This is the biography of Christopher Paolini found on the inside flap of Eragon in hardcover. There is one comment I must make: it leaves much to the imagination. What the publishers chose to tell you is just scratching the surface of what CP is all about. What kind of a guy has enough motivation (not to mention enough free time) to write a novel when he's only 15? Not the normal one, that's for sure. Chris is definitely far from normal.

Born on November 17, 1983 to Talita and Kenneth Paolini, he didn't even have what would be considered as a "normal" education. Both he and his sister Angela were home schooled because, according to their parents, "children are so precious." Christopher discovered the wide world of fantasy fiction at age ten and was hooked for life. “I didn't have too many activities aside from the ones I invented.” After receiving his high school diploma through an accredited correspondence course at age 15, Chris has mountains of time on his hands. His parents weren't about to ship him off to college while he was still so young, so Paolini got the brilliant idea to write a movie script. This movie script eventually evolved into the novel Eragon. After spending a month outlining the basic plot for the book, Paolini put pen to paper. "The first draft came so easily," he said. “It was like a dam had broken.” That draft took a year to complete, and a second year was spent editing. With the help of his sister's red pen, Eragon was released by Paolini International, LLC in February of 2002. Christopher Paolini then embarked on a marketing campaign all across the western United States. He visited over 130 schools and bookstores, giving a presentation entitled “Why Read? Why Write?” while completely decked out in a billowy red swordsman’s shirt, black pantaloons, and black lace-up suede boots giving the overall impression that he jumped out of a medieval history textbook. The family traveled as far south as Texas on a whirlwind marketing tour. It was a do-or-die situation for the Paolinis. “Let me put it this way. Eragon put food on the table,” said Christopher. “If Eragon had taken a month or two to become more popular, we would have had to move to the city and take jobs. It came that close.” Luckily, it never came that close.

Last summer, the novelist Carl Hiaasen was fly-fishing in Montana with his wife and stepson, Ryan. Ryan got bored, wandered into a bookstore, and came out with his own copy of Eragon. He appeared captivated, and Hiaasen told his publisher, Knopf, about it. Knopf made an offer. The Paolini family found an agent through a chat group online, and the book was sold. A spokeswoman for Knopf said the price was in “the middle six figures.” After another heavy round of editing (about 20,000 words were cut), the second edition of Eragon was finally published on August 26, 2003. Eragon has spent 24 weeks on The New York Times Bestseller list, outselling even Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. So after all of this success, what's next for young Christopher Paolini? “I might go to college,” he said. “Or I might take a vacation and have a nervous breakdown. I have a lot of reading to do, ‘Ulysses,’ Dostoyevsky, the rest of Tolstoy.”