Eau Claire’s Cayla Kluver just released the third book in her trilogy of teen fantasy novels.

Ready to be impressed?  The young author, Cayla Kluver, has just published her third book at the age of twenty, which is the last installment of the Legacy Trilogy.  The series was published in quick succession, with Legacy in July of 2011, Allegiance in March of 2012, and Sacrifice earlier this month. If that wasn’t cool enough, Cayla also just sent the first two books of a new trilogy about fairies to Harlequin TEEN.

She says writing has always been her form of self-expression and is how she coped with things.  Cayla grew up right here in Eau Claire, moving to the Valley at about 6 months old.  She lives with her family, which includes an older sister Cara, a younger sister Kendra, their lawyer parents, and a cat named Nina.  “Cara’s an actress, Kendra’s a freaky super-genius like Reid from Criminal Minds, and Nina is my muse.  My parents are both lawyers, but they’re not what you’d imagine when you hear the word ‘lawyer,’” she says.

“I realized that I had always been waiting until I was old enough to write a book. In that moment, I realized, why am I waiting? What am I waiting for?” – Cayla Kluver on her first book

Cayla has been writing her whole life, beginning at age 2, according to her mother. She says, “My mom will tell you, giddily, that she remembers when I wrote my first book.  I was two years old, and I couldn’t actually write yet, but I dictated it to her.  Apparently it was about a bunny, and I made her write it down.”

When Cayla was only 12 years old, she read the book Hawksong by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes and realized that the author had published her first book when she was only thirteen.   “I realized that I had always been waiting until I was old enough to write a book.  In that moment, I realized, why am I waiting?  What am I waiting for? Plus, I’m ambitious and a little competitive when it comes to writing...nothing else in my life, absolutely nothing else, just writing.”  That very day Cayla began writing what would become Legacy, the first book of the trilogy.  Her family went out for a day at the local pool, but she stayed home to start writing a novel, a notion that makes her laugh now.  

She worked on Legacy for the next few years, self-publishing it in 2008 at 15.  Her mother, who is a lawyer and was a business professor at UW-Stout for twenty years, decided to start her own publishing company, Forsooth Publishing, so that Legacy could be published.  Later, Amazon Encore offered her a digital debut in 2009.  Finally Cayla was signed to a publishing deal with Harlequin TEEN in 2010, the company she is still with today.

In the editing process for her books, her mother has always played a major role. Cayla says she’s her best friend and best critic, “always willing to hug me or give me a kick in the pants.”  Cayla has a gang comprised of friends, sisters, and her mother to help her with editing.  “I had a whole crew of very bookish people who I somehow convinced to be honest with me.”

So what do other people think of her books?  The first edition of Legacy won first place in the 2008 Reader Views Literary Awards, and a bronze medal in the Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards for young adult fiction.  The trilogy has been sold in 16 foreign countries.  It is available in the US in print form, as an audio book, and digitally.

When she’s not writing, Cayla thoroughly enjoys horseback riding and crime shows.  She went to Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania last year, but her major wasn’t what you’d expect.  She was studying Sociology and Anthropology with a concentration in Criminal Justice.  She says, “College to me is just a wonderful place of learning, and some annoying people who drink a lot, both of those things.”

So what about the future?  Cayla says she tried quitting writing once.  “It was a little bit like quitting heroin.  It was very, very ugly.  My mood was not good.  I realized then that I do enjoy it.  It wasn’t just a childhood trick just built up in my mind.”  Guess that means we can expect more writing from her in the future.