Rosalie Gilbert

The sorting of stuff I'm not keeping is a bit of a heartbreaking affair, with some things used only for photos and grand parades and practically new.. In particular, a beautiful silk surcote in a soft blue lined with white silk which is unworn by me and entirely hand stitched, almost brought me to tears. It's so pretty. 

I need to toughen up and really try to not let it bother me, but I just want to keep it for myself. 

The requests for my stuff are still coming thick and fast, and just answering messages to say, "No, I said I had nothing else yet" take time to answer, which is slowing the whole process down. I have 4 weeks until our biggest event of the year, so I really need to get stuff done. 

Photo of the blue surcote added so you can appreciate my sadness about it. The colour is just the best shade of blue. And it's silk. Lined with silk.
Just so much silk.

Things are afoot!  I've met with my last time printer, and have a meeting tomorrow morning with a publisher, so things are moving at a great pace!



I've made some adjustments to the cover art, bought the ISBN and the barcode, so I officially have a second book in the set! I have preemptively set up the website pages, with the book landing page, banners, headers, About The Book, reviews and promo pages and where to shop, although that page is incomplete until I know who is printing it and where it's being published or if I'm self publishing this one.

I'm very excited! 

I'll be getting the models together and planning a little launch party, of course along with a slew of social media.

Well, there's book things afoot and with some news I received from my publisher yesterday, I'm now in overdrive with the second of the medieval quote books, Medieval Household Hints: Advice on Running a Household from the Middle Ages Which You Still Need Today and getting that out. Here's the sneak, peek of the cover:



I had originally hoped my existing publisher would pick it up to compliment my two non fiction books, but there have been... issues... (friends only post about that shortly) and they aren't taking new books at the moment, and while mulling over a bunch of things, I've decided to see about having the next Medieval Hints book published here in Australia.

You might remember that I self published the first quotes book, Medieval Wisdom For Modern Women: Advice From The Middle Ages That You Still Need Today, which was good but had a few drawbacks. The book itself was printed here in Brisbane, supporting our local industry, but unfortunately, the printer was just that- a printer, not a publisher. My plan was to sell online via postage and at events and see if I could get small amounts into local books shops, all of which worked well to a varying degree.

Now that the USA is off limits for postage and international post is very expensive, it just isn't feasible to post out. I'm holding more stock that I wanted to, which I paid for up front, of course, but I will just chip away at it over the years until it's all gone.

Yesterday I discovered a Brisbane printer who also taps into the publisher network, promotes the books on their online book shop and does some online sales from there. It's not a print on demand situation. Tapping into the book shop network, getting a book sent out as a new release in mailings and promo is absolutely vital for getting things into places. From what I can see, I feel like I'd need to cover the cost upfront for printing etc and they take a percentage of online sales and store an amount of stock in their warehouse also for posting out and promoting on their own online bookshop, which, quite frankly, is fair to me. It's a lot of work to do all that, and it helps support a Brisbane family-run business. I'd have the rest of stock on hand for book signings and events for sales.

Anyway, I've sent them an email about prices, and if things aren't too bad, I might proceed with that asap. I have Mother's Day markets coming up and it would be fantastic to have it out for that! 

I've had a really busy few days planning and gathering images for my first ever After Dark with the Abbey Museum of Art & Archaeology. I've done a heap with the Queensland Museum for the British Museum which had a touring exhibit at the time called Medieval Power: Symbols & Splendour.

Last time I was giving my rather thrilling medieval sex talk, Between Linen Sheets: The Very Secret Sex Lives of Medieval Women (which turned into a book) but this time I'll be talking about medieval craftsmanship in dress accessories. It seems to be another topic that everyone feels they know about, but in reality, original artifacts are often much smaller or larger or better made than expected.

I'll have a look at some originals and compare them to some reproductions in regard to artisan skills and think about where we get our information from; artifacts, extant finds, art and so on.

I'll have some artifacts on display too, along with some reproductions of them for comparisons.

It's not until April, but since January is just about over, it's coming up fast!