Sile Rice

Sile (pronounced 'Sheila') Rice was born in Leicester on St Gregory's day, the greatest feast-day of the Anglo-Saxon calendar. She always enjoyed telling tales, but when, at the age of twelve, she saw the BBC's dramatisation of Charles Kingsley's Hereward the Wake, with Alfred Lynch in the title role, her world was never quite the same again. She was set on the course to writing historical fiction, starting with her own version of Hereward's story, The Saxon Tapestry.

Sile immersed herself for many years in Saxon history and lore. Leaving school at fifteen to work in a toy factory in Kent, she continued to collect material and write alongside her various jobs. The Saxon Tapestry was published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1991, to glowing reviews, and went into an American edition the following year.

A new, expanded edition of The Saxon Tapestry is now available in two parts on Kindle: Book 1: The Changeling, and Book 2: The Loom of Battle.

Her second novel, Danse in Indigo, is a dark fairy tale set at the Hanoverian court of the Holy Roman Empire. Her third novel, Wolf-Saga, is by turns bloody, earthy, and fantastical – but also, after a fashion, completely true.

Sile lives in Ramsgate, Kent, with her cats Vanilla and Romney and many other feline waifs and strays whom she looks after on behalf of the cat rescue charity Cats in Crisis Thanet, of which she is a founding member.