In 2012, a few months after the publication of Beatitude, I selected a date at random when I was invited to hold my debut reading at a Manhattan Barnes & Noble. Not until just before the reading did I realize the significance of the date: March 12. It was Jack Kerouac’s 90th birthday. For a novel in which Kerouac and his fellow Beat Generation writers figure prominently, it couldn’t have been more appropriate.

Flash forward to 2022, when my publisher, Sven Davisson at Rebel Satori Press,...