Ted Eaton with his son Christopher.
Everyone has a favorite book they can recall from when they were younger. For some, it was the Nancy Drew mystery series. For others, it was Harry Potter. For the next generation, it will be Rosi’s Castle.
“When newly orphaned Rosi Carol is sent to live with her mysterious Uncle Richard in his eerie castle on the New England coast, a whole host of problems plague her. With a strange dark cloud plus a host of irate ghosts following her, Rosi’s only allies are a disappearing girl in black and a paranormal reporter no one else can see. And why can’t her watch keep proper time?” reads the synopsis for Edward Eaton’s first young adult fantasy novel in a series of three.
Eaton, who lives in Beacon Hill with his wife Sylvia and son Christopher, spent two years drawing ideas and composing his manuscript. “I had a bunch of ideas floating around,” Eaton said. “I never had any direction to go with until I saw the opening picture of a girl sitting alone in a train station waiting for someone to pick her up. It was a picture that just appeared in my head.”
The new author is no foreigner to creativity. He has studied and taught theater at various schools across the country, China, Israel, Oman, and France. He holds a PhD in Theater History and Literature, and has worked extensively as a theater director and fight choreographer.
“I’m an artist. I work in the theater. I’m a director for the stage. I’ve written some plays, and I write. The ways I express myself are artistic. I consider myself an artist more than anything else,” Eaton conveyed.
Rosi’s Castle was originally a lengthy manuscript that his publisher at Dragon Fly Publishing believed would work better if it were cut into three parts, a trilogy. There was a lot of adjusting and rearranging of scenes that turned Rosi’s Castle into a different version of its former self, a distant cousin, according to Eaton.
“I’d written this book as a one volume book. And it was a fairly long book. I sent it out to some publishers a couple of years ago and got some nice feedback but nobody wanted it. I revised it and started sending it out to other publishers, and this small publisher in Oklahama started talking to me about where I wanted it to go and they ended up choosing me and I chose them,” reflected Eaton.
Although Rosi’s Castle is Eaton’s first novel, he started penning stories from a young age. Growing up in North Virginia, Eaton always had a veracious appetite for the arts, performing in school plays and writing his own for friends to act out. “I’ve always enjoyed writing,” said Eaton. “I get to be the artist and the interpreter.”
And readers of Rosi’s Castle will have their own fun interpreting the paranormal activities that go on inside the town Rosi moves to. When it comes to the supernatural, there are no easy answers, and readers will find themselves experiencing Rosi’s challenges as she does.
“It’s a fun book, and it is a different audience than I’m used to,” Eaton said, adding that, “this was much more of a straightforward story than the ones I’m used to. It’s all very exciting and it’s all very nerve-wracking. A colleague at one of the schools I work at came up to me and told me how much his daughter liked my book. People are intrigued by the character, and care, and want to read the next one.”
Volume two is currently sitting with the editor, and when it appears in print, devoted fans will be ready to find out what happens next in the undeniably enticing life of Rosi Carol. The book can be found online at http://www.amazon.com/Rosis-Castle-Doors-Edward-Eaton/dp/1936381214.