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.