Carol Berg's Biography
Member Info
Fort Collins, Colorado
Married to Pete Berg, a mechanical engineer with his own consulting business and a collection of hardware projects, cars, bikes, and machine tools that ensures our house will never blow away
Jan 2008
Since her first novel Transformation was published in 2000, Carol Berg's twelve mythic fantasy novels have earned national and international acclaim, including the Geffen, the Prism, and multiple Colorado Book Awards. Her duology, Flesh and Spirit and Breath and Bone won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature. But she didn't start out to be a writer. Carol majored in mathematics at Rice University, in part so she wouldn't have to write papers, though she took every English course that listed novels on the syllabus, so she would have time to keep reading. And it was her college roommate who shared a dog-eared copy of Tolkien and a love for fantasy that changed Carol's life...eventually. Somewhere in the midst of raising three sons, earning another degree - this time in computer science - and a software engineering career, another friend teased her into exchanging letters written "in character." The game quickly got out of hand. Carol lives in Colorado at the foot of the Rocky Mountains.
Influences
Mythology.
Mysteries - from Nancy Drew to Dick Francis - and science fiction.
Alice and her wonderland.
Tolkien, without a doubt, the master of building complete fantasy world.
Jane Austen wonderful characters with faults, and luscious conversation, and the other writers of classic British novels.
Edith Pargeter for the epitome of the magnificent villain - Isambard, wholly despicable, but by the end, you weep for him.
Spy novels - non-stop action, double agents, twists and turns.
Ellen Kushner and Guy Kay, for lyrical language and sheer beauty of detail.
The Rocky Mountains and other soul-filling landscapes.
Rachmaninoff, Chopin, and the unnamed musicians who have sung, played, composed, and illuminated the unspoken language of the heart.
Teachers, who exposed me to all of the above.
Upcoming Works
The Daemon Prism, the third novel of the Collegia Magica
The Heart's Coda, a novella follow-up to Song of the Beast
Agents
Lucienne Diver
The Knight Agency.
Recommended Links
Publishers
New American Library/Roc Books
Berkley
RMFW Press
Various foreign publishers
Interests & Hobbies
Education, politics, movies, Colorado camping, and biking, mentoring young writers.
About Carol
Since her first novel Transformation was published in 2000, Carol Berg's twelve mythic fantasy novels have earned national and international acclaim, including the Geffen, the Prism, and multiple Colorado Book Awards. Her duology, Flesh and...
Causes Carol Berg Supports
CARE, the Clinton Foundation, American Cancer Society, Larimer County Food Bank, the ACLU
Carol’s Favorite Books
The Heaven Tree, The Green Branch, and The Scarlet Seed (Edith Pargeter aka Ellis Peters), Price and Prejudice, Thomas the Rhymer (Ellen Kushner), The King...