Fantasy Author Carol Berg Shares About Inspiration

Today I have the pleasure of hosting uber-talented fantasy authot Carol Berg. She's made me fall in love with stories, awed me with her writing...enough that I went to the Colorado Gold Conference just so I could meet her and hear her talk about stories. I left even more impressed than I'd arrived. So without further ado, here's Ms. Berg:

(Carol Berg and moi at the Colorado Gold 2011)

There is a set of standard questions that readers always ask authors. Where do you get your ideas? When did you start writing? How did you get published? How many hours a day do you write? Why are you so mean to your characters? We’ve answered them so many times, we don’t even have to think about them. 

So here it is holiday time and one is thinking about family dinners and travel and New Year’s celebrations, as well as January book releases, and Rashda in her most unique and clever way, comes up with a question I have to consider carefully. Where do I get my inspiration to write? Inspiration, not ideas. What makes me sit down and tear my brain to shreds to come up with these convoluted stories? What gets me back in the chair only a few weeks after finishing seven years of constant deadlines. As I sit here and close my eyes, the notions that come to mind are kind of odd.

Trees. Dense evergreens or multicolored oaks along a meadow or sparse across a desolate hillside. Or colored gold with autumn and sheltering a path. Green seams in the rocky face of a mountain. Weather: lowering clouds or driving snow or a thin autumn day after the leaves have blown and the haze says a change is coming. Sun sparkling on frost covered tree limbs. Moonlit nights so bright that trees and fences cast shadows. The way the dust rolls up in the desert air. Unanswered questions. The Etruscan artifacts in the Penn Archeology Museum, talking about a sophisticated people who were inundated by the Roman Empire. Phrases like the last lighthouse or you can’t go home again or who is on the other side of the mirror. What does that mean? The glimpse of Billy Elliot grown up (at the end of the film by the same name) leaping onto the stage…no, really it is the expression on his father’s face as he looks on a wonder we can’t see… Books, certainly. Oh yes, I’m getting close.

Each speaks of one thing…story. What’s happening, who’s out there just beyond the place I can see? What makes a hard-bitten miner’s face express such awe when he’s watching a ballet? So that’s it. There’s a story in there somewhere, and I want to know what happens!

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Former software engineer Carol Berg never expected to become an award-winning author.  But her thirteen epic fantasy novels have won national and international awards, including multiple Colorado Book Awards and the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature. She’s taught writing in the US, Canada, Scotland, and Israel, and received reader mail from the slopes of Denali to beneath the Mediterranean.  All amazing for one who majored in math and computer science to avoid writing papers.  Her novels of the Collegia Magica have received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews, using words like compelling and superbly realized.

(Check out the cover of her latest book, released this month)

Former software engineer Carol Berg never expected to become an award-winning author.  But her thirteen epic fantasy novels have won national and international awards, including multiple Colorado Book Awards and the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature. She’s taught writing in the US, Canada, Scotland, and Israel, and received reader mail from the slopes of Denali to beneath the Mediterranean.  All amazing for one who majored in math and computer science to avoid writing papers.  Her novels of the Collegia Magica have received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews, using words like compelling and superbly realized. To learn more, check out this web site.

Please feel free to leave questions and comments for Carol. I'm unfortunately dealing with a sad family sitution and will be scarce.