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.