Charlie N. Holmberg is an award-winning, best-selling, and internationally published author of fantasy and romantic fiction. She was raised a Trekkie alongside three sisters, who also have boy names. She is a proud BYU alumna, plays the ukulele, owns too many pairs of glasses, and finally adopted a dog. She currently lives with her family in Utah. Her latest novel is Spellbreaker and she recently talked about it with Daryl Maxwell for the LAPL Blog.
What was your inspiration for Spellbreaker?
The inspiration for Spellbreaker is two-fold. The initial idea came from Studio Ghibli’s movie adaptation of Dianna Wynne Jones’s Howl’s Moving Castle; there’s a part in that movie where the main character, Sophie, goes to the Witch of the Waste and asks her to remove the spell she placed. The Witch says something like, “My talents lie in casting spells, not breaking them.” And I thought, wouldn’t that be neat, to have a segregation of magic users where one set could only cast spells, and one set could only break spells?
The second inspiration is the BBC series Lark Rise to Candleford. It inspired the time and setting for Spellbreaker. Brookley is based off of Candleford.
Are Elsie, Bacchus, or any of the other characters in the novel inspired by or based on specific individuals?
They’re not! In truth, the only time I’ve ever based characters on real people is when I wrote a contemporary (unpublished). When I go into fantasy-land, I go all the way. All the characters are unique to my brain.
How did the novel evolve and change as you wrote and revised it? Are there any characters or scenes that were lost in the process that you wish had made it to the published version?
I had to stop about halfway through and figure out a lot of the “mystery” element of the book. I had to get really up close and personal with my storyboard and figure out what connected to what, in what way. And how to connect them in a noticeable but not obvious manner. One of my biggest revisions to the rough draft was adding in a red herring...which I can’t talk about because spoilers!
If you could choose, would you want to be a spellbreaker, like Elsie, or a spellmaker, like Bacchus? If you chose spellmaker, which alignment/specialization would you choose?
Ooooh. I think I would be a spellmaker. My first thought was to do the physical alignment, but I think I would probably go rational. It’d be interesting (but dangerous) to see what people are thinking or to be able to plant thoughts in people’s heads. Just think of how many arguments you could win! That might make me sound like a sociopath. But you’d basically be psychic, which is neat.
Spellbreaker is listed as the first book in the Spellbreaker series, and the novel ends with quite the revelation and with a cliffhanger for the next novel. Do you know at this time how long the series will be and how many books will be necessary to tell the story you want to tell?
Right now, the series is two books. Elsie and Bacchus’s story, and that of the antagonist, ends with book two. However, the end of the second book does set up the possibility of a third novel. While Elsie and Bacchus would both be viewpoint characters in it, the story would follow a third character and answer some of the background questions from the main duology, as well as dig into one of the magical alignments we don’t get to see as much from.
What’s currently on your nightstand?
The Hollow Kingdom by Clair B. Dunkle. I’m excited to start it.
What is the last piece of art (music, movies, tv, more traditional art forms) that has impacted you?
There’s a song I recently discovered called “Overwhelmed” by Royal & the Serpent that I really love. It’s so interesting because the chorus is almost completely one-note, but it’s...addicting. It’s made me want to write music (a side hobby of mine) like that. I feel like it’s a song I could just put on repeat while I brainstorm.
What are you working on now?
I am working on Star Father (working title), which is the sequel to a romantic high fantasy that you’ll be seeing from me soon. I actually literally started it the day I did this interview! This duology has flavors similar to Joanna Ruth Meyer and N. K. Jemisin.
