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Boosting the Signal

Boosting the Signal

Boosting the Signal: A Vanishing Glow, by Alexis Radcliff

Alexis Radcliff is an author who emailed me out of the blue asking if I’d consider reviewing her book. I told her I couldn’t guarantee a timely review, and instead recommended she send me a piece for Boosting the Signal so that she could appeal to y’all directly about whether you might like to read her book. Which is, by the way, A Vanishing Glow, which she described to me as ‘a deep and thrilling blend of steampunk and flintlock fantasy’. So maybe what you might get if you smoosh Boneshaker and the Rebels of Adalonia books together? If that sounds awesome, read on for an excerpt from the book. Which nicely features a clear goal of SCIENCE! Or at least, science in the name of war. Check it out.

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A Vanishing Glow

A Vanishing Glow

“Isn’t this kind of dangerous, Doc?” Verse rubbed her arms and looked around the field. “I feel like we should have ear protection or something.”

“Got it covered.” Nilya pulled a handful of cotton bits out of her jacket pocket and passed two to Verse, two to Doc, and then jammed two in her own ears.

“What about Doc’s eye?” asked Verse. Her voice sounded muffled through Nilya’s cotton, but still audible.

Nilya blinked, and looked at Doc. “What about your eye, Doc? If this works, I’d hate to be responsible for something happening to it.”

Doc reached up and tapped himself in the center of the construct eye with two hard taps, making Nilya flinch. “Special crystal compound. Designed by Vasaan himself to work with mystech. Your pulser can’t do anything to it.” He grinned. “Go ahead, Nilya. Fire it up.”

“Wait, wait!” Verse scrambled to stuff the cotton into her ears. Then she covered them with her hands. “Okay, go ahead.”

“Here goes.” Nilya held out the pulser in front of her and braced herself. A queasy, nervous fluttering started up in her stomach. This was her moment. They were only a few feet from the beakers. It had to work. “Here goes nothing. One… two… three!” She flipped the switch.

A loud, keening shriek pulsed out of the tiny pinholes on the device in her hand. It vibrated with the energy of the mystech crystal inside. She winced at the volume of the shriek, despite the cotton, and gritted her teeth, holding the pulser nearer to the beakers. Are they vibrating? She couldn’t tell. She stepped closer.

She spared a glance back at Verse and Doc. Verse stood tensed and ready to jump backwards, one eye squeezed shut and the other peeping open, fixed on the beakers. Doc stood impassively, arms folded. He had a strange expression on his face. He unfolded his arms and raised a hand to rub the back of his neck.

The beakers stood silent and serene on the tree stump, giving no indication that the noise affected them. They should be vibrating by now. There’s no technical reason it shouldn’t work. Why isn’t it working? She bit her lip. What did I do wrong?

There was a loud pop and the device jerked in Nilya’s hands. The mechanical shriek cut off.

Doc was screaming.

She spun around to see him kneeling on the ground, rocking back and forth as he wailed, both hands covering his construct eye. Verse stood frozen behind him, a horrified expression plastered on her face. Nilya dropped the pulser and rushed to his side, grabbing him by the shoulders. Her heart thudded in her chest. “Doc, Doc, what is it? What happened?”

“My eye! My eye, what did it do to my eye? I heard something shatter…” His fingers frantically probed at the socket and then came away. He stared up at Nilya in confusion, natural eye rolling wildly. “I can’t see!”

His construct eye looked intact, though it no longer glowed red with its signature inner light. Nilya took a deep breath. She could still make out the black focusing bands clearly on the dull crimson surface. “It looks okay, Doc,” she assured him. “But deactivated. You can’t see?”

“My right eye…” He stared at her in shock, trying to comprehend what she was saying. “Intact?”

His hand snapped back to his neck, grasping at the brass compartment that held his M-cell seating. The casing swung out on tiny, concealed hinges, and his fingers groped for the mystech crystal inside. Tiny yellow shards tumbled out instead, and he caught them in his hand and brought them around to stare at them.

“I’ll be damned to hell,” he said, looking up at her in amazement.

Nilya stared back. Mystech shards… She stood and returned to the pulser, sweeping it up off the ground, and popped the casing off in a single motion. A similar pile of shards sat in her own M-cell seating. She upended the device, shook them into her hand, and held them out for Doc and Verse to see.

“What is it?” Verse asked. “What’s going on?”

Did my pulser do that? Nilya stared down at it, stunned. But how?

“What is it?” Verse pleaded.

“Something I’ve never seen done before.” Doc climbed unsteadily to his feet. “Her device destroyed the nearby mystech crystals instead of the glass.” He shook his head. “I never even thought…”

“But how? She didn’t build it for that, did she?”

“The calibrator,” Nilya said. “I’d never used it before. My design just resonates, but it’s the calibrator that helped me set the frequency.”

“I’m amazed, Nilya.” Doc let the crystals in his palm fall to the ground and dusted off his hands. “What you’ve stumbled on… Do you realize the potential this has?”

Nilya nodded mutely. Her mind was already racing with the possibilities. A handheld weapon that could knock out every light in a building or disable a guard’s shockrod? One person could hamstring an entire squad of Istkherian Steelguards. She licked her lips, mouth suddenly dry.

“So what do we do, now?” She held the pulser open in her hands, exposed to the air. The device was unharmed, despite the jolt of the shattering crystal. “I’m sorry about the scare with your eye,” she added.

“Forget my eye. It’s fine. Next we test it again.” He gestured back towards the workshop as he stared thoughtfully at her invention. “I have spare crystals in the shop. After we do that, then I take your device and go have a little chat with the Colonel about your potential as a military engineer. We might be wasting your talents with your current assignment.”

Nilya nodded, still too excited to speak. After this, they won’t just let me join the weapons engineering corps. They’ll probably ask me to run it!

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Boosting the Signal

Boosting the Signal: Al-Kabar, by Lee French

Earlier this week I did a cover reveal for Lee French’s new book Al-Kabar, and I’m pleased to report that that book has now been released! BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE–Lee has agreed to let me do a giveaway for this book, so if it sounds intriguing to you, drop a comment on this post by Monday the 21st, and I’ll choose a commenter at random. The winner will need to specify what digital format they’d like to get. If you don’t want to get in on the giveaway, you can actually buy the ebook for 99 cents until next Saturday! And what character goal can you expect to be pursued in this story? Peace. No matter what the cost!

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Al-Kabar

Al-Kabar

“What I really want is peace across Serescine. It would be magnificent to avoid all these ridiculous, costly wars.” From the second floor balcony, Zavin watched the sun slip below the horizon, painting the sky orange. The day’s heat would break soon and he’d leave the palace to wander the city streets in disguise for a few hours.

His lover rested a delicate ochre hand on his shoulder, her gold bangle bracelets clinking together. The smooth silk of her flame-red dress teased his dark skin and he gripped his olivewood staff tighter to avoid temptation. Its topaz crystal pulsed with dim light to echo his concentration.

“My husband–”

“Must you call him that in my bedroom?” He glanced over his shoulder with a scowl and found Mahdis smirking at him.

“Caliph Korval has proven receptive to your ideas so far. There’s nothing to worry about.” She slid behind him and kissed the bare skin between his shoulder blades.

“There’s always something to worry about.” At the moment, he worried about losing track of time in the throes of indulgence and passion. “The path ahead will have Korval taking the mantle of Sultan. Many things need to be prepared for that to become a reality.”

“Are you sure it can be done? There hasn’t been a sultan for a long time.”

“Of course I’m sure. I’ve devoted years of my life to setting this in motion. Korval will be the Sultan and I’ll be his right hand, ready to step in should an assassin ever manage to penetrate his security.”

Mahdis chuckled. “I’m sure that would never happen.”

Zavin bared his teeth in a feral grin. “No, of course not. There will be peace across Serescine, no matter how many lives I have to spend to make it so.”

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Boosting the Signal

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.

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Stormseer

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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Boosting the Signal

Boosting the Signal: One More Second Chance, by Jana Richards

Jana Richards is a fellow Carina author, but for this post for Boosting the Signal, she approached me about a new non-Carina release of hers! She also asked me to mention that the ebook edition of One More Second Chance is on sale for 99 cents, from August 21st through September 4th! This book’s a contemporary romance, and from the sound of it, Jana’s heroine Julia has a very challenging goal indeed: raising her daughter as a single mother, in the face of multiple other demands. So if small town contemporary romance is your catnip, give this a look, won’t you? Particularly since it’s conveniently on sale!

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One More Second Chance

One More Second Chance

My name is Julia Stewart. I’m a high school principal in a small town, a place called Lobster Cove. With a name like you’ve probably guessed we’re not in Kansas, Toto. Lobster Cove is located on Mount Desert Island, off the coast of Maine. We’re just down the road from Bar Harbor.

I love this place. Sometimes when I look out at Frenchman Bay and see the islands in the distance, with the sun glinting off the waves, it makes me want to cry. Silly, I know, but the natural beauty of my little island has that effect on me.

The town is cute as a button, too. There are all these quaint little shops painted in bright colors. We have a town square with a bandstand that’s about as American as apple pie. You can walk down to the pier and watch the lobster boats come in.

Mostly I love this town because it’s home. My parents are here, and so are the friends I’ve known since childhood. This is where I want to raise my six year old daughter, Ava.

I’m never leaving Lobster Cove again.

My ex-husband Russ convinced me to go to Thailand to teach English. I thought it would be a big, fun adventure. And it was, sometimes. But mostly I was homesick. I couldn’t believe how much I missed mom and dad, my friends, my hometown. When I got pregnant with Ava, I insisted we move home. I wanted to give birth in Lobster Cove, with my parents and friends close by for support. But Russ wasn’t happy about coming home. When Ava was three he left me to back to Thailand.

I was devastated. Especially when he told me that he was in love with a Thai woman he’d met when we were there together. I didn’t have a clue he’d been having an affair right under my nose. I thought I knew everything about Russ. We’d been together since the tenth grade and I didn’t think we had any secrets. You never really know a person, do you?

So there I was, suddenly a single working mom. I was able to secure the position of principal at the Lobster Cove High School, and I love it, but the job has come with a whole lot of complications. My math teacher, who thinks he should gotten the job as principal, is doing everything he can to undermine my authority. My former father-in-law, who happen to be school board chairman, opposes everything I stand for as a principal. And, oh yeah, he blames me for the divorce. Russ hasn’t sent so much as a birthday card to Ava since he left, and he hasn’t spoken to his parents either. Wyatt blames me for that, too.

But right now those problems seem almost trivial compared to what’s looming on the horizon. There’s something very, very wrong with my mother. She may be responsible for Ava’s broken arm. Dear God, she may have abused her.

I can scarcely believe it. My mom has always been my rock. I wouldn’t have made it through Russ’s desertion and our subsequent divorce without her. I don’t know what to do.

There’s a further complication. Mom and Dad’s new neighbor, Alex Campbell. He’s the new doctor in town. The new temporary doctor. In a few months when completes his contract with the Island Health Board, he’ll head back to San Diego. He’ll soon be gone so I shouldn’t lean on him for help with my parents. My heartbeat shouldn’t accelerate whenever he looks at me. I shouldn’t let Ava fall in love with him.

I shouldn’t fall in love with him either. I’ve been down this road before. I put everything I had into my marriage and it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough. The betrayal still aches. And it’s left me very cautious.

Maybe, down the road, I might be ready to find love with a man who loves this place and wants live here as much as I do. A local. Not someone like Alex who’s from away and will be leaving soon. It doesn’t matter how compassionate he is, how supportive he’s been of my parents, or how wildly attracted I am to him. It doesn’t even matter that the thought of losing him makes me physically ill. I can’t love him.

And don’t tell me I should ask him to stay. If he stays he’ll soon grow tired of the smallness of this place. He’ll soon resent me for trapping him here. I know how this will play out.

I let a man drag me away from this island once, and I won’t let it happen again. I can’t.

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Boosting the Signal

Boosting the Signal: Mating Flight, by Bard Bloom

Bard Bloom is a fellow member of the Outer Alliance mailing list, and was the latest to answer my call for Boosting the Signal submissions over the loop! When he told me his duology Mating Flight was about dragons, I leapt right on that. And I’m glad I did, because yoiks, check out that lovely cover art, won’t you? Not to mention that his protagonist is a female dragon, with a very basic goal: get through the coming mating and dominance matches of her people. And I am totally curious now as to how she recorded this diary Bard mentions!

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Mating Flight

Mating Flight

From the author:

This is a snippet from the Mating Flight duology by Bard Bloom, comprised of Mating Flight: A Non-Romance of Dragons and World in My Claws: Mating Flight Concluded. They’re on Amazon in Kindle and paper formats.

Jyothky, keeper of the diary that was edited into Mating Flight, is a dragoness of marriageable age. Which means she, two other dragonesses, and six male dragons — drakes — are going to go off for a few years, have lots of sex and dominance contests, and decide who will marry whom and which three drakes don’t marry at all. She has no sense of touch and no libido, putting her at a disadvantage.

Good to Be a Dragoness (?)

Advantages Disadvantages

I am guaranteed getting married, since there are two drakes for every dragoness.

I’m not really very eager to get married. Arilash, well, Roroku was right about Arilash, so I guess she does want to have a drake she can mate with whenever she wants and nobody will complain. I haven’t really been looking longingly on drakes very much. And I’ve tried, too.

This is rather more than a matter of gratifying intimate personal urges, or even producing progeny. Mated pairs of dragons control territory. Bachelors do not. They live on the territory of mated pairs, one way or another.

Dragonesses enjoy copulating more, according to Arilash. I can’t imagine how she found this out. If it’s true at all.

I can’t feel, so I’m not going to enjoy it much.

Drakes need to compete all the times, before they’re married or definitely not getting married. Lots of fighting, lots of verbal sparring, lots of treasure hunting, all that sort of thing. Which some of them enjoy (Greshthanu) and some of them don’t (Osoth).

Dragonesses compete too. The customs are a bit different. We fight and spar verbally as much. We don’t collect much treasure, that would be offensive to the drakes — the drake gets status from presenting his mate a good hoard. Sexual prowess is another realm of competition … for drakes too, but more for dragonesses. Arilash is going to beat me in that. She’s been practicising with the drakes, if the rumors are true. Which is very undignified and inappropriate of course!

I am not much obliged to study anything in particular beyond the basics of breath, sorcery, combat, rulership of households and domains. A dragoness can get away with more laziness than a drake. I know a handful who have taken advantage of this option. (I’ve actually had more of the opposite problem: I’ve wanted to study sorcery, but nobody will teach me anything but the simplest, because it will stunt my growth more than it already is.)

Drakes who think it likely that they will lose generally need to study some craft or profession which will give them some status among dragons, afterwards. Osoth studies necromancy and Nrararn studies sky-magic, both quite respectable and useful specialities. Tultamaan studies the king, and is one of his advisors and retainers. Ythac should probably be paying more attention, though he is pretty good with information magic. Of those four, only Ythac has much of a real chance at getting married.

I am automatically considered attractive and appealing no matter what I look like or what parts of me got broken. This ought to be important. I am probably going to be the technically worst lover in all of the dragon-worlds. I’m going to keep asking “is it in yet?”, because I can’ttell. If not using an outright scrying spell — can you think of anything more offensive than that? But ultimately that doesn’t matter. I’m a dragoness, which means I am more desireable than the lack-of-mates that half the drakes have.

I am not actually very attractive. I’m a dull black color without much texture. Arilash is a dull tan color without much texture. Roroku is a dull green color without much texture. And so on. Compare that to the drakes: Nrararn with his twirly horn and incandescent mane and pretty cerulean color, Greshthanu with his garden of blue and orange spikes, etc. etc. etc.

This is really just the same as songbirds. Females are dull colors to avoid attracting attention. Males are bright colors to attract attention: attention of females, attention of predators, whatever.

But I’m not a stupid little songbird. I’d like to look exciting and dramatic. Again, I could shapeshift or use cosmetic spells the way drakes do, but everydragon can tell that they’re there and pretty much can tell what I really look like too so it doesn’t help.

I have a better-than-drake chance of surviving my Great Separation. (Mating flights must be nasty on Dragonhome for the original, un-Separated dragons. Two drakes for every dragoness is bad enough, but they’ve got three or four.)

I did survive my Great Separation, so this one doesn’t seem very important any more. Sure, I should be thankful and happy for it. But the only difference it makes to my day-to-day life is that I have a day-to-day life. That’s surprisingly hard to remember.

I’m going to get married.

… I’m going to get married.

I’m not even being flippant or clever here. Suppose that I have my choice of four drakes (really two or three) and I don’t want to marry any of them, or anyone at all? Suppose I want to go be an explorer, a discoverer of new worlds? A researcher into the depths of sorcery (bad for size, bad for fertility)? Anything other than the co-ruler of a tiny-to-small domain? That’s not a choice for me. I’m going to get married, because there are so many more drakes than dragonesses that every dragoness has to get married.

I hope there’s actually some fun in it. I’m not going to enjoy sex, that’s clear enough. My parents seem basically happy with each other, but they say that’s some work to achieve and due in a large part to a regular schedule of sex plus lots of unscheduled. Rankotherium and Dessvaria seem to basically hate each other.

I hereby resolve to meet my fate with all the honor and bravery of a dragon. And if I don’t have all the sensuality of a dragon, I’ll fake it as best I can.

(I hope you believe that resolution for me, ’cause I don’t.)

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Buy Mating Flight: A Non-Romance of Dragons: Amazon (Kindle) | Amazon (Paperback)

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Boosting the Signal

Boosting the Signal: Red Blooded, by Caitlin Sinead

Caitlin Sinead is another repeat visitor to Boosting the Signal–she came by earlier this year with her release of Heartsick, and now she’s back again with her next Carina title, the politically-themed New Adult romance Red Blooded! This time she’s offering a direct excerpt from the book, wherein her character Peyton needs to pull off two goals at once: surviving the grilling of her campaign manager… and surviving the presence of Dylan. Peyton clearly has her hands full!

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Red Blooded

Red Blooded

There’s a loud thump and some profanity on the other side of the door. Bain doesn’t wait for me to say “come in.” He barrels through with a couple of staffers bobbing along behind him. If the crowd below is intense, these staffers are downright ferocious.

“Peyton,” Bain says with a clap, as though I’m his best friend. “How’s the speech coming?”

I smile and straighten my shoulders and try to respond, but I can’t help seeing the way Gin, one of the staffers, snidely asks Dylan how “work” is going. Yeah, he uses air quotes. Dylan cocks his head and—

“Peyton!” Bain snaps everyone’s attention back to him.

“Yeah, the speech,” I say. “It’s good, I feel good about it.”

Bain sticks his legal pad under his armpit. “All right, let’s hear it.”

“Right now?” I swallow and rub my fingers against my palms.

“Right now.” Bain stares at me. Dylan scrolls in his tablet and hands it to me, my speech all lined up. This isn’t necessary though. I’ve memorized it.

I memorized it because that’s something I can control. There are too many other things I can’t control. Like my mouth, which is now so dry, it’s hard to open.

“Honey,” Bain says, and his inflection makes an otherwise endearing address sound caustic. “If you can’t do it in front of me, how do you expect to do it in front of America?”

“I got it, okay.” I stare him down. Or, at least, I try to.

I start off in a low voice and only shake, oh, about the level of a 4.2 earthquake when Bain snaps, “Louder and look up.”

I look up, but my words trip and fall over each other. All I can think about is how Bain should retire to one of those little islands where the drinks have umbrellas. He’d like that, right? Yeah, he should retire and leave me the fuck alone.

“Stop, stop,” Bain says. “Gin, make yourself useful and get her a fucking cup of water.”

Gin dashes to the bathroom.

“Peyton, I know I’m not your favorite person. But you need to look up when you talk. Speak loudly and clearly.” As if in demonstration, he locks my eyes and continues in a slow, precise voice. “If you stumble, we’ll know it’s because you’re nervous or distracted. But America will think it’s because you don’t believe what you’re saying.”

Gin dashes back with my water so fast he trips. The cup goes flying, drenching my right side.

Cold shocks my skin, but Gin looks worse. He’s red and still on his knees. I reach down to help him up. “Are you okay?”

“I’m sorry,” he says.

Bain looks to the ceiling, a vein in his neck threatening to pop out. “Peyton has to meet with fucking funders in twenty minutes.”

He says it as though Gin wouldn’t have accidentally spilled water on me if only he’d known that fact.

“It’s okay,” I say, flipping my dress away from my leg and dabbing it with some paper towels that Dylan hands me. “If we can find a blow dryer or something it won’t take long at all to—”

Bain snaps his fingers and juts his thumb in Gin’s direction.

Gin scrambles out of the room.

Bain sighs. “Dylan, get over here.”

Dylan strides to Bain, and Bain puts his hands on Dylan’s shoulders, turning him to face me.

“Okay, you don’t need to say your speech looking at me, but you need to be looking at someone. So, can you keep your eyes on him while you talk?”

“Yes,” I say, but too softly for Bain’s liking.

He puts his hand behind his ear and leans toward me. “I’m sorry, did you say—”

“Yes!” I yell. I breathe in. Before Bain can mock me again, I start my speech. “I didn’t have any siblings…”

I focus on Dylan’s brown eyes. When he smiles, I get lost somewhere between the memorized words and muddy comfort. When I start talking about my dad, Dylan’s eyes crease, his chin dips forward further. He coaxes the words out. He coaxes the memories.

“…Please help us welcome the next Vice President of the United States of America,” I conclude, but don’t look away from Dylan.

He grins and pulls something out of his pocket. A neatly folded tissue.

I barely hear Bain’s booming voice as he exits the room, off to complete another task on his long to-do list. “Fucking fantastic, Peyton, just like that.”

I take the tissue and glide it under my eye.

Gin scrambles in with a hair dryer and holds it out to me. “It’s fine, really,” I say. He looks around and, realizing Bain’s gone, he shrugs and leaves.

I go to the corner and plug the hair dryer in. At first I turn it on my leg, but that’s of course too hot. I try to hold my dress out myself, but really, it would be best if…

“Why don’t I hold the hair dryer and you hold your dress,” Dylan says, taking the tool out of my hand.

I hold it out for him as he delicately sprays warm air toward some of my more sensitive parts. He’s got to get close to do it correctly, so when he looks up and asks me if it’s too hot, his breath is only a couple of inches from my mouth. He’s got me cornered.

My face warms.

He clicks off the hair dryer. “This is kind of ridiculous.”

“I’ll take my dress off.”

His mouth parts.

“In the bathroom,” I say, pointing.

He laughs, but it’s this weird laugh that’s more of a grunt. I guess we’re back to the frustrated grunts. He steps aside and I brush by him.

I stand alone in my underwear in the bathroom, blowing the bottom of my dress dry. Just another day on the campaign trail.

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Boosting the Signal

Boosting the Signal: Where Light Meets Shadow, by Shawna Reppert

I’ve had fellow Here Be Magic and NIWA member Shawna Reppert on Boosting the Signal before, with her book Raven’s Wing. Shawna’s got a new release out, the m/m fantasy Where Light Meets Shadow, chock full of things which are Highly Relevant to My Interests: music, elves, and queer-friendly fiction! Because I mean honestly, a fantasy novel involving a romance between elven bards? It might as well be subtitled Put This In Anna’s Eyes Now. And if you’re in the same boat with me, meet her hero Kieran, whose goal is nothing less than the saving of his people through song. Sign me up.

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Where Light Meets Shadow

Where Light Meets Shadow

Those not rude enough to say it to my face are saying it behind my back. Crazy Kieran is going to get himself killed for sure this time. He thinks he’s the bard his father was, off on some fool quest for what? A new tune? A new song? What difference can that make to anyone?

The thing is, they’re wrong. Not the part about me getting myself killed. Time will tell with that, although I can hope they are wrong. And if not? Maybe I think it’s a fair risk, gambling on joining a little sooner my father and mother and my brother never born in whatever lies after this life. If I die like my father did, in service of our people, I can only consider it a death well met.

And here Dermot or Cuin would roll their eyes and tell me I’ve sung too many ballads and now fancy myself the hero. Brona would frown and say that I must put a higher value on my life. I have no death wish; I wish I could convince her of that. Life is too full of song and story and pleasures to leave it early except in a good cause.

But as for the rest, I am very much aware that I am not the bard that my father was. Perhaps, in the fullness of time and under his tutelage, I might have become so. We’ll never know, will we? The murdering, oathbreaking Leas have seen to that.

As to what difference a tune can make, perhaps no difference at all. Perhaps all the difference in the world. I have called rain down with a tune—accidentally, it’s true, but still it proves that music has power. My father, it is said, could bolster the failing courage of armies with a song.

Something must save our people. We have been dwindling since or defeat by the Leas. We all see it, though no one wants to talk about it. The hunters go out less often and bring back less game. Each harvest is a little bit more disappointing than the last. The old feasts and festivals are no longer celebrated, out of deference to the queen, it is said, although the truth is that none of us have the heart for it.

Maybe new tunes and new songs will revitalize our people. Maybe—and this is a hope I share with none, since it sounds mad indeed, maybe I can find the forgotten healing magic of the bards of legend. Maybe I can wake our queen from her long stupor and save us all.

Maybe I’m not the bard my father was, but I may be all the hope that we have.

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