On the Fourth of July in 2014, Joseph Mazerac walked with his two young sons down the dock at Semiahmoo Marina when an unfamiliar boy popped up from a docked boat, stuck his hand high in the air and waved at them with a grin spread across his face.
“He was dressed in all of his fishing gear,” Mazerac said. “He just looked like he belonged on a boat.”
Mazerac looked at his boys.
“Do you know who that was?” he asked. They didn’t.
“That’s Captain Kid,” Mazerac said.
Little did Mazerac know that Captain Kid would become a key character in the Florida author’s latest book series. Over a decade later, Mazerac is on his own adventure to find the boy – now likely a young man – in hopes of dedicating the third book to him.
He made up stories for his children about Captain Kid’s adventures rescuing a mermaid and finding buried treasures. The trio continued on, headed for the shoreline.
After playing by the water for a bit, they decided to head back. To their surprise, Captain Kid, who Mazerac said seemed to be around the same age or slightly older than his boys, aged 6 and 7 at the time, popped up and waved again as they passed by. Mazerac said the boy was thin and had brown hair.
“That was all the interaction we had, but again, I just started making up these Captain Kid stories on the fly,” Mazerac said.
Mazerac and his family, who live in Florida, were in the middle of a cross-country road trip visiting his wife’s family in the Blaine area.
“That was the last time I ever saw him, but when I got back home, I was still thinking about Captain Kid,” Mazerac said.
That chance encounter sparked an idea for Mazerac’s first book, “Into the Attic of the World,” which became a series called the Castatine Chronicles.
In “Into the Attic of the World,” readers meet Captain Kid, who has come to this world looking for the missing Patch Fairy.
In Captain Kid’s world, the Patch Fairy leaves a merit badge under the pillows of children who have acted bravely or learned a new skill. Captain Kid sails in on his homemade raft and enlists a group of friends on his search for the Patch Fairy in another dimension.
Two books in the series have been released, and a third is in the works, which Mazerac plans to release in early 2027.
Mazerac hopes to find the boy who inspired the series. Today, he would likely be about 17-20 years old.
“If we could find out who that kid was, that would be so neat,” Mazerac said. “I would certainly want to do a dedication or something like that in the third book, which I’m writing now, and send them some signed books.”
The Castatine Chronicles books are published through Sunbury Press Inc, an independent publisher in Pennsylvania. They are available for purchase at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and through Sunbury Press’ website, sunburypress.com.
In addition to the Castatine Chronicles, Mazerac has written other books that are available on his website, josephmazerac.com.
“I want to tell him that story and to thank him for all that outgoingness and that charm that he had, and how bright his personality was,” Mazerac said.
