What gave you the inspiration to write TQR?

The very first scene I ever envisioned for the book came out of the blue one night when I was working on another story idea. I suddenly saw Brienna sitting in a sunlit library. And across from her was Cartier, who was looking at her intently, as if he had just said something to her. And instead of speaking to him, Brienna spoke to me instead and said, “The summer solstice is in eight days and I have yet to master my passion.” And I was like, “WAIT! Who are you and what are you talking about!?” 

I wrote that line down before I forgot it, and then I had to ask…what was this passion she spoke of? I began to think of things in life that require dedication, time, instruction and one’s whole heart to master. I wrote down art, then music. Next I wrote down dramatics, because I had always been fond of theater as a teen. Then I thought of wit, and lastly knowledge. And the longer I stared at that list, the more the world began to build around it. These were the five passions of life, and Brienna was in a school of the passions in Renaissance inspired world. I then had to ask her why she was worried she wasn’t going to master her passion in time. As I began to write that scene out (which parts of it are still in the first chapter of TQR), I started to understand her more. And I knew that she was going to go through a failure, but from that failure, a new opportunity was going to rise. And that was going to be the revolution to put a queen back on the throne. 

But I think the heart of my inspiration was simply to write a story that I longed to read. A story about sisterhood and dark family secrets, of tangled history and realms ruled by queens. A story of a young woman who is intelligent and cunning yet imperfect, who becomes the driving force of a revolution because of her knowledge, who finds herself and carves her own path in the world.