order! At this stage, the release date 25 March is only 5 weeks away!

You can pre-order HERE.

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Surprise someone!

Slip into something sexy... do it for yourself!

As always, a reminder that my first book makes a pretty nice present whether you're Valentine's, Gal-entines or treating yourself, because you deserve it!

Available through Mango Publishing, Amazon and ordered in bookshops everywhere!

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Source materials

As a writer, it's always tricky to get the word count into the right bracket if you work with a publisher which has a set format for many of their books. A certain amount of words goes into a book of this size, while more goes into the next. Obviously, this impacts print ad sale price, as does the number of colour (or not colour) images in a book.

Knowing this, I had an issue with being waaaay over where I needed to be for my next book. While it's educational and non-fiction, it certainly isn't an academic work printed by a university press, because that's a whole other creature. This book is aimed at people who want to start somewhere to learn more and not be put off by all the academic-speak and horrendous references in text books.

Don't get me wrong. I, myself, love that kind of thing, but that's not who comes to see me and hear my talks when I do them in public. That's not the average medieval fangirl who likes the era but doesn't know much about it. My whole website is made as a springboard to further research. Visit, dip a toe in, then fly from there. Same for my current book and the new one coming out soon.

With that in mind, a asked a SERIOUS QUESTION to social media users, because I needed to reduce a LOT of word count, but I really didn't want to leave out my sources. Over 8 000 words of sources, which is a lot of words I could cut in one single go. I have a few options there if I need to reduce word count on my new book, but I don't want to cut content, and the easiest way to not cut content is to cut the 8 000 words in the sources, so I made a poll to look at feedback.

The choices were:

1. I don't care about sources.

2. Include source numbers in book with sources and cut chapters.

3. Include sources numbers in book but have the sources online (webpage and downloadable pdf) and keep content.

This is not an academic work printed by a University press or it wouldn't be an issue. I love sources myself. I want sources. I'm thinking outside the box here. I'm already 20 000 words over. My feeling is if I HAVE to reduce word count, option 3.

The feedback was very interesting. Very few people said don't bother with sources. A lot said to keep the sources in the book and cut content, but I don't want to do that because it's not a big a book as I'd like and I need to trim other content anyway... Option 3, having the sources link a QR code in the book which links to them online was mostly well-received. Some people pointed out that a website won't be there forever, but it's my domain, so it'll be up for the next 30 years or so, and it's not an academic work anyway. People can download the pdf file or read online. Ideally, if I ever get to be wildly famous, a second edition with everything expanded back and the sources printed in the book along with all the images, would be ideal.

The people who made the biggest fuss about how they would not ever buy a book without the sources printed inside were, quite frankly, not the people who bought my first book and probably wouldn't buy this next one either, even though it's not funny and I do take a more serious approach to it.

The images are cut from 98 down to 10, and one of those is my author photo. I'm in the process of providing a second QR code to an online full-colour gallery of the images I talk about in the book which, again, not ideal, but will save readers from having to google the images themselves.

Frustrated, but better than nothing.

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Now stock has arrived!

With all the fiasco surrounding the collapse of Booktopia and buy out by a new owner who kept the name but didn't honour any of the previous orders, myself included, I've had no stock here in Australia.

Finally me shipment arrived from America, books plus import tax and the total was not a great price. I have been selling books to the museum shoppe which has always supported me and allowed them to make a bigger profit from the books than I do, just so I can help the museum raise more money, but now my total cost is the entire of what they buy them from me for. I hope they'll still be interested in buying them from me as I can't see them importing from the publisher directly.

Apparently, there is to be a new warehouse in Australia which isn't Booktopia, so fingers crossed things are a bit more affordable.

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Sneak peek at my new book!

Sneeky peeky! Release date is tentatively set at Spring in the USA, but I'll wait for a definitive before I start getting too excited!

I particularly love the single girl with her cat making the chaplet with flowers. Nothing is set in stone until it comes out, of course, but the artwork has been tentatively approved and all we need to agree on are a few things like the subtitle which will go inside the book, the final release day, how many pictures I can include and whether or not the sources can e included in the book. It's quite a lot of words, but I really do feel that it's very important that I have them, so I have a cunning plan for if I need to cut a lot of words to fit their book format.

Anyway, it's full steam ahead!