Young adult fiction author Tricia Copeland believes in finding magic. She believes magic infuses every aspect of our lives and each of us create our own brand of magic. Whether transforming hearts, lives, numbers, ideas, art, music, or simply enjoying nature, we discover magic every day. She aims to write stories that show what is possible when one commits to finding their own version of magic. With urban fantasy and paranormal young adult titles, you’re sure to find a magical character and story line to love within her books.
Tricia’s Kingdom of Embers won the 2019 Colorado Independent Publishers’ Association EVVY Award for YA fiction. To be a Fae Queen won a Gold Global Book Award, and To be a Fae Guardian was awarded the Independent Book Publishers’ Association Benjamin Franklin award for YA audiobooks.
From the moment I entered the world of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, I was hooked. I devoured all things vampires. Stoker wanted Dracula to be published in newspapers in chapters to further create mystery around the existence of vampires. In many countries variations of his novel were produced in newspapers entertaining readers week after week. With this backdrop, I began storyboarding my first vampire series. It started with the idea for a female character, Alena, pronounced Uh-lee-nuh, who was a vampire and witch hybrid struggling to fit into her mother’s vampire community as well as a human teen life.
In order to build Alena’s story, I also needed to build her mother’s and father’s stories, and form rules for the vampires and the witches. Where did they come from? How did they fit into our modern society unbeknownst to humans? And most importantly where was Alena’s story going to take her?
I couldn’t have imagined eight years later that Alena would be partnered with a fae Queen to rid the world of an evil witch spirit determined to end them all. But I got ahead of myself. In order to give Alena a quest, I needed a huge challenge that would spur her into action. What would a vampire-witch hybrid, who must hide her true nature from almost everyone or risk death, want most? Freedom?
With an attempt at not divulging too many secrets of the series here, I created a world where witches were descendants of angels. The Creator wasn’t happy with these angels playing god, creating their own beings, and cursed the witches dooming their souls to eternal purgatory and preventing them from forming permanent homes.
Enter the vampires, sired from a different faction of once ethereal beings. I gave both the witches and vampires lifespans of hundreds of years and protection from disease and illnesses, save if a witch stayed in one home too long. From the beginning the witches’ believed their aim was to protect humans from all forms of evil roaming our Earth, thus leveraging an age-old rivalry between the witch and vampire species.
For Kingdom of Embers, the first book of the Kingdom Journals series, I set Alena in Los Angeles in 2017 where she discovered that to break the curse on the witch lines a trinity of witches, born at the turn of a century, must come together and find the Lance of Longinus. During the first months in her new city, Alena runs into a grown-up real-life human version of her once thought imaginary preschool friend, Hunter. That couldn’t be a coincidence right?
Alena and Hunter began the quest to discover their connection. But these characters needed a nemesis, someone or some group, decidedly against breaking the curse. That led me to form Sonia’s story. Very much alive in 2017, Sonia didn’t appear until the very end of Kingdom of Embers when she swooped in attempting to rescue her son and grandson, and a very important relic, from Alena’s and Hunter’s grasps.
Kingdom of Embers ended in a bit of a cliff hanger with Alena and Hunter wondering how to find the third witch of the trinity. The next book in the series, Kingdom of Darkness, found Camille experiencing vivid dreams and hallucinations of Alena and Hunter and their quest. I wrote the series in a journalistic style with each main character telling their own story, Alena in Kingdom of Embers, Camille in Kingdom of Darkness, Jude in Kingdom of Honor, and Hunter in the finale, Kingdom of War.
Confused as to where the vampire story went? I finally created a vampire novel in Kingdom of the Damned, Alena’s mother’s saga. This fit best between the third and fourth books in the series and chronicled Anne’s efforts to bring peace to her people. For even more background you could dive into Sonia’s story with Of Witches and Vampires.
Wondered yet how the fae fit in? Alena, Hunter, Camille, and Jude needed more muscle power to stop their evil nemesis, Sonia, so I brought in an army of fae, or fairies, to shore up the witch forces. Determined to uphold her species’ duty of protecting the humans, their leader, Queen Titania, risked her title in the Kingdom Journals finale, Kingdom of War, to aid in ridding the realm of Sonia’s influence.
Always looking for the next story, I found Titania poised to lead us into the realm of the fae in the Realm Chronicles series that begins with To be a Fae Queen. The completed Realm Chronicles series, that incorporates political intrigue, royal romances, and many fantastical beings, also included To be a Fae Guardian, To be a Fae Legend, To be a Fae Rogue, and the finale, To be a Fae, which releases in July of 2025.
All these interlocking novels can be found and followed in my Kingdom Journals and Realm Chronicles Reading Order Guide which can be viewed and downloaded at this webpage. (Kingdom Journals and Realm Chronicles Book Guide | Tricia Copeland & Maria Jane)
Happy reading, or listening via audiobook, and blessings be,
~ Tricia Copeland
Find all her titles including contemporary romance, now penned under Maria Jane, young adult fantasy, and dystopian fiction at www.triciacopeland.com.
About the Author
