After more than a decade of writing, world-building, and weaving together complex realms of witches, vampires, and fae, award-winning author Tricia Copeland has brought her ten-book fantasy saga — spanning the Kingdom Journals and Realm Chronicles — to a breathtaking conclusion. Her newest release, To Be a Fae, marks the finale of the Realm Chronicles series and the culmination of an epic journey that has captivated readers with its magic, courage, and deeply human heroines.
Blending urban fantasy with rich mythological storytelling, Copeland’s work explores what it means to find strength, purpose, and connection — even in the most enchanted worlds. As she closes one chapter and looks toward the next, she reflects on the joy, growth, and wonder that have defined this extraordinary storytelling adventure.
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You recently released the finale to your Realm Chronicles series, which also concludes a ten-book arc spanning both the Kingdom Journals and Realm Chronicles. What does it feel like to reach the end of such an ambitious, interconnected world you’ve been building for years?
Finishing the Realm Chronicles series with the To be a Fae finale feels exciting, amazing, and a little sad. I love experiencing my books with readers and can’t wait for their reactions. At the same time, my characters endure many tribulations, and I’m relieved to finish the series with a happily-ever-after for them. Yet in equal parts, I’ve begun missing their adventures.
The Kingdom Journals and the Realm Chronicles are distinct yet deeply connected. What was your vision for how these two series would weave together, and how did you approach balancing continuity across so many characters, timelines, and magical systems?
When I began writing the Kingdom Journals I wouldn’t have believed that the saga would encompass multi-realm elements with goblins, ogres, dragons, much less faeries featured as major characters. My original intent was to create a vampire series, but the direction of the storyline quickly morphed into a mostly witch cast, with characters involved in a quest to break an age old curse on the witch lines. Set in contemporary time on a human-filled planet Earth, the series tells the story through the eyes of each of three of a trinity of witches prophesied to break the curse.
Independently, I created a short story, entitled Titania Rises, about a faerie princess who is handed her kingdom’s crown at age fifteen. When writing Titania Rises I was also writing Kingdom of War, the finale in the Kingdom Journals. In the finale, Sonia, a powerful witch determined to prevent the trinity from breaking the curse, creates an army of vampires powered by witch spirits. The trinity needed a group large and powerful enough to stop the witch-powered vampires. The questions became, who would help the witches?
My answer seemed obvious. The fae, led by Titania, would help the witches and the two distinct character sets from the Kingdom Journals and Titania Rises became intertwined. With Titania’s character taking on a larger scope, I wanted to tell her story. I needed an adversary and Sonia seemed perfect for the role. I expanded Sonia’s ire against the vampires to the fae, putting Titania in Sonia’s cross hairs, and continuing the Kingdom Journals characters’ stories.
With the same adversary connecting the characters of both series, I followed the Kingdom Journals characters in sub-plots while developing Titania’s character and story arc. Titania’s journey, embodied in the Realm Chronicles series, takes place predominantly in the fae realm of Middle Earth, a land lying just under our contemporary human world. It was so fun to intertwine these characters’ paths as the two groups, one steeped in modern technology and the other frozen in the middle ages, coalesced into one.
From Alena’s journey in the Kingdom Journals to Titania’s evolution in the Realm Chronicles, your heroines are strong yet deeply human. What do you hope readers take away from their growth, and how have these characters changed you as a writer?
For two characters whose origins are polar opposite, Alena and Titania both realize their talents and inner strength and decide to use these to help their people. One of my favorite themes is a character discovering their unique drives and competencies and honing these to overcome challenges. I like to highlight how we all have different abilities and that these attributes can be used to make positive change. In order for this message to translate from vampires or faeries to us normal folk, my characters take on flaws that we all experience. Alena can be bossy and entitled, while Titania can be stubborn and quick-tempered. Over the course of the series, especially the Realm Chronicles series that finds Titania crowned monarch at age fifteen, we see these characters reel in some of their natural tendencies, growing and maturing into leaders who think about others, make sacrifices for their people, but also strive to attain balance and happiness for themselves. Through these series, I’ve gained a deeper understanding of what people and incidences shape our lives and how we can choose to grow from our experiences.
The Realm Chronicles expands into a rich Fae universe while the Kingdom Journals began as urban fantasy. What inspired you to make that transition in tone and scope — from contemporary witch-vampire conflicts to full-scale fantasy epics?
Writing Titania’s short story, I felt a fae character was better suited to a medieval, middle ages technology type setting. The logistics of hiding wings in contemporary human society, where satellites and surveillance cameras capture almost everything, seemed daunting. How would they remain hidden from humans? I decided to set the Realm Chronicles series in middle earth, a realm just below our bedrock, and this gives the books an epic fantasy feel.
We find the fae, who rely on candles and torches for light, fires for cooking, and swords and arrows for hunting and defense, leading somewhat idyllic, simple lives just beyond our human realm. The fae battle creatures, like kobold, goblins, ogres, and dragons, who attempt to invade their realm from lower earth, all the while aware that us humans, with our electricity, cell phones, and computers, live just above them.
Now that you’ve closed this ten-book saga, what’s next for you creatively? Do you see yourself revisiting this universe again, or are there entirely new worlds waiting to be discovered?
The finale in the Realm Chronicles series includes a host of fantastical characters whose stories are begging to be written. A short story, For Njordhaeli, featuring a nix named Brynja will be released in a new fantasy magazine, The Arcane Quill, in its debut issue in January of 2026. I have a few ideas for forming a novel based on For Njordhaeli so that may be the next full length book in my fantasy line up.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.triciacopeland.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/authortriciacopeland/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TriciaCopelandAuthor/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/triciacopelandbrzostowicz/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/tcbrzostowicz
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBHpvjj9L3od2SLTS4zJTjA
- soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/triciacopelandauthor
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/show/6s0imhxH3qgQiHhNhpIxwF
