The Drawing Room

Cheerio! My name is Chiara. I love animals and nature, books and theatre, art and music, and all good and beautiful and wholesome things.

I live in a small village, with two rivers and plenty of blueberries, and I drink a lot of tea (mostly Yorkshire) and love cooking and baking nice things made out of plants. I write, and I also draw, and I read and watch and listen. Other hobbies include embroidery, being outsides and learning about things I find interesting.

This blog has no particular theme or main subject matter, it’s anything and everything, including a few personal things, the things I like, and sometimes opinions. But most of all, it's literary and artistic, at times very romantic, and always calm and cosy.

I am a Friend and Defender of Narnia and Professor Lewis, generally fond of Inklings, a stout Stratfordian, and unashamed reader of Anything That I Like.

I feel strongly about fictional characters, and I think that’s a very natural and fine thing to do, but I do not at all agree with the popular opinion that books were better than people, and think that loving literature should not be a disguise for misanthropy.

Although I always respect personal opinions, I do not accept false claims to support them. I happen to be an Apprentice Caretaker of the Imaginarium Geographica and enjoy making jokes about it and quoting bits of it that would confuse most people. Also, I happen to know a great many random things about Oscar Wilde.

My political stance is Kindness with a dash of Idealism, and individual consideration, and also I am unspecifically Catholic – roaming, but with strong leanings towards tea and cake.

I love weather and the smell of the air. Birds fascinate me. Comfort and cosiness and warmth are important, and sometimes a high art. Some books and series are like coming home, and the most homely home of all is Skeldale House in Darrowby. Bluebells are beautiful.

I have a more elaborate and less personal blog over at Bluebell bibliotheca – my lovely library in the bluebell forest! – and a chaotic and in some ways more intimate little place on tumblr. This blog is different altogether, although I sometimes post the same things in different places, and sometimes I post things only in one place, depending on what feels suitable. But this is my little quiet place.

I have written and self-published two German language children's books: Das Licht in den Kronen, a middle-grade fantasy novel, and Gefangen im Sternenwald, a fantasy chapter book. Both are firsts in series and available as ebooks and paperbacks. I also have other projects, children's and adult books, series and stand-alones, fantasy and realistic, and hope to translate them or have them translated into English at some point.