Teacher to Publish His Lifelong Dream

It has been a lifelong dream of Michael E. Bolyog, a Spanish teacher at Oak Park High School, to publish a novel.

In December, that dream will come true when his fantasy novel, “Aidens Cauldron,” is published.

“I’ve been writing since I was 6,” the 48-year-old veteran educator said. “It’s a culmination of a lifetime’s work.”

Bolyog, who has been at Oak Park High since 1990, co-wrote the book with his stepbrother, Rick Young, who lives in New Jersey.

The 246-page book, which will be published by Sendraaks Writings, is set in the Middle Ages and is about six relatively ordinary people, faced with an extraordinary adventure.

“I wanted to see what happened if six people who were everyday Joes found themselves in a place with magic and things that will eat you. What do you do?” Bolyog said.

The novel is the first of a trilogy. Bolyog and Young have finished the second book of the series and are two-thirds through the third one.

Bolyog was struck by the idea of writing fantasy novels in 1984 when personal computers were first being introduced in the home and some of the first fantasy role-playing computer games were created.

About a decade later, he began writing the book with his stepbrother by sending copies of the manuscript through the mail, then by sending computer disks, and finally via e-mail on the Internet.

Bolyog said he puts together the images, while his stepbrother, a senior federal law enforcement officer, fills in the details.

“Rick likes to say he is the one who puts the meat on the bones, when I send him the skeleton,” Bolyog said.

The book was completed in 1995, but it took several years to find a publisher.

Bolyog said he writes in the evenings after he comes home from work.

“You’ve got to have a wife that’s absolutely and completely supportive,” he said. “You have to love to do it.”