BUTLER TWP - Literary legend Jack Kerouac once said, "Everybody goes home in October."

The Beat Generation author, who died Oct. 20, 1969, is well known for his novel "On the Road."

The thinking behind that novel, as well as his "October in the Railroad Earth," are explored in a new biography called "Kerouac: A Biography," by Butler County Community College professor Michael Dittman. The book is available at Barnes and Noble, Borders and www.amazon.com.

It is only fitting the book should be released in October, since that month was one of importance in Kerouac's life and death. Both of Kerouac's published works include October significance, and Kerouac himself died in that month.

This is the second book Dittman has written, but the first to be published.

"This is the first one to have seen the light of day," Dittman said. "And it's actually kind of funny, because I didn't pick this topic."

Dittman had contacted the publishing company about another project of his, and they decided they'd rather have him write about Kerouac.

The topic wasn't a hard one for Dittman, who had previously published a study guide to Kerouac's "On the Road.""I had a lot of information already, so I didn't need to do a whole lot of research before being ready to write," he said.Dittman said the hardest part was dealing with Kerouac's widow, Stella, who has control of all of Kerouac's final works and will not let anyone have access to them."So it made it twice as hard as it had to be, because she just won't let anyone else have access to his unfinished work," Dittman said.Once he had all the research done, Dittman said it took six months to do the writing."The writing was the easy part," he said. "Going back and forth with the editing took longer than it did to write the manuscript."The book will be followed up by a second one called "The Beat Generation." It will contain information on all the famous Beat authors from Kerouac's time, and is expected to be released in 2006.Dittman said he has other ideas in the works and hopes to build on the momentum of getting Kerouac's biography in print."Once you get started, you get that momentum," he said. "And I always like to have lots of projects going at once. It keeps me interested."