From Camp Princess: Born to Rule
(coming to bookstores in May!)

Alicia looked around her room. She’d brought small touches of home that reminded her of Belgravia. Her glass bottles with her best perfumes sat on the dressing table, and a painting of her royal family hung above her bed. Still she missed her own castle, especially now that it was quiet time and she had a moment to think about things.

Some princesses brought their favorite stuffed animals to camp, but Alicia had her favorite book, Love Letters of a Forgotten Princess. It was a birthday present from her beloved aunt, the Queen of Albermarle. Almost every night she read at least one of the letters. It was on her nightstand now, adding a cozy touch to the room. Knowing it was there made Alicia feel just a bit less homesick.

She sat down at the gold writing table, chose a quill, and dipped it into the crystal inkwell.

Dear Mum and Pop, (or HM and HRH)

I think it is really stupid that they have this rule that I cannot call you Mum and Pop in a letter but must address you as Her Majesty and His Royal Highness. Why do they care what I call you in a letter? So I’m doing it both ways, which means that I’m not quite following and not quite breaking the rule.

Well, I don’t mean to complain BUT... guess what else? It’s not summer. You told me that the weather was “odd” here, but Holy Monk Bones, it’s just started to snow! It was spring when we rode into the camp. Then spring turned to summer and that lasted for about an hour. Mum, Pop, I hate to tell you this: it’s the dead of winter now.

A wave of homesickness hit Alicia. She put down her pen and gazed out the turret window. When her big sister Lorelei had come here five years earlier, she had told Alicia that it had mostly been spring and autumn and only one day of winter in the first session. But she had also said there was “no telling” in a place like Camp Princess.

The young princess sighed. She knew that things like the weather couldn’t upset Lorelei. She was brave and never got homesick. Alicia picked up her pen again and continued writing.

So, Mum and Pop, I am including a list of what I need:

• Silver fox muff (not the red fox one, it’s not as warm)
• Ear muffs (I look stupid in them but I’ll look stupider if my ears freeze and drop off.)
• Please please send me those expensive new style snowshoes with rawhide laces. I want to be able to hike over any kind of snow.
• Ice skates—the new models with gold and silver blades.
• Also, send my extra pair of high-top, fleece-lined, suede boots—the purple ones. I’m on the Purple team for the Color Wars.

Alicia paused again in her writing. She wondered if she should tell her parents about the rumors she had overheard about the ghost in the South Turret. Her mother might worry. And her father would call her a “puffball princess.” Oh well, better not mention it, she decided.

Why would a two-hundred-year-old ghost show up now, anyway? She’d certainly be out of fashion! Totally medieval! Alicia thought, trying to make a little joke to set her mind at ease. She went back to her letter.

My chambers are all right. I am in the South Turret. I share it with two others, a Princess Gundersnap from Slobodkonia and Princess Kristen who is from somewhere called the Isles of the Salt Tears in the Realm of Rolm—wherever that is. I heard it’s a very wild place. She has the best boots, though!

I miss everyone so much. I think of you all having breakfast in the lake pavilion and watching the swans glide over the crystal blue water. Meanwhile, I’m here snowbound in June in a stone turret! Does that seem quite fair?

Alicia hastily crossed out the last sentence and wrote, “I’m going to try very hard to get as much as I can out of what you call ‘the Camp Princess Experience,’ and give it what Pop calls ‘the old camp try.’”

Rah rah, she thought miserably.

“Well, I shall say good night,” she wrote, and then signed the letter.