How did this all get started?

I have always been a very creative person.
Throughout grade school and middle school, I was writing comic strips, and by high school, I was writing and drawing my own comic books.

My work is greatly influenced by Marvel ™ and DC comics™, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings™ series, C.S. Lewis’s Narnia™ series, David Eddings’ Belgariad™, and the worlds that were opened up to me by my interest in world mythology and the Dungeons and Dragons™ role playing games.

The start of this world came out of my Dungeon and Dragons™ campaigns from late high school and college, but the real spark for Castle Zierath came as I was working for the Luther College Upward Bound summer program.

We were asked to come up with a theme for our morning tutoring group – our Academic Skills and Strategies Group or AS2G. I have always loved the fantasy worlds of myth and magic, so I set up ‘Castle Zierath.’ I became ‘Lord Zierath’, and I had my students chose titles – countess, earl, duke, baron, marquis, that sort of thing. I created a map and we divided up the land, and they got to decide what was in their land – rivers, forests, lakes, cities, castles, ruins, monsters. It was a great bonding experience.

Each year the map and the world got more extravagant and complex, and I worked more and more of our basic academics for tutoring into the world. They wrote stories of their characters and drew pictures of their sections of the world. One year as the math part of the learning contract, I had three students race different modes of transportation across several continents. They had to do research on ships, on animals, on terrain as they figured out how long it would take them to get from point A to point B. The kids were learning, being creative, and having fun.

Nine years ago, several of my students, former students, and summer co-workers encouraged me to take this world and actually start writing a book. So, I did. I took the real people in his life, particularly the friends who encouraged me to write the book, and turned us into characters in the story. This is one of the truly unique features of my world. I call these ‘real people’ characters Imrhys, which means in our made-up elven tongue ‘human-elves’ or ‘immortal humans’. These characters become the Guardians of the Achar, sort of the super-heroic wizards and warriors who protect the sentient populations of the world of Castle Zierath.

As to the ‘why do this?’ question, I have always enjoyed being creative, and I am having fun. This way, I get a chance to share that creativity with people who have been important parts of my life. The ones who have read my stories and seen the pictures have laughed and urged me to do more. The other question that I get is ‘Will this make you make money off of this?’ The answer is probably not. Money is not the goal for this endeavor. It is to share the fun, to spread laughter and to spark the creativity in others.

However, I do think that if anyone should make money off of these projects, it should be my friends and I.

(c) 2006 Scott Zierath