Carol Berg
Carol Berg
Carol Berg is the author of several fantasy novels, including the books from the Rai-Kirah series, Song of the Beast, the books from The Bridge of D'Arnath series, and the Lighthouse novels. In January 2010, she introduced a new series with the release of The Spirit Lens: A Novel of the Collegia Magica...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
CountryUnited States of America
coworkers fairly family former hobby life lifelong math ordinary software surprised teacher took wonderful
I'm a fairly ordinary person - a lifelong reader, a former software engineer, and former math teacher. I come from a wonderful family of teachers, musicians, librarians, and engineers. I think I surprised them as well as my friends and coworkers when I took up writing as a hobby and let it take over my life!
straight
Write. Write. Write. Learn how to revise. No story is perfect straight from the keyboard.
front until work
Writing is communication, and you don't know how you're doing until you put it in front of someone else's eyes. You also learn from critiquing other writers' work.
children blood soldier
A soldier never dies. His blood makes the grass green for his children.
book giving demand
Books don't prattle. Books don't make demands. Yet they give you everything they possess. It's a very satisfying partnership.
heart shrews may
So what is this feadnach? Is it another curse that makes me beholden to slaves and shrews?' 'No, my lord. It is your heart. Difficult as it may be to comprehend, there is a possibility you may have one.
memories soul
Memory has no power but what the soul chooses to make of it.
advice boring cultures everybody gives life nobody people piece
One of the things that put me off writing for a while was that piece of advice everybody gives new writers: 'Write what you know.' Nobody would ever want to read about my boring life! But I do know a lot of things about different societies' cultures and mythologies. The way people were and are.
figuring plotting
I never believed I could write anything. No way - write a whole story? Figuring out all that plotting and symbolism? How do you foreshadow things?
Write a million words before thinking about getting published.
board count fiction guy promoting sandwich saw science wearing
At one of the first science fiction conventions I ever went to, I saw a guy wearing a sandwich board promoting his book. Count me out of that one.
best drill elementary english good grammar hated high required teachers training
I had really good English teachers in elementary through high school. Not only were we required to read a lot - which is the best training for writing - we were drilled on grammar every day, every night. I hated the drill part, but I don't dangle my participles too often.
age began brink britain enjoy generally geography match purposely roman start
I enjoy worldbuilding very much. I generally start with an approximation. With 'Flesh and Spirit' and 'Breath and Bone,' because I was thinking of a world on the brink of a dark age, I began with the sense of Roman Britain. But I purposely set the geography to match something other than Britain - which has been overdone.
began capital chose cold great image market opening quickly riding scene slave
For the 'Rai-kirah' books, I began with the image of Aleksander riding the great wastelands, and that quickly morphed into the desert. Because I wanted my slave market cold and miserable, I chose to set the opening scene in the empire's summer capital in the mountains.