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Jafir’s Amazing Adventures Began As Author’s Bedtime Stories To His Children
by Jim Aroune
He built health care companies for a living, but building the tales of a pre-teen hero was also an amazing experience for Charles T. O’Neill.
Before he became the author of “The Amazing Adventures of Jafir,” O’Neill had helped launched, or founded, several companies as an entrepreneur, from Connecticut and New York City to his current home of Tampa, Florida. Sharing stories and, later, writing them, became one of the ways he balances the two very different worlds of career and family.
“Jafir helped a lot of our family’s days wind down in a good way,” said O’Neill. “I’m glad I followed my daughter’s advice and wrote them down.”
What O’Neill wrote down were the exploits of a ten-year old boy he’d created as part of a bedtime story for his children.
He and his wife, Karen, raised five children they were blessed to adopt over a ten-year span. The O’Neills adopted their oldest daughter from within the United States, their oldest son from Cambodia, then an infant and, later, a brother and sister, from Ethiopia.
“When my two sons and daughter came from Ethiopia, we looked for adventure books featuring children from Africa, but we struggled to find them,” said O’Neill, “so, we came up with Jafir.”
During the bedtime stories, Jafir would always be on an adventure. The ten-year old Ethiopian boy was always courageous and willing to be brave for others.
“It started as something to help our three youngest think about the place from where they came,” said O’Neill. “About a year after they’d been home, my oldest suggested, `Dad, you should write these down.’”
O’Neill began writing what is “The Journey to The Sea” in 2004. With work and family consuming all of his time, it took seven years to complete. O’Neill self-published Jafir’s first adventure in 2011.
He wrote “The Secret Sea Serpent Society” and “A World Away” over the next 12 years; publishing what was now a three-volume series under his own “Ennis House” Publishing company.
O’Neill completed extensive research of the time and the story’s era (early 19th century) so that the historic fiction he shared beyond his family would be educational. But the themes of Jafir’s journey came just like the bedtime stories he shared with his children, in the creation of a character who is simply good in all he does.
And while the names of many of the most prominent people in “The Amazing Adventures of Jafir” were invented by O’Neill (including’s Jafir’s sister, Boomtina) the names of others in the story came from real people the O’Neill family learned of while bringing their children home from Ethiopia. Characters including Ascarame, Teskyeri and Binnian were named for Ethiopian children adopted by other families as the O’Neills were preparing to adopt their sons and daughter.
“I did it so the kids would have something to think about when it came to the place where they were born,” O’Neill said. “Most children who are adopted from other continents, other countries; they don’t have historical perspective. Hopefully when they’re older, they’ll get it.”
O’Neill is currently writing the fourth volume of “The Amazing Adventures of Jafir.” A fifth volume is also planned. Their release dates will be announced soon.
“Working and raising a family, working as an entrepreneur, where nothing’s guaranteed, it can be stressful,” O’Neill said. “Spending time with my sons and daughters, especially when they were little, and sharing this story, was a memory we’ll always have. It helped me leave work behind and opened a new experience for me; the experience that has been creating and making available to others, Jafir’s adventures.”