Bella Santini in the Land of Everlasting Change follows a fourteen-year-old girl who enters a magical fairy realm and discovers that her mysterious connection to its magic may reveal a hidden truth about her identity. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

Bella Santini was born from my own experience of feeling different as a child. I was highly sensitive and deeply aware of the emotions around me, but I did not always understand what I was sensing or where I belonged. I wanted to create a character who carried some of that same uncertainty.

Fantasy gave me a beautiful way to explore those feelings. Bella begins the story believing she knows who she is and what her world is, even though she has never felt completely at home in it. Then she enters a place where everything she understands about herself begins to shift. The magic is part of the adventure, but underneath it is a very human question: What happens when you discover that the things that made you feel different might actually be part of who you are?

That became the heart of the Land of Everlasting Change. Bella is entering a magical world, but she is also entering a deeper understanding of herself.

Bella enters the fairy realm almost by accident. What did you want her unexpected journey to represent?

Life rarely announces the experiences that are going to change us. We can be moving through an ordinary day and suddenly find ourselves somewhere we never expected to be, emotionally or literally. Bella does not choose a grand quest. She falls into one.

I wanted that unexpected journey to reflect the experience of growing up, particularly during the tween and early teen years. The world begins changing around you, relationships change, your awareness of yourself changes, and suddenly the rules that once made sense do not seem quite as certain.

The Land of Everlasting Change makes that experience visible. Bella cannot control everything that happens around her, but she can learn to understand what she feels, make choices about how she responds, and discover what those choices reveal about her. For me, that is where courage begins.

Yelimoon Fairy School adds a magical-school element to the story. What was most exciting about creating the school and its magical curriculum?

Yelimoon was tremendous fun to create because it grew out of a real place that captured my imagination. I lived in Cheltenham, England, and often admired the beautiful buildings of Cheltenham College. Their historic architecture became the visual inspiration for Yelimoon Fairy School. I loved taking something that existed in the real world and imagining what might be happening behind those walls if they belonged to a school for fairies.

From there, I could let my imagination run free. I created magical classes, unusual teachers, creatures, friendships, mistakes, and all the delightful complications that happen when young people are learning abilities they do not yet know how to control. What interested me most, though, was that Bella could not simply master a spell and suddenly master herself. She has to experiment, make mistakes, become frustrated, try again, and learn whom she can trust. Yelimoon teaches magic, but the experiences Bella has there teach her about herself. That is one of the things I love about writing fantasy for young readers. You can give a child an extraordinary world while still speaking to something very real in their life.

What can readers expect from Bella’s continuing adventures in the Land of Everlasting Change?

Bella’s world continues to grow, and so do the challenges she faces. Each adventure explores another layer of growing up through fantasy, friendship, difficult choices, misunderstandings, consequences, and, of course, magic.

In Troll War, Bella begins discovering that understanding another person requires looking beyond what we have been told about them. In Princess Bella Visits the Dragon’s Lair, her choices become increasingly important, and she learns that even well-intentioned decisions can have consequences. As the series continues, the world expands further, and Bella’s understanding of herself becomes more complex.

There are larger mysteries unfolding as well, including questions about Bella’s connection to this world and where she truly belongs. I want readers to have the pleasure of following an ongoing fantasy adventure while growing alongside Bella. She does not become fearless or suddenly have everything figured out. She becomes more capable of listening to herself, understanding others, making choices, and meeting change when it arrives. That, to me, is a much more interesting kind of magic.

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