Chris first dreamed of being a writer in elementary school when he tried his hand at Redwall fan fiction. He failed miserably, and might have given up right there if his parents hadn’t fed him an assemblage of vaguely Seussian lines about places he might go, butter battles he might fight, and virescent cuisine he might consume (but mainly that first thing about going places). But his Final Fantasy fan fiction in middle school wasn’t much better, and when he tried writing his own novel in high school he decided it was way too hard and played a lot of video games and pretended to snowboard instead, though his obsession with writing continued festering in the recesses of his mind.
In 2003 Chris enrolled at Brigham Young University as an English major, but soon took two years off to serve as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Southern Italy. Upon returning to BYU, Chris suffered a brief stint of ballroom dancing before his writing obsession re-emerged and he began writing in earnest. He finished his first novel, Duskfall, while taking a year off and teaching ballroom dance at a local studio.
In 2010 Chris was accepted into BYU’s MFA Creative Writing program, taking fiction, non-fiction, YA lit, and theory classes, focussing mostly on short fiction writing. He somehow managed to convince the English Department to let him teach some composition and creative writing courses as part of the program, and took every opportunity to terrorize college freshman and beginning writers with pleasure.
While Chris learned about the art of writing from his MFA, he learned about the business and the craft by taking classes from Brandon Sanderson, author of the Mistborn series and the Stormlight Archive. With Brandon’s help, Chris realized that he could do what he loved and maybe even make a living at it if he put in the proverbial blood, sweat, and tears. Living that dream is working out well for him so far.
Chris currently lives in Lehi, Utah, where he spends his time writing, reading, writing, hiking, writing, playing video games, and hanging out with his magnificent wife, Rachel. When the writing gets tough, he considers resorting to another master’s degree, or heaven forbid a PhD, at whatever university will let him concentrate on gender and pop-culture studies in the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer...but then he remembers how much he loves what he does, and writes some more.
CONTACT
email: usbergo [dot] gmail [dot] com
twitter (one day I might even start tweeting - oops...looks like that day has come)
