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. 

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.