Boosting the Signal: Stormseer, by Stephanie A. Cain

Boosting the Signal is directly inspired by John Scalzi’s Big Idea column and Mary Robinette Kowal’s My Favorite Bit. But given that I’m a much lower-profile author than either of them, I don’t usually expect to get any feedback about the books I feature. Imagine my surprise, then, when an author I saw featured on My Favorite Bit emailed me out of the blue to ask if she could also be on Boosting the Signal! “YES”, I said, particularly given that I’d already noticed her cover on Kowal’s site and thought that that sounded like a book I wanted to check out. Dynamically posed characters of color? Yes please I’ll have some. Particularly when the author serves me up an intro to their villain. I do so love me some villain POV pieces! So here’s Cain’s villain, telling you all about how his dastardly plans are of course entirely for the good of the kingdom.

Stormseer

You should already know me, but on the off chance that you’re a foreigner or from some remote village in the far east of the kingdom, I’ll introduce myself. My name is Arisanat Burojan, and I am Lord of the First Family, cousin to the king of Tamnen.

That’s right, cousins. That’s how the Families work, you know. Well, of course I love my cousin. He’s a misguided fool, but I do love him. The same goes for Prince Razem. He’s only a few years younger than me, and I know I can count on him to keep this war with Strid going as long as possible. But the problem is, he’s still not in it to win it, so to speak.

Oh, I don’t doubt that he hates our enemies. After all, he still thinks they killed his sister, Princess Azmei. I certainly haven’t told him I was the one who arranged for the assassination. Why would I do that? Right now he trusts me. He thinks we’re on the same side.

What side am I on? Why, I’m on Tamnen’s side, of course! I’m only doing this for the good of the kingdom. You think I want to murder my cousin’s family? What sort of monster do you take me for? I practically grew up with Prince Razem and Princess Azmei. I wept for her after I paid the assassin.

But the royal family has lost its edge. The king is actually talking about peace! Peace, after all the atrocities those Strid dogs committed on our people. After the sacrifices our people made in this war. After my brother died at the hands of those murdering Strid. The king talks of peace.

It’s intolerable. I will not allow it. And since there is only one other nobleman on the council willing to speak out, I must go about it another way.

I didn’t mean for things to turn out like this. But my cousin gave me little choice.

I embarked on this path three years ago, after Venra died. My brother died in the war, and how did Princess Azmei respond? She agreed to an arranged marriage with a foreign prince–despite the tenderness and affection between her and Venra, despite how she must have known he intended to speak to her father about an alliance. She had to have known how much Venra adored her. But she shed pretty tears at his funeral and then sauntered back to the capital where she agreed to marry a same-loving boy she’d never met.

Oh, I know that isn’t nice. I don’t really care if the Amethirian prince loves men instead of women. But Azmei’s arranged marriage was just one more demonstration of how weak the Tamnese throne has become. We agreed to marry our princess to a foreign empire so her husband could crush Strid for us. If that doesn’t show how ineffective my cousin’s rule is, what does?

So I arranged to have Azmei removed. I didn’t anticipate how angry Razem would be, how he would blame our enemies for it, but that’s certainly a bonus. But now that the king has finally decided to pursue peace by other means, it’s time for my plan to come to fruition.

First, the death of the king. Second, the prince.

And then I will be king.

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Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Holy crap! I’m in LIBRARIES!

Smashwords reported to me an awesome thing today: to wit, I’ve made my first sale of Faerie Blood via Overdrive! This means that some library somewhere has elected to purchase that book to make it available to their patrons. Which means, somebody will be able to check out Kendis & Company via Overdrive really soon. 😀

What I do not know is what library might have made that purchase, though. I’m googling around tonight to see if there’s a way to find this out, and this has led me to Worldcat.org, which is apparently a very large database of what’s available at libraries.

Through this, I have now also determined that my Carina books are ALSO available in a small handful of library systems!

The Brooklyn Public Library has all three of the Rebels books, and in fact has two copies of Victory showing up in their search results on me, here. So if you’re a patron of their system, you can read my whole trilogy through them! Awesome. And their Twitter account is here.

The Hennepin County Library in Minnesota apparently has Valor and Victory but NOT Vengeance, according to their search results. If you’re a Minnesota patron, consider them. Also consider asking them to pick up Vengeance to round out the set! They’re on Twitter here.

The Los Angeles Public Library just has Valor, but hey, if they’re going to have only one of my books, that IS the correct one to have to start the trilogy! If you’re in L.A., consider asking them to pick up books 2 and 3, won’t you?

Same notation for the Calgary Public Library and oh wow I’m readable in at least one Canadian library, how awesome is this. <3 They also just have Valor, but that’s a start!

The New York Public Library only has Vengeance, which is an odd purchasing decision on their part, but hey, not my call to make! Do I have any New York readers who might consider asking them to also get Valor and Victory? ‘Cause yeah, if you try to read this trilogy starting with Vengeance, you WILL be confused.

This is PARTICULARLY amazing: there’s a copy of Victory in the Auckland Libraries system in New Zealand! O.O Apologies in advance to any New Zealanders who might check that book out and be really really confused since it’s the tail end of the trilogy. Do please consider asking them to also pick up Valor and Vengeance!

And, much closer to home, the Hillsborough County Public Library Cooperative has a copy of Victory, and so do the Douglas County Libraries in Colorado, here.

Many thanks to all library purchasers who saw fit to pick up any of my Rebels of Adalonia books! Particularly Auckland and Calgary! But really, all of you!

Because HOLY CRAP I’m in libraries. If I could reach back in time and share this news with High School Anna, who spent her study hall time slurping up every book she could find in the school libraries, High School Anna would cry with joy. Current Day Anna is pretty close to doing so herself, and has just thrown off a flurry of shoutouts on Twitter to these various library systems. :~)

ETA: I am informed by Vancouver-based friend sticckler that the Rebels books are ALSO in the Vancouver Public Library system! And they have the entire trilogy, and people are even checking it out! I shall be adding this to the list of Reasons Why I Love Vancouver!

Anybody else want to share a library system sighting of any of my books with me? 😀

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.