I'm taking a break from going through the book draft, lovingly copyedited by my colleague over the last few days. It really is amazing how many inconsistencies and typos can slip through, even if you are trying for consistency and trying to have a typo-free text.

I don't have many more pages to go, though - and then, after a short break, I will go into the next stage: printing out the manuscript and giving it a good, nice, on-paper read. Some things just can't be done on a screen, and proofreading your own long text definitely is one of them.

The cat, meanwhile, is lying on her bed beside my desk and is snoring, and occasionally she's making small funny sleepy-cat noises. She's also taking great care of sleeping a similar amount of time on her left side and her right side, though sometimes she gets stuck in the transition and sleeps in a weirdly twisted s-shape for a while.

No rest for me, though - coffee instead! And about 40 more pages before I can go do something else for a bit...

There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who think that writing a book, and even more so writing several books, will make you wealthy; and those who know better.

Yes, there are some exceptions to that rule - J.K. Rowling springs to mind, obviously, and a few others have had roaring success and become wealthy from writing. But taking that for the usual outcome would be like supposing everybody who dabbles in IT will end up like Bill Gates.

This is why I'm always delighted when real authors who have published several books write about their writing income honestly. Jim C. Hines has been doing this for several years now, and you can find his most recent post here. Kameron Hurley has very recently done something similar on her blog.

It's very interesting, and it can be quite sobering. I know, from my own experience, that you don't write a book for the money. You write it because you want to write it, and when it's published and you get some royalties from it, that's a reason for happiness, and getting some money is a good reason to find a publisher - but it will usually not turn out enough money to let you make a living, even if you are writing full-time.

That's a bit like knitting, actually. Most of us knit because they want to knit, or because they like the finished thing that they make themselves, or because there's no other way to get that special thing they have in mind... but if you just want socks or a sweater, it's usually cheaper to just buy them. (Never mind easier and quicker, too.) Most writers just like to write.

And without that, our world would be a little poorer.

Just in case you have wondered about the late blog posts recently - it's not that I have lost my interest in blogging, or that I have un-learned how to read a clock. It's more or less directly due to the joys of working together with someone on the other side of the planet, and my changed daily schedule.

There's this book project, you see (and I actually don't know how much I have already told about it in this blog, though I think it's not much).  It's a joint project with Gillian, who has instigated it and brought heaps and heaps of words (the bulk of all the book, in fact). Gillian is a historian who happens to live in Australia... and that means our working together has to be timed carefully. That usually ends up being my morning to noon, sometimes early afternoon, and her arvo (the Aussie afternoon) to evening and night. There's only so much you can do in these sessions, and recently, we've had some more and some longer ones, as we're working towards meeting our deadline for publication.

Since this project is going to eat up some more of my premium morning hours, and I suspect things will go more crazy in the next two to three weeks instead of less crazy, you will know just what is up when the blogpost goes up later than usual. (Including, like today, much later than usual.)

And just in case you are interested in the process: at the moment, we're taking one last joint read through the manuscript to get rid of the last bits that need checking, editing, or otherwise modifying. Gillian has started doing the final detailed proofing on the printout, and I will join her very soon in that. A few people have a draft of the manuscript to have a look at it and will hopefully give us some feedback; meanwhile, we're also sourcing good illustrations to go with the text, because sometime a picture is better than words. Getting a book finished is pure craziness... but a weirdly nice, good kind of total craziness.

A while ago, I posted about an upcoming exhibition of early modern dresses in Nuremburg. I've since received an update about this - it will start in December 2015. You can read more about the exhibition here.

Also, it's time for me to bleg again...

Together with a colleague, Gillian, whom I met in Leeds, I've been working on a book about medieval England these past years. The book is going to give an overview about England from c 1050 to 1315. We have tried hard to write a book that gives enough detail for those readers who would like to use medieval England as a basis for their own projects - such as a medieval-based fantasy world, or writing a historical novel, or getting started with Living History.

We're now actually in the last stage - copyediting, getting the last few stray bits and pieces in line, and... illustrating it. We have the opportunity of putting pictures into the book, even colour pictures, which is just wonderful. The only drawback? Our deadline is approaching, fast. And we need to get the illustration done double-quick...

A while ago, I've already gotten a few gorgeous pictures for the book, but there are still quite a few topics that are not covered. We would love to have pictures that show actual live persons using good-quality replicas of stuff from England (or non-regional things), from the time-span 11th to very early 14th century. Daily life scenarios, craftspeople doing their work, children playing, any combination of things that actually existed and were used and people using them would be helpful, whether secular, religious, or military. Good pictures of just tools and maybe half-finished products would be very welcome as well.

So... if you have a photo, or several photos, that fit the bill and you would be happy with them being published, please send it to me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. And we will be ever so grateful for your help!

The OA week has provoked some more blogging, not only here. Doug has posted a longish article about OA publishing concepts that sound a lot more reasonable than the ones I ridiculed yesterday. And one before that, with a lot more information about free or affordably-priced OA journals, and links to said journals. Go read it here.

In other news, I'm still busy editing (the Beast is losing words - it's like a book diet!) and also preparing for the Textile Forum. Additionally, I am thinking about offering an embroidery set for doing a small medieval motif, about 4 cm in diameter. I would like to offer that as a complete package with cloth (that has the pre-inked design), naturally dyed silk thread, maybe gold thread, short instructions and possibly also a small (non-medieval, but affordable) embroidery frame. Suggestions as to motifs would be greatly appreciated!

I just found out that this week is Open Access Week. Yes, it's nice and comfy here under my rock, thank you for asking.

I found out, by the way, from an email sent to me by Maney. The email says they are partaking in Open Access Week - and my first reaction was "yay free access to articles!". Turns out that was wrong, though.

The email tells me about the very generous offer of 50% off the fees if you want to publish an article as OA with them. Yes, that's right - Maney is one of the "author pays for OA" journals, and their fees are quite hefty. Even with 50% off, you'll still shell out between 400 and 1000 USD. Erm... thanks, but no thanks. In my universe, the One Rule still stands: the author never pays. Yes, I know that publishers have to eat, too, and that their money does not come from publishing for free and giving away the published articles, too. It comes from selling what they have published - and I still think that it is fair to pay for what you want to read, provided it is not what Germans call a "Mondpreis" (moon price, literally - an astronomical sum that is totally unrealistic). I'm also convinced that a reasonable pricing of articles, especially older ones, would raise their income far enough that a fair-for-everybody model will be possible. (Or would you hesitate for a second to pay one or two dollars for immediate access to a paper that interests you? Instead of being asked to shell out 30+ dollars, even though the article is several years old and you do not know whether it will really help you on with your research, or not?)

You can laugh about the pricing yourself here. Incidentally, the page also offers the full list of OA articles published with Maney. I do not wonder why there are so few... (There is one about spinners and yarn regulation in 1550-1800 that might be of interest to you, too, written by John Styles.)

If you want to read some more, you can go to Paperity, an article aggregator of OA articles. (I found that via www.openaccessweek.org, by the way. The site seems to try for promoting OA, but also seems fairly small, impact-wise, and it has a layout that is a bit confusing to me.)

The Textile Forum is drawing closer and closer, and thus we are busy preparing things and planning. I'm also doing editing work on the book project I am doing together with Gillian - we are reverting some changes that we made during one stage of the project, and both have the impression that our final book will be much better for it. It really is amazing how hard it can be to sort out the best sequence of chapters in a book - and how many bits and pieces would fit into several chapters equally well...

There's even more coming up - I have received hand-woven cloth ordered for the equipment of Lauresham, and it's washed and dried now, ready to be sent off for dyeing. The spinning-wheel tuning is also progressing, though slowly. The next step is a suitably "sticky" drive band to properly turn the whorls on flyer and spool; there is too much slip at the moment, and thus I am not getting the ratios that were planned.

Finally, I am starting to do the lists of things to prepare and to take to the "Kreativ" fair in Stuttgart. It's going to be a full and interesting November!