Chris Ernest Hall's Blog

 

Four years ago today I got laid off from my job @sixapart. What have I been up to since then? Well, I decided to take some time off, and it turned into four years. To me, that feels like a significant, and resonant, span of time. 

Four years is a fundamental unit of human civilization; the length of time between Olympic games, and US presidential elections. It’s how long high school lasts, and college, too–unless you’re a slacker like I was. To choose an example perhaps closer to home for those of us in the Bay Area, it is the standard period for full stock vesting when working for technology start-ups. 

Four turnings of the calendar, four orbits of the earth around the sun. A year may seem like a long time, but as anyone who’s worked in software can tell you, it can get eaten up surprisingly quickly. Put four of them together, though, and it’s long enough that you can iterate, go down blind alleys, make mistakes, learn from them. 

That’s why this anniversary feels like a significant event to me, and an opportunity to take stock and see what I’ve accomplished. It also gives me an opportunity to update you all on the status of the Complete Works of Chris Ernest Hall, following up on my “Status Update” post from last fall. Since then I’ve made significant changes, and have arrived on the final configuration. There are now five volumes, though one is divided (at least until it’s finished) into four parts, so that means a total of eight physical books. Here follows a volume by volume break-down of where they stand: 

1. Something Interesting to Read: Long-time fans may have noticed that the picture included in this post did not include Collected Works, even though that was the first book I produced during my post-layoff hiatus. That’s because it has been superseded by the this volume, as well as the next one. SITR includes the short stories (with attendant commentary) and my closet screenplay Therapy, in exactly the same form as they appeared in Collected Works. Since it’s essentially just a repackaging, SITR’s status is done and it will be available for purchase today.  

2. Notes For a Future Novel, 20th Anniversary Edition. Almost a year ago, I decided to break out my first novel from Collected Works and publish it separately. To sweeten the deal, I also added almost eighty pages of out-takes because I got feedback from readers that they wanted to read even more interminable conversations between Michael and Tim about literature and abstruse philosophical issues (not really.) NFFN20 will be available shortly, once I finish my review of the proof copy I just received from Lulu. 

3. The Deep and Savage Way, 20th Anniversary Edition. I hadn’t really looked at this work in a while before I prepared this editing edition. It needs a fair amount of work, by which I mean a substantial teardown/rewrite. Sometimes my old writing is better than I remembered, but for some reason this novel was worse. Maybe because it was written in Seattle. (loljk, PNW friends! Love you!) Release date is TBD. 

4a. Celebrated Summer, Book One: Out Into the Light. By now you’re probably sick of hearing about this book. It’s the same one I’ve been cramming down your throats for the past two years. If you’re not, please make my life seem temporarily worth living by ordering a copy or two. 

4b. Celebrated Summer, Book Two: One Night In Z-Town. But wait, there’s a sequel?! Yes, and it’s completely written. I think it needs another rewrite or two before it’s ready for prime-time, though. CS2 continues the thrilling story of Tim Page and his burgeoning romance with April Hall, as he becomes increasingly immersed in the scandalous goings-on at the movie theater he is working at in downtown Santa Zita. It’s my tribute to such classic coming of age movies as Dazed and Confused, American Graffiti, Superbad, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, since the entire action of the book takes place in a single day, and culminates in an epic party in which the hero must out-wit his rivals and overcome his fears in order to win the girl of his dreams. I’m hoping to release it this summer, possibly on August 5th, the 25th anniversary of the day that the book takes place on. 

4c&d. Celebrated Summer, Books Three and Four. As you can see in the photo, these two books are not yet produced in bound editions, but exist merely as drafts produced with a good old-fashioned laser printer. Although I have done a tremendous amount of work on them, including writing more than 51,000 words of CS4 last November during NaNoWriMo, there are still major gaps and holes in the plot, not to mention vast sections that needs to be heavily rewritten. Release date is TBD, but my hope is to have something releasable by 10/17/89, the 25th anniversary of the Loma Prieta quake. 

5. In Search of Narrative In America. The final volume of the Complete Works  is my Dead Letter Office/Odds and Sods collection of fragments, unfinished tales, and other random detritus from my archives. This volume includes Helen of Santa Zita, which I was thinking of publishing separately last year, but decided was too thin (literally, when I published it with Lulu it felt more like a fat pamphlet than a paperback book) to stand on its own. This book needs one more round of editing, plus there are two stories in it I’d like to finish, so it will not be available until later this spring. 

 

Once these books are finished, I am going to declare victory and call the Complete Works done. It’s been fun, going through my archives and whipping these old works into shape, finally getting some sense of closure, but I think it might be time to move on. Who knows, maybe I’ll write something that isn’t set in late 80s/early 90s Santa Cruz. Or get a real job, we’ll see. 

I’ve posted some cover photos and mentioned various projects on Facebook/Twitter, but haven’t done a formal update in quite a while. Be assured, though, it’s been a very busy year for us. So, without any further ado, here’s a project by project status update, detailing everything that’s been happening at The Complete Works of Chris Ernest Hall. 

 

Collected Works: This volume, the beginning of the Complete Works, has now been retired. If you bought or otherwise obtained a copy, it’s now a collector’s item! Of course, CW will still be the only book that includes Therapy so it will remain purchase-able on Lulu for completists, but there will be no active promotion going forward. 

Celebrated Summer, Book One: I shipped this book earlier this year. I’ve been doing promotion by giving away free copies using Goodreads Giveaways. The jury is still out on how effective a promotion tactic that is. 

Celebrated Summer, Book Two: After extensive work during the past 12 months, I put this project on hold in order to focus on the Complete Works as a whole. Right now I am thinking that CS2 will be merged with CS3, and possibly even CS4. In effect, Celebrated Summer will consist of two volumes, instead of four, in an attempt to make it a more manageable experience for readers (not to mention the writer.)  

Notes For a Future Novel, 20th Anniversary Edition: I have finished editing my proof copy. All that remains is to enter the edits, some more work on the Author’s Afterword and the out-take commentary, and it will be done. 

Helen of Santa Zita, Part One: An editing copy is on its way from Lulu. Based on what I’ve looked at so far, I don’t think this book needs much revision, at least until I write Parts Two and Three (see below.) The work I did in 2000-2001 appears to have stood the test of time, which is nice to know, since HSZ was the first writing project I undertook when I resurrected my career after the 1997-2000 hiatus caused by the Dotcom boom.  

In Search of Narrative In America: Book production has begun on this volume of the Complete Works, scheduled for release this December. It’s intended to replace the “Something Interesting to Read” section of Collected Works (ie, the short stories) but will also include some other short stories and incomplete pieces that I at one point intended to include in a collection of out-takes, confusingly also titled In Search of Narrative In America. This book will consist of mostly existing material but I plan on finishing a few of the pieces that I started post-Andy Warhol’s Sister, so it will involve more a bit more work than NFFN and HSZ, but it should still be complete-able for Christmas 2013. 

The Deep and Savage Way, 20th Anniversary Edition: Coming in 2014. I finished this novel in 1994, but it needs fairly extensive revision to reconcile it with HSZ and CS, and to fix some sections I’ve never been completely satisfied with. Because of the opportunity to do a 20th Anniversary edition, I’ve decided to schedule this book for release in spring 2014. 

In summary, by the end of this year, I hope to have four different books that I can give away on Goodreads. By early next year, The Deep and Savage Way will join the roster. 

What happens after that is partially dictated by what gets traction on Goodreads. Some of the options include:

An interim release of Celebrated Summer, Book Two  This would include the work I’ve done so far on CS2, plus more. Much, much more. There is approximately 140,000 words I’ve written for Celebrated Summer that have never been revealed to the world, just to give you an idea of how bloated and out of control that project became over the past seventeen years. 
Helen of Santa Zita, Parts Two and Three  I have about a fifty-thousand words of material already written that I could use for an HSZ sequel. However, there are large gaps in the narrative, so it won’t be simply a matter of editing existing material.  
“Margarita”  This is the code-name for a sequel to Celebrated Summer which would show the events of The Deep and Savage Way and Helen of Santa Zita from Tim’s point of view, but then continue on all the way to summer 1990.
Notes For a Future Novel 2.0/DSW-HSZ-Margarita supermix novel  While preparing the 20th anniversary edition of NFFN I was reminded how that novel has an important device that isn’t present in any of my other novels, which is the alternation in  point of view between Tim, Michael, and Helen. Once I have DSW, HSZ, and Margarita written, I could combine them for people who would rather read the overall story in chronological order—thus taking the Santa Zita books full circle and returning to the spirit of the original Notes For a Future Novel. 

Today I am pleased to announce the formal (if it were
software I would say 1.0 final) release of Celebrated Summer, Book One: Out
Into the Light. Available now, for the special introductory price of $9.99 from
Lulu.com, merely by clicking this blue button:

But
wait, you say. Didn’t that already come out? Well, yes, I released a preview
edition last year, but this edition has a beautiful new cover, drawn by San
Francisco illustrator Matt David (see below), half a chapter of new material, and a further
round of edits. As a result, I
am now finally ready to consider it done.*

In
case you’re wondering just what the hell I’m talking about, Celebrated Summer
is a book I’ve been working on for quite a long time. Originally titled “1989 A
Novel,” I began writing it in spring 1996**. I worked on it off and on between
then and 2008, in various incarnations. I became more serious about it in 2009, when I started revising
it from the beginning. Since 2011 I've been focused on it full-time, which has enabled me to finally get a grasp on the huge mass of material I had accumulated since 1996, and get to a point where I had something I felt was good enough to publish. 

The
novel is a coming of age story set during the summer of 1989 in the seaside
university town of Santa Zita, California. The novel is about many
things–friendship, love, crime, the golden age of sampling, town-gown tension,
the late 80s, partying–but the heart of the story is the romance between Tim
Page, a twenty-year-old college student in between his sophomore and junior
years at UC Santa Zita, and April Hall, a sixteen-year-old girl he meets while
working his summer job at a movie theater in downtown Santa Zita. 

Frequently
Asked Questions

Will
there be an ebook/Kindle edition?

There
will be a e-book edition, but not quite yet. Kindle will no doubt be
first, followed by ibook/generic epub.

This
is great. How can I help?

If
you’d like to help me spread the word, there are three very easy things that would be enormously
valuable:

◆    Share
this post on facebook, twitter, or tumblr. Feel free to use the cover art or
whatever else.

◆    If
you are a Goodreads member, please put Celebrated Summer, Book One on your “to be read” shelf.

◆    Like
my Celebrated Summer page on Facebook. We must, after all, render unto Zuckerberg
what is Zuckerberg’s.

What’s
the deal with this being Book One?

Celebrated
Summer was originally conceived as one novel. However, it evolved to become
such an epic work that I decided to split it up into four books. They are
designed to be readable as independent works, though most readers will probably
prefer to read them all, in sequential order. What’s being announced today is
the first volume, Out Into the Light.

Wasn’t
there a KickStarter for Celebrated Summer?

There
was! But it didn’t get funded. Oh well. However, it was a good learning
experience. If you did pledge to my KickStarter project, you are entitled to a
free signed copy. Email or message me on Facebook so we can make arrangements
for you to receive it.

Whatever
happened with Collected Works?

It’s
still available! You can buy it from Lulu, and there is also a Kindle version.
If you happened to be one of the people who have read Collected Works already,
it would be greatly helpful if you would take the time to rate and review it on
Goodreads. 

*
Well, until I finish the series, after which I will no doubt revisit it, but
that’s a ways down the road.

**
Of course, the idea for 1989 came even earlier, a novella titled “Stealing
Money” that I intended to include in Santa Zita Stories.

 

 

I wanted to save this news for next week, but the NY Times has forced my hand. Yes, it's true, J. J. Abrams is now attached to direct the the film adaptation of CELEBRATED SUMMER. As a special treat, here's the first half page of the screenplay we've been collaborating on:

 

FADE IN

CLOSE UP along the railing of the deck of Cafe Nightingale... LENS FLARE briefly obscures the camera's view, but then we see a CLOSED EYE, which opens suddenly, with a look of desperate horror. This is TIM PAGE, and he has no idea how he ended up lying there.

Next to him is a box, a mysterious box that looks like it should not be opened, under any circumstances. So, Tim doesn't, he just continues to lie on the floor, looking dazed. He might be thinking about his relationship with his father, but since this is a movie, who knows? 

Oh, and there's a HUGE MONSTER, running amuck. Probably should have mentioned that earlier. It's hard to get a good view, because there's more LENS FLARE. 

Exciting stuff!

 

 

I am very pleased to unveil the cover design for Celebrated Summer, Book One: Out Into the Light, drawn by illustrator Matt David.

Writing a novel is, perhaps necessarily, mostly a solitary activity, but it was fun to be able to collaborate on at least one aspect of the finished product. I owe Matt a big thank you for working with me, taking the time to read the entire book before beginning work, and educating me on the finer points of graphic production. If you're interested in checking out more of his work, please visit http://www.matt-david.com/.

I am currently working on finalizing some other aspects of the book design, and entering the final edits. The finished product should be available for purchase within a matter of weeks. 

 

For those people who've already gotten their copies of Celebrated Summer, Book One, here is the soundtrack for Chapter I. If you want to be surprised, just click the play button, but if you're curious as to what songs appear, click the "Continue Reading" link. 

1-01 Chapter I

Note: soundtracks for Chapters II through IX will be forthcoming.  

The Feeling Begins / Gethsamane / Of These, Hope (Peter Gabriel)
The Wheel (Edie Brickell & New Bohemians)
Cemetery Gates (The Smiths)
3 Feet High and Rising Intro / The Magic Number (De La Soul)
Garden of Earthly Delights (XTC)
School's Out (Alice Cooper)
Batdance (Prince)
Roadhouse Blues (The Doors)
What's the Matter Here? (10,000 Maniacs)

The release of Celebrated Summer, Book One: Out Into the Light is imminent, and in honor of that, here is the official book description:

CELEBRATED SUMMER is a unique and moving coming of age story set during the summer of 1989 in the seaside university town of Santa Zita, California. Intellectual partier Tim Page has just finished his sophomore of college. He’s decided to spend the summer in Santa Zita instead of returning to his suburban hometown of Alta Lara, so he hang out with his two closest friends, Helen and Jessica.

Tim’s goal for the summer: fall in love. He gets a job at a movie theater where he meets a curious cast of locals including: Caleb, the antic assistant manager whose workplace persona is one long performance art piece; his ex-girlfriend, the perpetually stoned August; and their friend April, who seems perfect for Tim in every way–except that she’s still in high school. As his feelings for April grow, he is drawn into a secret conspiracy that takes him to places he could have never imagined and threatens to change the course of his life forever. 

Described as “Marcel Proust meets Bret Easton Ellis” and “Clerks as written by E. M. Forster,” CELEBRATED SUMMER is a hilarious, poignant, and sometimes heart-breaking tale of lost innocence, obsession, and the price we must all pay to make our dreams come true.

Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.

via www.brainpickings.org

Based on my experience with Celebrated Summer (1989) I completely agreed. I would have been much better off if I had kept up the momentum I had in 1997 and gone all the way to the end. Instead, I abandoned the novel until 2001 and then got stuck in 10 years of rewriting Part I over and over.

 

I'm currently working on a new look for the spine of my Complete Works series. I wanted something that looked a little bit fancier than what I currently have, and that also included the volume number. This is what I've come up with so far:

All of the songs on The Immaculate Collection (with the exception of the two new songs) were remixed by Shep Pettibone alongside either Goh Hotoda or Michael Hutchinson and some were also edited down from their original lengths in order to decrease the overall running time. While all the vocals remain the same as in the original recordings, "Like a Prayer" and "Express Yourself" feature different music backing Madonna's vocals than their original album release.

via en.wikipedia.org

So it turns out the Madonna songs on the "1989 A Novel" soundtrack are inauthentic, because I was using the Immaculate Collection versions, which are remixes. Question is, are they sufficiently different that I should feel obligated to purchase the original versions? #xrisworldproblems