Nathan Brindle

I’m through 11 chapters of BBESP Volume 3.  I’m working on Chapter 12.  There will be a Chapter 13 or an Epilogue, one of the two, but I think more likely Chapter 13.

With any luck, it will be finished next week.  Please cross fingers.  The farther you go along in any series, the harder it is to keep everything together as the plot develops and expands.  So — given my pantser style of writing — it takes longer to make sure everything works.

So keep an eye on this spot.  Soon.  I promise.

In the meantime, here is the probable cover, and an image I generated for storyboarding in chapter 4.

Princess Regnant Alice and her companions, after a trip to Prince Daniel’s world Xeros, and a visit to Lost Terra and a meeting with Michael, the mysterious, ancient human, have been directed by Michael to travel to Mahoukai — a world of magical beings who will be able to properly train and guide Prince Daniel’s sister Alouette in the use of her inborn magical powers.

But a nagging question continues to bug both Alice and her father, Roger; what is really going on, back on Capital? Is a revolution brewing? Is the Lord Chancellor, Rupert, somehow involved, and at what level? Eventually they must bid a reluctant farewell to the Mahoukaian Great Mages of Antiquity, and end Alice’s six-month absence from her Throne.

And what they find on Capital is far, far beyond anything they might have imagined from 50,000 light years away.

The second volume of the BBESP light novel!

(For those who haven’t read the first volume — it’s here.)

Well…not much more to say than that 🙂

After much chewing of nails on my part, Amazon finally deigned to let this novel go live.

I’m The Beautiful But Evil Space Princess Who Rules A Galactic Empire But Really Wants To Leave People Ruthlessly Alone!, or “I’m the BBESP” for short, is first in a series of three (at least) light novels about the far, far future of the Timelines universe.  Because it’s so far in the future and mostly disconnected from the events being written about in the Timelines universe, it’s its own series.  So let us start with Volume 1:

Alice is the Imperial Princess Regnant of the Galactic Empire. At 22, she has been thrust into power after her father (the Emperor) and her two older brothers have all died in various ways. Her Imperial Chancellor, Lord Rupert, does everything he can to support her, but has somewhat different ideas about how the Empire should be run than did his late Emperor.

Alice has one major problem: She cannot be crowned Empress Regnant until she marries and produces an heir. (In fairness, it’s the same way for the male heirs who succeed the throne while unmarried; they remain Princes Regnant until they marry and produce heirs.)

But Alice, being kept busy three days a week by interminable audiences with petitioners, and the rest of the week with what she terms “mostly busy work”, has no real way to meet boys — well, reasonably eligible boys, anyway, and of her own age — with whom she might eventually take up and form a household. And she chafes at the necessity of trying to rule, hands-on, an Empire so huge it cannot be truly ruled by any one person to begin with.

Literally, she just wants to leave people alone, as her father and his predecessors did for centuries.

Then, into her life walks the Crown Prince of a planet many, many parsecs away from the Capital Planet…and her life begins to take on a life of its own…

Available for free reading via KU, or purchase the e-book for $5.99. There’s also going to be a paperback edition, it’s just waiting for me to review the proof that’s supposed to arrive today. I don’t know if there will be hardbacks or not.

Book is finally up, as of 18 Nov 2025 00:07 EST.  Yay.  See link in next post.

Note:  Amazon KDP has really screwed the pooch on this release.  The e-book is still sitting in “Publishing” status, as it has been since Friday.  When it actually goes “Live” — if ever — I will update this page again.  — 17 Nov 2025 17:30 EST

I’m The Beautiful But Evil Space Princess Who Rules a Galactic Empire But Really Wants To Leave People Ruthlessly Alone! — Volume 1.  Publishing right now on Amazon KDP.  (I’ll put up a link later when it finishes going through the clusterfuck known as Amazon Publishing.)

[Update: The clusterfuck continues, it’s now 4PM on 11/15.  Oy.  And continues to continue at 4PM on 11/16.]

This is what I’ve been working on for the last bit of a while.  Eventually there will be three volumes and it’s all one novel — like what the Japanese do with light novels.  Each volume will be about 50,000 words, so the finished product will be the equivalent of a 150,000 word novel.

I hesitate to say it’s part of the Timelines universe.  Technically it is, but it’s 20,000 years in the future of that universe.  So the world it builds on is the world long after the Darkness Fleet is destroyed, and also long after a series of wars between human worlds over how they will be governed going forward.  The answer for most of the past 20,000 years has been an Empire that is primarily a clearinghouse for disputes between the worlds, with an Emperor who is legally in charge of it all, but who leaves most of the work to a professional bureaucracy.

At any rate I had a lot of fun writing it and the folks who watched it grow from an idea to a finished book generally seem to have thought well of it, and I hope my other readers do, as well.