Author Klara Chilla
About me
Well, I guess this is the part where I´m supposed to tell you something about myself…
Where do I begin? What there to tell?
I lead a completely normal life, work a boring office job and have a not so boring family. There´s my husband, who normally doesn´t read novels, but still fights his way through my stories. There´s my daughter, who holds cut onions in her face, because I need a picture of an eye with a tear. And there´s my son, who loves to plot crazy stories about a character´s destiny with me, just because of their name. Last but not least, there´s my grumpy cat that made his way from the shelter into our loving hearts. All of this is rather unspectacular, but enables me to fully dedicate my free time to fantasize and create stories.
The tale of Jess Morgan arose when my children were still in kindergarten. I have been fascinated by pirates throughout my whole life and have read and watched countless of books and movies about them. And because I also love the sea with my whole heart, it was only a matter of time until the story about a pirate captain, who his connected to ship by a tattoo, formed in my head.
At first he was trapped on a miniature ship in a bottle, but eventually found his way out of it and onto the Monsoon Treasure. Whose name, by the way, I came up with on a long car ride, during which my daughter repeatedly blasted “Through the Monsoon” by Tokio Hotel through the speakers. My husband threw the “Treasure” in – and born was the name of the mighty ship! From then on it took me a few more years until the whole story about Jess Morgan, Lanea, Cale Stewart and all those other lovely characters was completely written down.
After my first story, it was clear pretty quickly that there was still so much more awaiting Jess and his crew. And so, the second volume “The Tears of the Waidami” developed.
But despite all my love for pirates, I needed to take a break, during which I wrote “Shadow Velvet”: The first volume of a trilogy about 16-year old Klara, who has to spend her summer holidays with her family in Scotland. But the country´s reputation doesn´t seem as bad as expected; and Klara finds herself thrown into an adventure, where she meets a mysterious and goodlooking boy at the nearby loch…
I´ve always really loved Scotland, so it was clear from the offset, that I had to integrate this beautiful place into a story. The second volume is on its way!
There are so many more ideas in my head, wanting to come to life. As bad as I need my coffee in the
morning, I now also need my stories.
I had my very first public reading at the pirate festival at Brückenkopfpark Jülich. I was so nervous!
I was really shocked (in a positive way) about the many, many positive reviews about the “The Pirates of Waidami” series at first and still smile like a small child when I get a new one. Thank you so much! You and all the lovely people I´ve met though social media and fairs keep me going!