A week ago I typed THE END on page 264 of the manuscript for the fourth and final book in my CASTLE series. I’ve done this before for every one of my fourteen novels. It’s always a strange moment. I’m a slow writer and this book’s characters have been keeping me company for the best part of two years. Sitting down most afternoons to pick up the thread of this story has become the focusing event of my day. And, as has happened to me before, I can feel myself slipping into a form of postpartum or post-novel depression.

Where have they gone, these creatures of my imagination who told me their stories, punished me for long absences by going silent and kept me guessing right up until the end of our journey together? Because I’ve been lucky enough to live a sustained creative life, this feeling at the end of what is a first draft is a familiar one. I know there is more work to do on this book, but I also know that first, I must put it aside so that when I come back, I will have the distance and objectivity to recognize its flaws and be ready to revise.

This journey which is about to come to an end started over forty years ago. I wrote The Castle in the Attic in response to the sadness I felt when my son started kindergarten and a beloved nanny left us to go back to taking care of babies.

As all good books do, it started with my own feeling, in this case one of abandonment which I expect was much stronger than how my son felt. For five years, Mrs. Miller had calmly walked me through the tough and often tumultuous days with two toddlers. She was a gifted and experienced teacher who thought nothing of building the solar system for Andrew with a number of balls, string and toothpicks or of telling me when my kids needed discipline.

Here she is walking Andrew to school on the last day she was with us.

This is the first novel I didn’t outline ahead of time. Instead, I scribbled some notes and let the characters emerge and find their form and motives in their own time. I listened to them rather than ordering them around. I started a practice I call the “Journal of the book” and have kept it up ever since.

I ask myself questions. What’s Eve doing in that cave and how are you going to get her out? Is Gudrin jealous of the growing friendship between Sonia and William? Without the magic token, how can William defeat this wily villain? And I cheer myself on. You’ve broken the back of the book! Great idea to switch the banquet to a bonfire. Every writer needs encouragement no matter where it comes from.

So this is the fourth book in the series. I have reclaimed the rights to The Castle in the Attic, which means it is only available in paperback here, but still available in audio here. (Also on Audible but I prefer to support independent bookstores through Libro.fm.) The second, The Battle for the Castle, is still in print.

The prequel, The Cradle in the Castle, which I finished in 2023 is not yet published. And the fourth, still untitled, should be ready by the end of the year.

But William will not be time traveling again. He and I both know that for sure. He defeated the wizard in the first book with his body, the rats in Battle with his mindand in this one, the arch villain who sent them all, with his spirit. William is ready to return to his 20^th Century life and stay there.

I admit that I’ve left many an open door for the series to continue with other characters carrying the story. Perhaps my grandchildren will write those sequels. But for me, this is the end of the series that started with my first time-traveling fantasy novel more than 40 years ago.

No wonder I’m feeling a bit blue.

Elizabeth Winthrop Alsop (www.elizabethwinthropalsop.com) is the author of over 50 works of fiction for adults and children under the pen name Elizabeth Winthrop.  These include the award-winning fantasy series, The Castle in the Attic and The Battle for the Castle as well as the short story, The Golden Darters, read on the nationwide radio program, Selected Shorts, and included in Best American Short Story anthology, and Island Justice and In My Mother’s House, two novels now available as eBooks.  She is the daughter of the acclaimed journalist, Stewart Alsop. Daughter of Spies: Wartime Secrets, Family Lies, a family history about her parents’ love affair during World War II and their marriage lived in the spotlight of Washington during the 1950s was published by Regal House, October 25, 2022.

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