U.G. Ridley

I am from Norway, but I was pretty much raised by stories from all sorts of media due to lack of friends as a result of middle-school bullying, so I've never been very in-tune with Norwegian culture, and I'm planning to move to America. Since I am Norwegian, I'm sure you can guess that U.G. Ridley isn't my real name. I've dabbled with many names over the past few years since my real name is pretty hard to pronounce in English, and U.G. Ridley was just sort of a name I landed on cause I thought it fit the whole "author alias" thing. U stands for Ulrik (to keep some of that Norwegian flair), and G stands for Greenhill, which is the English word for my real last name, which I wanted to have in there for the sake of keeping some of my origin. As for Ridley... meh, I just thought it sounded cool.

The most important thing to me is storytelling. Stories have made me who I am, in almost every way. My parents weren't so much "parents" as they were landlords, who just sort of kept me alive without teaching me the ins and outs of life. In addition, I started getting bullied pretty early in life, so my social life disappeared early on in my childhood. All the lessons I should have learned from the experiences I never got to have, came from stories, and from observing the lives of others through fiction. When I was fifteen, I found out that both of my parents have severe mental issues, and that my dad is an alcoholic. Among these news, were also the news that my dad had a hereditary mental disease that causes severe depression, one I most likely have inherited, though luckily to a lesser extent than my dad. The thing that always kept me occupied, hopeful, and frankly... alive throughout those years, were the amazing stories that have been told by beautiful minds. I believe that storytellers have shaped the world into something better, and I believe they will continue to do so. To me, there would be no greater honor than to one day be a part of the legacy that writers have left behind.