PPWC 2014 Q&A - Carol Berg

Carol Berg, Author

1. What was the defining moment that made your realize you wanted to be an author?

When I started typing my first letter 'in character' to a friend, after a lifetime of believing I couldn't make up a story.

2. What is the one thing you cannot work without? What is your creative vice?

Bigelow's Raspberry Royale tea.

3. If you could 'revive' any literary figure from the past for a one hour conversation, who would you choose?

Edith Pargeter (aka Ellis Peters). She was self-educated, found her biggest success late, and wrote the best villain I've ever read.

4. What is one of your more notable or unusual conference or convention experiences?

I almost didn't walk in to the pitch session with the editor who bought my first eight books, because I was convinced she didn't like the two pages I'd read.

or

Sitting (terrified) on a convention panel in Scotland with two very famous authors and the head of the Vatican Observatory, and after surviving it in decent order, being swarmed by the entire front row. They turned out to be my Israeli publisher, Hebrew translator, and their friends, none of whom I had met before.

5. If we asked your friends and family to compare you to a cartoon character, which would they choose, and why?

Maybe Dory in Finding Nemo. Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, even if you're a little bonkers.

6. What is one thing would you like aspiring authors to know about the road to success?

Two things. It involves a lot of hard thinking. And often the success you find is not at all what you expected.

About the Author: Though a devoted reader, Carol Berg majored in mathematics at Rice University and computer science at the University of Colorado, so she wouldn’t have to write papers. Somewhere in the middle of a software engineering career, she started writing for fun, and the habit ate her life. Carol’s thirteen epic fantasy novels have won national and international awards, including multiple Colorado Book Awards and the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature. They’ve been read, so readers tell her, on five continents, on a submarine under the Mediterranean, in the war zone of Iraq, and on the slopes of Denali. Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews called her Novels of the Collegia Magica things like compelling, intelligent, complex, and superbly realized. The latest is The Daemon Prism. Next up is a new fantasy/mystery duology about a sorcerer who draws portraits of the dead. First volume, Dust and Light, will be out from Roc Books in August 2014. Carol camps, hikes, and bikes in Colorado and lives on the internet at http://www.carolberg.com.