Booktopia Virtual Bookfair

[medievalrosalie]

It should come as no real surprise that in our current state, most events are now held online. I hadn't attended a Bookseller's Fair before, virtual or otherwise, so it was kinda a big deal for me.

Our host today was the delightful Jonathan from my Australian distributor, Booktopia. Booktopia handles Australian authors from Mango Publishing in the USA who are my people. The fair was attended by book distributors and book shops all over Australia.

It was really great to connect with other Australian Mango authors and put a face to both Alex and Jonathan from Booktopia whom I'd only met via emails and phone. Delightful, the pair of them.



The format was a Question and Answer and mostly the questions were the usual ones- why on earth did I write The Very Secret Sex Lives of Medieval Women etcetera, but the best one which I wasn't quite prepared for was "Who was my favourite women who isn't well known to modern people?"

Hands down that has to be that feisty woman who was taken to court for stabbing a man with a knife. It was self defence. He had tried to force his unwanted attentions upon her, and when he wouldn't take no for an answer, she stabbed him. He took her to court, and while the judge ruled that she had acted in a manner that was appropriate, it was also agreed by the jury that it should be noted that in no way was it okay for women to grab men's bottoms for no real reason generally.

Medieval court records are weird sometimes.

And that's why I wrote a book.