Charlie N. Holmberg - Author Interview

A little background info about Charlie via www.charlienholmberg.com: 

Charlie Nicholes Holmberg was born in Salt Lake City, Utah to two parents who sacrificed a great deal to give their very lazy daughter a good education. As a result, Charlie learned to hate uniforms, memorized all English prepositions in alphabetical order, and mastered the art of Reed-Kellogg diagramming a sentence at age seven. She entered several writing contests in her elementary years and never placed.

Being a nerd, Charlie started writing fan-fiction as a teenager in between episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. She became a full-fledged band geek with mediocre talent in high school, where she met her husband. While she strove to win his attention by baking him cookies and throwing ramen noodles at his house, he didn’t actually ask her out until six years later.

Charlie began taking writing seriously during her undergrad at Brigham Young University, where she majored in English and minored in editing. She finally won a few writing contests. She graduated with her BA in 2010 and got hitched three months later. Shortly afterwards, her darling husband dragged her to Moscow, Idaho, where he subsequently impregnated her.

In summer 2013, after collecting many rejection letters and making a quilt out of them, Charlie sold her ninth novel, The Paper Magician, and its sequel to 47North with the help of her wonderful agent, Marlene Stringer. She currently lives with her family in Utah. Someday she will own a dog.

(Did she mention her third book, The Master Magician, totally made the WSJ bestseller list? Because it totally made the WSJ bestseller list.)

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I picked up Charlie's book The Paper Magician totally by random. I was sitting out on the beach on my honeymoon and was scrolling through books on my kindle when it caught my attention. I absolutely loved it and finished in about 2 days! My husband was not thrilled about that, as he felt  I wasn't giving him enough attention. I was so thrilled to get to chat with Charlie that I nearly did the "lawn mower" dance when she emailed me back and agreed to the interview. There are recent rumors that the The Paper Magician series will be turned into a film by Disney... only time will tell if these rumors are true. I for one, really really hope they are true! So, without rambling on and on about how much I love Charlie's work... here she is! 

1. Describe yourself in 5 words. 

These are always awkward, ha. Um… loud, [hopefully] funny, [hopefully] creative, sensible, and Christian.

2. What was your inspiration for The Paper Magician series?

I initially just thought it would be cool to have a character who could make origami come to life. The idea stuck and the rest branched out from there.

3. What has been the greatest moment of your writing career so far? 

Oooohhhhh…. That’s tricky. Having my debut actually published and do so well was probably it. That was really mind-blowing for me. I felt so lucky and so excited. It was (and still is) so strange to me to have complete strangers reading my book.

Second is probably hitting the WSJ bestseller list. :)

4. What books or authors made you fall in love with reading and writing? 

Gail Carson Levine, Martine Leavitt, Brandon Sanderson.

5. What was the hardest part about writing this series?

Honestly? Being pregnant while drafting book three. I get this hormonal block thing where I’m really not motivated to draft, so the third book was really slow coming. This is also the first and only series I’ve ever written, so I really wanted to make sure books two and three didn’t feel tacked on and lived up to book one.

6. And lastly, what advice do you have for aspiring writers? 

Finish your books. Seriously, 95% of aspiring writers have never finished a book. So get it done. Make a daily word count goal, stop self-editing yourself, and finish the darn thing. :)

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Thank you Charlie for taking the time to answer my questions! I enjoyed reading them and getting to know the author behind The Paper Magician. 

Readers, be on the lookout for Charlie's latest book that hit the shelves on June 28th! It is called Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet and it sounds wonderful! 

- The Blonde Bookworm