Scott Hertzog
I’ve always been drawn to stories about ordinary people forced to make impossible choices.
For nearly three decades, I taught high school English, helping students discover how stories shape the way we understand the world and ourselves.
Now I write stories of my own.
My fantasy explores hope, fear, sacrifice, memory, and the choices people make when there are no easy answers. At the heart of The Last King of Äncalë is a question that has become central to much of my writing:
What do people justify when they’re afraid?
That’s the kind of question I love fantasy for. Build a world unlike our own, fill it with kings and elves, ancient powers and impossible dangers, and somewhere along the way it begins asking questions about us.
The Road to Äncale
I didn't set out to become a fantasy novelist.
The road here passed through a lot of other places: my mother's love of poetry and Shakespeare, decades of teaching literature and creative writing, years of writing songs and short stories, a graduate degree focused on creative writing, a Middle English poetry course that eventually produced The Despair of Kréchellia, and a four-year journey through my family's history inspired by my father's genealogical research.
Then, in the summer of 2021, a friend challenged me to write a novel in a month.
That novel became The Last King of Äncalë.
It sat unfinished for years until, after I retired from teaching, my son Kiefer kept telling me I needed to finish the book.
Eventually, I listened.
