Guest Blog - Jean Gill on her new novel, Hunting the Sun

I’m delighted to welcome Jean Gill onto the blog today.  

Jean is a friend and the author of books across multiple genres from poetry to Young Adult fiction, cookery to travel, dogs to fantasy. She is a photographer, beekeeper and dog nut. But most of all she is a talented historical novelist, known for her Troubadour novels and more recently for her exciting Norse series, The Midwinter Dragon series. The latest, Hunting the Sun, is on pre-order for release in ebook on 28th March 2025 – although the paperback is already available.  

The book is set in Sicily where Skarfr and Hlif are in exile. Back in the 12th century the Kingdom of Sicily became renowned for its silk industry and today Jean is going to tell us about the sensual nature of silk. Over to Jean:

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Silk and Sensuality

Shut your eyes and imagine the feel of silk against your skin. Then open your eyes and admire its natural lustre, a smooth sheen that plays with light, that drapes over the human form like no other fabric. Our love affair with silk dates back centuries and the sensual images in the literature of the past are equally evocative today. Skin like silk, silken hair, satin sheets…

In the 1st century CE the Roman Empire attempted to ban silk for trade reasons but also because the sensuality of silk was not considered good for civic morality.

Seneca the Younger wrote, ‘I can see clothes of silk, if materials that do not hide the body, nor even one's decency, can be called clothes... Wretched flocks of maids labour so that the adulteress may be visible through her thin dress, so that her husband has no more acquaintance than any outsider or foreigner with his wife's body.’

I suspect that this rant made silk even more popular. By the early medieval period, silk-making had reached the Mediterranean, flourishing in the Byzantine Empire, the Moorish countries of what is now Spain and in the Kingdom of Sicily, where my new novel takes place. In the 12th century, Sicily was one of the richest realms in the world, under the rule of King Roger II, a Norman who adopted Moorish customs and clothes.

One of my favourite discoveries in researching ‘Hunting The Sun’ was the history of Sicilian silk, which is still famous nowadays. In 1148, the Sicilian Admiral George of Antioch raided the Greek coast in a series of attacks against Byzantium. His two big triumphs were seizing the bones of Saint Theodore from Corinth, and kidnapping Jewish silk workers from their workplace in Thebes.

‘Wretched flocks of maids’ indeed. Silk workers throughout European history were mostly skilled women, often slaves (either officially or, as nowadays, entrapped by poverty and lack of residency status), who also had to provide sexual services. For centuries, in many European countries, working in the silk trade was a euphemism for such services, and the sensuality of silk as a motif in literature was one of the rabbit-holes I dived into, fascinated.

My interest in silk is personal. There are two white mulberry trees in our garden, and the people who lived in our house over a hundred years ago would definitely have kept silkworms and made silk thread. They might also have spun it and woven it, as a cottage industry. Mulberries can live up to two hundred and fifty years and, every spring, I imagine the thousands of silkworms which have munched on the leaves. The only munching these days is when the mulberries fall and the dogs tuck in but what an amazing history those two trees could tell. A history which connects me to Rachel, my fictional character who was one of the kidnapped Jewish women who lived and worked in the silkworks in Palermo.

The Tiraz, as it was known, was a workshop attached to the King’s palace in Palermo, where Rachel added her own expertise to the existing silk production and designs. She also had to provide sexual services in what was a sort of harem, also part of the royal silk monopoly.

The unique nature of Sicily’s Western Christian, Greek Orthodox and Moorish culture can be seen in the exhibit in a Vienna museum known as King Roger’s coronation mantle. In ‘Hunting The Sun’ he wears this amazing silk garment during the anointment of his son as joint ruler. Watching the ceremony is Hlif, a Viking trader who has befriended Rachel.

Extract from ‘Hunting The Sun’

The red mantle was the Tiraz’ finest work, bearing the type of embroidered band which had given the silk works its name. When the procession passed Hlif, she saw the back of the mantle and gasped. The gigantic design was all executed in gold and silk threads; either side of a palm tree, a huge lion dug its claws into a camel’s back. The tiraz band along the immense length of the lower edge was of Arabic letters in gold as Rachel had described; Hlif had not expected them to look like runes, so tall and twig-like.’

Silk, sensuality – and secrets. The silk workers belonged to the King and were expected to keep his secrets, whether those of grubs and mulberry leaves, or those of the bedchamber.

Meet Rachel…

Extract from ‘Hunting The Sun’

Usually, Rachel was embroidering plain cloth with gold, silver or brightly coloured threads, or sewing on jewels or beads, but to rest her eyes, she sometimes took a turn at the loom in the next room, as today. When she saw Hlif in the arched doorway, she finished one last throw of the shuttle, which drew the weft thread through a dizzying pattern in and out of the warp.

‘It’s gorgeous,’ said Hlif, admiring the damson roundels appearing on the heavy silk background. Brocade, in the damask style.

Rachel glowed, as if she’d been visited by angels — or become one. The sheen on her olive skin and crescent of black hair showing below the practical cap, was as silken as all around her. Her oval face and long straight nose showed the same classical perfection as her weaving and when she looked up at Hlif, her dark eyes were lit with passion. ‘I feel like this is my purpose in life,’ she said. ‘to create something beautiful. And when I’m lost in my work, nothing else matters.’

Jean's book is available on pre-order discount at 0.99. It will be published on 28 March 2025.

Pre-order your copy

For more about Jean Gill visit her website.