The Follow Your Fates series is geared to ages eight and up, and the intent of the series is to place the reader as the main character in classic ancient Greek and Roman literature. In this creative format, the reader has the freedom to make his or her own choices throughout the book, including choosing an ending. Each decision the reader makes directs them on a path for the rest of the book.

What makes this series different from other books is the interactive aspect. DeHoratius even uses the books as a teaching tool with his some of his honors classes. He hopes younger students will utilize these books as a fun gateway into eventually reading the original ancient literature on which they are based.

“I have [always wanted to write a fictional book] and I still do. Although, I am a little terrified of fiction and of being in control of an entire world, which is why these books were a good compromise. They are sort of fiction and sort of non-fiction,” DeHoratius said.

However, DeHoratius has not always been writing books. After five or six years of teaching, he began publishing academic articles in journals.

“I never really went into it wanting to write a book; I have always entertained the notion of getting a PhD,” said DeHoratius. “That’s why a lot of my writing tended to be academic in focus early on.”

The first books DeHoratius wrote were Latin textbooks, as he took a different approach to writing them as a high school teacher.

“Most of the textbooks are written by college professors, who certainly know their stuff, but they don’t have the experience of seeing students every day and having the kind of contact that high school teachers do, so I kind of wanted to write something more palatable for the high school crowd,” said DeHoratius.

The textbooks were published in 2005, and it was this step that led DeHoratius to the publishers who would print his new series.

DeHoratius, who used to read “Choose-Your-Own-Adventure” books as a kid, was inspired by a student in 2003 who did a choose your own adventure project about the Black Plague in his Medieval class.

A couple of years later, DeHoratius was teaching the Classical Literature course for the first time and had to refresh his knowledge on The Iliad. He chose to almost “rewrite” the book in a choose-your-own-adventure format, as he thought it would help him read the book more closely.

A couple of years later he decided to do something with the rewritten work and polish it up to publish them through Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers. The first book of the Follow Your Fates series called The Wrath of Achilles was published, along with the other two called The Journey of Odysseus and The Exile of Aeneas.

Writing books does not come solely from inspiration and a desire to help students learn, though.

“The hardest part is the detail work. A lot of people have this image of the writers sitting down and everything sort of pouring out of them in this moment of inspiration, and then it sort of being done,” DeHoratius said. “The actual  writing is actually a very small portion of the process. There’s a lot of editing and checking and re-editing. Those are the things that people don’t quite realize, you only see sort of the public side of it. You don’t really see all the hard work and the detail work that goes in behind the scenes.”

Though the process can be grueling, DeHoratius hopes to write more books in the future, but said that it is also up to the publishers.

For additional information on DeHoratius’ work, visit his website http://followyourfates.weebly.com. or the publishers site at www.bolchazy.com/followyourfates.