From Publishers Weekly’s Children’s Bookshelf July 27, 2017:

High school English teacher William Ritter never expected his short story experiment about an eccentric paranormal detective named Jackaby and his clever assistant, Abigail Rook, to one day become his first published novel. A lover of stories and mythology, Ritter has published three books about Jackaby and Rook, with the fourth and final installment, The Dire King, to be released next month. Ritter spoke with PW about his inspiration for the books, the importance of representing different mythologies in literature, and the ways in which his work as a teacher affects his storytelling.

Did you always plan Jackaby and Abigail’s story to be told in four books? Did you know where their story would end?

From an early stage, I had four installments in mind. I wrote the first without thinking it would be a novel at all; it was just a short story. Pursuing publication made me consider where Jackaby and Abigail’s story would go, only then did any ideas for a series solidify. Eventually I determined that there would be four distinct stories happening along the way to a larger story. I had a general idea of an ending. There’s a war in the final book and I knew I wanted to get to that.

Read the full interview by Sara Grochowski from Publishers Weekly) here. (Sara is a bookseller in Michigan and a blogger.)

The Dire King (Jackaby #4) hits shelves August 22, 2017. Contact your favorite independent bookstore or enter your zipcode at this page to find your local indie to preorder to have it waiting for you.

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