Profile

I’m a writer in Boulder County, Colorado. I have often been found on Twitter as CZEdwards, snarking about fashion & politics, posting kitty pics, and word counts. I am a fan of the Oxford comma, epic fantasy, The West Wing, and cinnamon. I have two cats, whose nom de Internets are JingleCat and NinjaCat. We were formerly owned by Madame, Fluffy and Whiskey, who all lived to respectable old ages.

I have written Rien’s Rebellion, a six volume series set in its own universe. It starts with the assassination of a good monarch, leaving behind his only daughter, Cazerien, and his two nephews, Laarens and Savrin. Rien is a lawyer and a judge in her country’s legal system; Laarens commands a western border garrison and Savrin ... isn’t what anyone expected of him. I’ll be releasing a novella soon in the same universe, then the next series.

The Rebellion cycle started with two thoughts: What if Pompeii, in 79 CE, was the worst Mt Vesuvius was capable of doing? If that eruption had been one order of magnitude worse, Vesuvius would have destroyed Rome, and most of what’s now Southern France and Italy. The entire Mediterranean would have been upended. And that means the Roman Empire ended 400 years early. Which destroys Christianity, and disrupts all of the trade and communication routes, while leaving a few outposts in Britannia and Germania. What would Europe look like several centuries later?

The second thought was about the fragility of governments, especially at moments of succession. Two female monarchs, who ruled in their own names, overlap each other from 1205 - 1213: Tamar of Georgia, and Raziya Sultana, who ruled the Delhi Sultanate. Both of their fathers intended for them to succeed them; both trained their daughters to be the monarch. Tamar’s father elevated her while he lived, and she was co-regnant with him for six years, at which point she had to put down insurrection because the men around her couldn’t cope. Raziya’s father did not elevate her, but did leave her as his heir and successor. She, too, faced men who could not cope. We know Tamar was one of the most revered and respected leaders in Europe and Asia during her reign. By all accounts, Raziya Sultana was Tamar’s equal. I wanted them both to have a happy ending, because they deserved better than how the men of their time treated them.