If you live in Florida, chances are you witnessed yet another gruesome news piece over the past week, bouncing from the local paper to the evening news to CNN to CBS The Early Show.

The breaking story was about a Florida State juvenile facility where innocent young boys were beaten and tortured throughout the 1950’s and 60’s. Many of them are thought to be buried in the thick underbrush of the North Florida woods.

One of the survivors, Roger Dean Kiser, came to HCI last week and told us of this tragic tale via frenetic phone calls and scatter-shot emails to a bunch of the staff. Seeing so much stuff come through here in a given week, I didn’t pay much attention to it until I heard the story myself on the radio in the morning and saw pictures on the news the same night.

It wasn’t just another call from an overzealous author after all.

It was real. And, it was sad.

As testimony to the company that we are, Kiser picked us to retell his story because of his former dealings with HCI as a story contributor to several Chicken Soup for the Soul books. He was a little gun shy of competitors with whom he had prior dealings and signed our contract.

Now all departments are hustling to catch up to a news story that we can only hope has staying power. The governor of Florida declared that he would initiate a proper investigation in consort with the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI, so we expect the story to unfold over time.

Roger Dean Kiser has been trying to tell his story for 17 years about the beatings that went on in an austere building on school property they called, The White House.

He self-published a book called The White House Boys a while back and with HCI, his book will be completely retooled and brought to market, probably as soon as January.

We hope.

Editors are editing madly, sales people are talking up the book, our computer geeks are notifying amazon, book designers are tweaking the cover, and I’m both assessing the media that’s been done with plans for more. Timing is everything for my department so I’m looking to work with the author sometime this week to see what we can do. (I’m grateful that Oprah’s crew is on hiatus until the new year so she doesn’t jump on it before we’re ready!)

It is suspected that more than 200 bodies might be buried somewhere in the murky, shallow swamplands of Florida. Apparently, this is only one part of what many survivors remember as “The Secret.”

Wow! I don’t think this “secret” involves any mumbo jumbo about the law of attraction. With all due respect, that is.

I’ll keep you posted as to how this all pans out. Keep your eyes peeled for more news stories about this.

The White House Boys: An American Tragedy. You heard it here first.