So I have a new book coming out on May 17, Going Up In Flames. It’s a novella, part of the Kindle World series for Erin Nicholas’s Sapphire Falls books. This book has been a lot of fun to work with and a kind of lifesaver in the midst of the chaos and uncertainty of Samhain’s shutdown. The hero is Jorge Delgado, a secondary character in all the Konigsburg books related to the Rose restaurant (Don’t Forget Me, Fearless Love, and most of all Hungry Heart). Jorge is running the Barbecue King’s food truck at the Sapphire Falls town festival and he falls for a local girl, Kirsten Engstrom.

I’ll tell you all more about Going Up In Flames as the release gets closer, but here’s the rub: I can’t call it a Konigsburg book. In fact, I can’t even mention the name Konigsburg in the story. According to Amazon’s legal department, while I own the names of my characters (the Barbecue King is safe), I don’t own the place names. Thus if I use the name Konigsburg in the book, Erin could claim it and I’d never be able to write another Konigsburg book.

Now I’d like to emphasize that Erin has no intention of claiming Konigsburg. In fact, she’s said so expressly and has said she’s willing to sign a legal waiver to that effect. Doesn’t mater, says the legal department. Her descendants could claim Konigsburg because I used it in a Sapphire Falls Kindle World, which would mean my descendants would lose the right to write more Konigsburg books. Leaving aside for the moment the extreme unlikeliness of my sons ever wanting to write a Konigsburg novel or Erin’s kids wanting to do the same, Amazon is still adamant about not using the name Konigsburg in the book.

So what to do? One of my reasons for writing Going Up In Flames was the hope that it might interest new readers in the Konigsburg universe since I hope to go on writing books set there (probably under my own independent label). Avoiding any mention of Konigsburg seems counterproductive to me, but using the name in the book risks the ire of Amazon (not something I want to do).

The solution came from my hubs. “Call it K-burg,” he suggested. Which is what I did. If Erin’s grandchildren want to write K-burg books, they have my permission.

It’s far from an ideal solution, of course. I can imagine readers going “K-burg? What the hell is K-burg?” I can only hope they’ll cruise over to my Web site and see all the references to Konigsburg, putting two and two together. And I hope they’ll love Jorge and Kirsten and the Barbecue King and Darcy because I hope they’ll all show up again in future books.

Here’s to Konigsburg. Long may it wave.