About Charlie

Author Charlie N. Holmberg smiling in dark glasses and purple shirt standing against brick wall

 

The Short Version

Charlie N. Holmberg is a Wall Street Journal and Amazon Charts bestselling author of fantasy and romance fiction, including The Paper Magician series, the Spellbreaker series, and the Whimbrel House series, and writes contemporary romance under C. N. Holmberg. She is published in more than twenty languages, has been a finalist for a RITA Award and multiple Whitney Awards, and won the 2020 Whitney Award for Novel of the Year: Adult Fiction. Born in Salt Lake City, Charlie was raised a Trekkie alongside three sisters who also have boy names. She is a BYU alumna, plays the ukulele, and owns too many pairs of glasses. She currently lives with her family in Utah. Visit her at www.charlienholmberg.com.

The Long Version

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. Charlie has since finished the original trilogy with the WSJ-bestseller The Master Magician. Her second trilogy, the Numina trilogy, includes Smoke & SummonsMyths & Mortals, and Siege & Sacrifice. She has also published six stand-alone novels: Followed by Frost (a 2016 RITA finalist); Magic Bitter, Magic SweetThe Fifth Doll; The Plastic Magician, a story in the Paper Magician universe; Veins of Gold; The Will and the Wilds; and The Hanging City. Spellbreaker hit the Amazon Charts and started a duology completed by Spellmaker, which hit the Wall Street Journal bestseller list. Star Mother and Star Father explore mythic arcs, while her Nerds of Happy Valley series (published under the name C. N. Holmberg) celebrates the simple joys of everyday nerdy love. Her latest historical fantasy series, Whimbrel House, includes Keeper of Enchanted Rooms and Heir of Uncertain Magic

Charlie lives with her family in Utah. She finally owns a dog.