Rosalie Gilbert

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 Lives of Medieval Women book hasn't changed either.

Medieval urology is a complicated thing, but luckily, treatises like the Seeing of the Urines was a very handy guide to what was going on with the medieval woman.

To learn more about secret medieval lady things, The Very Secret Sex Lives of Medieval Women is still available from right here at Mango Publishing or through your favourite online book seller. Or ask your bookshop to get it in for you.

Extinguishing the flames of lust was not just a business for the medieval woman. There were some really great one helpfully suggested in health handbooks like this one from Hildegard von Bingen.

Hildegard von Bingen. was born 1098 in Bermersheim, Germany, and died 1181 and became a nun at 16. She was the Benedictine Abbess in 1136 at Disibodenberg and if you don't mind me saying so, I feel that as such, she was sexually inexperienced and shouldn't know how to quell lust in anyone other than herself.

Of course, her writings were based on the four humours, so in theory, she knew these would work. Men and women had different properties, biologically speaking, and so did plants, therefore it followed that certain things would behave a certain way.

So, lettuce. Actually, wild lettuce is different from our lettuce today and did actually contain a mild sedative, according to my friend at the Cabinet of Medieval Curiosity who tends to know about these things.

That's where it's at. Or not at, if you get my drift.

It's 20% off with free shipping on The Very Secret Sex Lives of Medieval Women by yours truly at Booktopia right now!

What are you waiting for?

I'm very excited to announce that I've successfully made my very own little Square shop. It's similar to Etsy, but I can manage everything, and they only take commission on sales, not have a monthly fee likes other online marketing tools.

It was a not much of a challenge to make the website and the phone app all sync and get the stock to be the same and learn how to manage it with my own mobile hotspot. A few little hiccups, but easily navigated. It has a great little card reader, so now for the first time, people can use their credit cards to buy things!

I did have trouble with the shipping estimator, but since I have prices for shipping from my post office, the best work around for me was to create multiple listings INCLUDING the postage to different countries. The shopper just needs to select the item with the right country flag on it and they can pay for the item plus shipping. It's a small problem if someone wants a few heavy things in the one package, but they can contact me directly if it's over a certain weight and I can work around there.

I don't have so many sales myself that I can't make this a workable solution, so it's working great for me!

I used photos of my niece, who has been very kind about letting me use her face on things and I love the colour scheme and clean look of the site. I've been able to link my Things For Sale on my regular Rosalie's Medieval Woman website to the shop and so far, that's worked well too, so that all my old links remain in place but point here.

Clearly, if you have a nice ass, you're all the better for getting pregnant. Actually, any ass will do. Don't be confused. The specific type of ass Trotula was writing about, is the donkey kind.  It can be found in texts before the 12th century to describe a horse-like animal with long ears and a braying sound, and the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it thus:

Noun (1) Middle English, from Old English assa, probably from Old Irish asan, from Latin asinus

For reasons best known to herself, Trotula recommended this kind of milk specifically as promoting a quick pregnancy, but, as with some of her other remedies, I remain doubtful.

Please, don't try this at home.

For more awful hints on how to get pregnant or how to avoid being pregnant, you might like to read The Very Secret Sex Lives of Medieval Woman, available here.

Look, I know we are all sick of hearing about it, but by now we all understand the challenges I've faced with publishing and the front cover of my book. This week I had dealings with a venue which was hoping to sell my book over the course of a medieval event, but, in an exceptionally tactless way, informed me that they felt the cover was (and I quote) "A bit on the nose" and that it wasn't suitable for a family-friendly festival in their gift shop.

I completely understand that the original cover screams SEX in large, unwieldy letters, which is one of the reasons I printed a dust jacket. That and the nipple censorship thing, of course.

The venue was not particularly happy with the dust jacket either, so with an extremely limited time frame, I got this one off to the printer for a new dust jacket. The venue conceded that this one was (and again, I quote) "A bit better." They insist that the book be wrapped somehow so it can't be perused by potential customers. I really would have just given it all a solid miss for the way they feel, except for the fact that they are actually potentially interested in stocking my book all year round.

Anyway, I'm now waiting for these to arrive, so I can trim them and wrap the books with their new "bit better, less on the nose" jackets.

See what I did there? BOOK-ings? Oh, all right, it wasn't that funny.

I'm pretty excited though, because my first speakers booking for next year is in. By first, I mean on top of my regular every-year-booking bookings. This is a brand new one. There's a women's friendship group in Brisbane who have their monthly meetings with a guest speaker and I'd been recommended as an entertaining speaker with an interesting topic! That looks like February. The group does an incredible amount of outings and activities for women who are new to the area. It seems like a really great group. They have interstate trips as well as attend cultural events as a group. I usually waive the speakers fee for women's groups but since people do tend to buy books at my talks, I'm hoping that they will permit sales instead.

In other book news, Booktopia, my Australian distributor has let me know that they have only a few copies of my book in stock and with Xmas around the corner, will be asking my American publishers guys for a reprinting of my book. I know the first print run wasn't massive, but I feel that it's a small achievement in my world! My concern here is that if my local museum calls out for more books right before Xmas for their events, I may not have enough to give them and have for other things without ordering from the States. If I order directly from the publisher, the sales don't count, as I could be just hoarding them to book my sales numbers, but honestly, who has money for that? If I buy my stock from Booktopia, the sales count which affects my rankings and recommendations on Amazon which keeps visibility and therefore impulse sales happening.

In even more book news, I've gathered my courage and emailled the gift shop of the Victorian Medieval Festival in December to ask whether they might like some of my books in stock so I can so author signings while I'm at the festival but not have to handle the actual sales. I make more money doing the sales, but I'm super keen to do the bathhouse, and can sign books if people by them at the gift shop.

As usual, I'm expecting a push back of "We Are A Family Festival And Your Book Is Quite Sexy!" but I'm hoping that since I pointed out the sales figures for the last festival, they'll see dollar signs instead. You'll know how that goes if you start seeing me promote it on social media as an exciting opportunity to get your copy Signed By The Author, which still makes me giggle a bit when people mean me.

Further news on the Braille Library of Australia copy of my book. Still being proofread. Apparently proofreading and then making error adjustments is a big process! Having it even available in Braille cracks me up endlessly.

Fingers crossed for all of those things.