Richard Grayson's "AUTUMN IN GAINESVILLE" Now Available as Trade Paperback or eBook at Amazon Kindle Store

This week Superstition Mountain Press published Richard Grayson's Autumn in Gainesville. It is available in a 242-page trade paperback edition for $13.99, as well as an e-book published by Art Pants Company available at the Amazon Kindle store for 99 cents.

The promo stuff says in part:

Richard Grayson has been keeping a daily diary compulsively since the summer of 1969, when he was an 18-year-old agoraphobic about to venture out into the world -- or at least the world around him in Brooklyn. His diary, approximately 600 words a day without missing a day since August 1, 1969, now totals over 9 million words, rivaling the longest diaries ever written.

But Grayson is not merely an eccentric with graphomania. His nonfiction has appeared in PEOPLE, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE ORLANDO SENTINEL, THE SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK POST and numerous other periodicals.

ROLLING STONE called Grayson’s first short story collection, WITH HITLER IN NEW YORK, published in 1979, “where avant-garde fiction goes when it becomes stand-up comedy,” and NEWSDAY said, “The reader is dazzled by the swift, witty goings-on.”

Grayson’s other short story collections have also received acclaim. LIBRARY JOURNAL called LINCOLN’S DOCTOR’S DOG (1982) “excellent” and said of I BRAKE FOR DELMORE SCHWARTZ (1983) that “Grayson is a born storyteller and standup talker.”   THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW said Grayson’s I SURVIVED CARACAS TRAFFIC (1996) was “entertaining and bizarre” and “consistently, even ingeniously funny.”

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY called Grayson’s THE SILICON VALLEY DIET (2000) “compulsively talky and engagingly disjunctive”; KIRKUS DISCOVERIES termed Grayson “an audacious and wickedly smart comedic writer” in its review of HIGHLY IRREGULAR STORIES (2005); and THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, reviewing AND TO THINK THAT HE KISSED HIM ON LORIMER STREET (2006), said, “Grayson has a fresh, funny voice.”

Grayson’s seventeenth compilation of diary entries, AUTUMN IN GAINESVILLE, alternates among the three fall seasons during the years he worked as a staff attorney in social policy at University of Florida law school think tank.

Taking place from 1994 to 1996, Grayson's diary chronicles his adventures as a legal researcher, college instructor, gay rights activist, candidate for Congress, local media presence on radio, TV and newspapers, and also a contributor to and columnist for New Jersey Online.

Working for a education project called Schoolyear 2000 and one of the first experiments in web-based journalism projects, fighting an anti-gay referendum in Alachua County, shaping the concept of a center for genome sciences, still questioning himself and the culture at every turn, Grayson moves into his mid-40s and by the book's end, he finds himself surprised with a book contract for a new collection of short stories and prepares to move on to the next, unknown, phase of his life.

Grayson has published the first six volumes of the diaries of his late teens and twenties as THE BROOKLYN DIARIES, featuring SUMMER IN BROOKLYN: 1969-1975; WINTER IN BROOKLYN: 1972-73; SPRING IN BROOKLYN, 1975; AUTUMN IN BROOKLYN, 1978; MORE SUMMERS IN BROOKLYN: 1976-1979; and A YEAR IN ROCKAWAY, 1980.

The second six volumes of his diaries have been published as THE EIGHTIES DIARIES, which include SOUTH FLORIDA WINTERS, 1981-1984; LATE SPRING IN SUNRISE, 1982; WEST SIDE SUMMERS, 1984-1987; INDIAN SUMMER: PARK SLOPE, 1985; SPRINGTIME IN LAUDERHILL, 1986; and EIGHTIES’ END: AUTUMN, 1987-1989.

AUTUMN IN GAINESVILLE:1994-1996 is the fifth volume of THE NINETIES DIARIES, following SUMMER IN NEW YORK: 1990, LAST SUMMER IN ROCKAWAY: 1991, FIRST FALL IN GAINESVILLE: 1991, and SPRING IN GAINESVILLE: 1992-1994.

The book is also available on Lulu and Scribd for free online reading.

Richard Grayson's "SPRING IN GAINESVILLE" Now Available as Trade Paperback or eBook at Amazon Kindle Store

This week Superstition Mountain Press published Richard Grayson's Spring in Gainesville. It is available in a 210-page trade paperback edition for $11.99, as well as an e-book published by Art Pants Company available at the Amazon Kindle store for 99 cents.

The promo stuff says in part,

Richard Grayson has been keeping a daily diary compulsively since the summer of 1969, when he was an 18-year-old agoraphobic about to venture out into the world -- or at least the world around him in Brooklyn. His diary, approximately 600 words a day without missing a day since August 1, 1969, now totals over 9 million words, rivaling the longest diaries ever written.

But Grayson is not merely an eccentric with graphomania. His nonfiction has appeared in PEOPLE, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE ORLANDO SENTINEL, THE SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK POST and numerous other periodicals. ROLLING STONE called Grayson’s first short story collection, WITH HITLER IN NEW YORK, published in 1979, “where avant-garde fiction goes when it becomes stand-up comedy,” and NEWSDAY said, “The reader is dazzled by the swift, witty goings-on.”

Grayson’s other short story collections have also received acclaim. LIBRARY JOURNAL called LINCOLN’S DOCTOR’S DOG (1982) “excellent” and said of I BRAKE FOR DELMORE SCHWARTZ (1983) that “Grayson is a born storyteller and standup talker.” THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW said Grayson’s I SURVIVED CARACAS TRAFFIC (1996) was “entertaining and bizarre” and “consistently, even ingeniously funny."

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY called Grayson’s THE SILICON VALLEY DIET (2000) “compulsively talky and engagingly disjunctive”; KIRKUS DISCOVERIES termed Grayson “an audacious and wickedly smart comedic writer” in its review of HIGHLY IRREGULAR STORIES (2005); and THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, reviewing AND TO THINK THAT HE KISSED HIM ON LORIMER STREET (2006), said, “Grayson has a fresh, funny voice.”

Grayson’s sixteenth compilation of diary entries, SPRING IN GAINESVILLE, alternates among his three spring semesters as an over-40 law student at the University of Florida. Taking place from 1992 to 1994, and coming after FIRST FALL IN GAINESVILLE, Grayson's diary from his first semester of law school, SPRING IN GAINESVILLE gives the reader a unique, thoughtful and idiosyncratic perspective on the day-to-day process by which American attorneys are made.

Grayson has published the first six volumes of the diaries of his late teens and twenties as THE BROOKLYN DIARIES, featuring SUMMER IN BROOKLYN: 1969-1975; WINTER IN BROOKLYN: 1972-73; SPRING IN BROOKLYN, 1975; AUTUMN IN BROOKLYN, 1978; MORE SUMMERS IN BROOKLYN: 1976-1979; and A YEAR IN ROCKAWAY, 1980.

The second six volumes of his diaries have been published as THE EIGHTIES DIARIES, which include SOUTH FLORIDA WINTERS, 1981-1984; LATE SPRING IN SUNRISE, 1982; WEST SIDE SUMMERS, 1984-1987; INDIAN SUMMER: PARK SLOPE, 1985; SPRINGTIME IN LAUDERHILL, 1986; and EIGHTIES’ END: AUTUMN, 1987-1989.

SPRING IN GAINESVILLE: 1991-1994 is the fourth volume of THE NINETIES DIARIES, following SUMMER IN NEW YORK: 1990, LAST SUMMER IN ROCKAWAY: 1991, and FIRST FALL IN GAINESVILLE: 1991.

The book is also available on Scribd and Lulu for free online reading.

Richard Grayson's "LAST SUMMER IN ROCKAWAY" Now Available as Trade Paperback or eBook at Amazon Kindle Store

This week Superstition Mountain Press published Richard Grayson's Last Summer in Rockaway. It is available in a 204-page trade paperback edition for $12199, as well as an e-book published by Art Pants Company available at the Amazon Kindle store for 99 cents.

The promo stuff says in part,

Acclaimed short story writer Richard Grayson has been keeping a diary since the summer of 1969 when he turned 18, a time recounted in his first published book of diary entries, SUMMER IN BROOKLYN.  In LAST SUMMER IN ROCKAWAY, it's 1991 and he's turning 40.

The diary entries begin in Los Angeles, where Grayson goes for the first time to lead workshops at a writers' conference overseen by his oldest friend, a writer and editor he met in a second grade class in Brooklyn's P.S. 203.In California, Grayson learns that his bankruptcy has been finalized and that he has been accepted to law school at the University of Florida.

After a brief stay in South Florida to complete his teaching career at a community college, Grayson flies to New York for three months, living in the now-vacant beachfront apartment in Rockaway that had been his grandparents' longtime home.

Between visits to his grandmother in a nearby Long Island nursing home and excursions to Brooklyn and Manhattan for long lunches, dinners and walks around his native New York, trying to take everything in, knowing he will probably never return except as an infrequent visitor.

Grayson also reflects upon everything from the death of novelist Isaac Bashevis Singer and conditions in Rockaway's ghetto neighborhoods to whether one day the computer, TV and telephone will merge into one device.

Richard Grayson's previous diary books include SUMMER IN BROOKLYN: 1969-75; MORE SUMMER IN BROOKLYN: 1976-79; WINTER IN BROOKLYN, 1971-72; SPRING IN BROOKLYN, 1975; AUTUMN IN BROOKLYN, 1978; A YEAR IN ROCKAWAY, 1980; SOUTH FLORIDA WINTERS, 1981-84; WEST SIDE SUMMERS, 1984-87; LATE SPRING IN SUNRISE, 1982; INDIAN SUMMER: PARK SLOPE, 1985; SPRINGTIME IN LAUDERHILL, 1986; EIGHTIES' END: 1987-89; SUMMER IN NEW YORK, 1990; and FIRST FALL IN GAINESVILLE, 1991.

The book is also available on Scribd and Lulu for free online reading.

Richard Grayson's "SUMMER IN NEW YORK" Now Available as Trade Paperback or eBook at Amazon Kindle Store

This week Superstition Mountain Press published Richard Grayson's Summer in New York. It is available in a 234-page trade paperback edition for $12.99, as well as an e-book published by Art Pants Company available at the Amazon Kindle store for 99 cents.

The promo stuff says in part,

It's the summer of 1990, and writer Richard Grayson -- about to turn 39 and having recently lost forty pounds -- has come up from Florida to spend the summer in his native New York City, shuttling between a friend's Upper West Side apartment where he's lived for the previous six summers and his grandmother's apartment on the beach in Rockaway, where she is suffering from depression and other problems of old age and is ultimately hospitalized for weeks.

For most of the 1980s, Grayson has gotten by as a writer through combining literary grants and income from part-time college teaching and computer education workshops -- and a scheme relying on constantly moving cash advances from the over 40 credit cards that Grayson accumulated during the Greed Decade.

Now, as the national economy falls into an ominous recession -- and war in the Persian Gulf seems imminent -- Grayson's credit card chassis is spinning out of control, with him $150,000 in debt and meager unemployment benefits his only steady income.

Moreover, he recognizes that his career as a fiction writer, never quite viable despite numerous publications, good book reviews, and critical encouragement, is coming to an end. What to do?

He takes up the cause of the beleaguered Miami hip-hop group, 2 Live Crew, whose As Nasty As They Wanna Be CD has been declared obscene by a Florida judge. Grayson's efforts win him national publicity -- and some hate mail from those offended by raunchy rap music. And his satirical campaign to rescue billionaire Donald Trump from bankruptcy are highlighted on CNN and in The New York Post.

As he moves through the city, taking random graduate courses in computer education and creativity at Teachers College, running from bank ATM to bank lobby to deposit the money in his credit chassis, fretting about the future as he wanders around Brooklyn, desperately trying to stir up interest in his poorly-selling books of fiction, and going out to endless lunches and dinners with his many friends -- mostly other writers, theater people, artists, performers, politically-connected lawyers and religious activists -- Grayson recounts his days in the diary he's been keeping obsessively since he was an agoraphobic 18-year-old boy about to start Brooklyn College in the summer of 1969.

Grayson has published the first six volumes of the diaries of his late teens and twenties as THE BROOKLYN DIARIES, featuring SUMMER IN BROOKLYN: 1969-1975; WINTER IN BROOKLYN: 1972-73; SPRING IN BROOKLYN, 1975; AUTUMN IN BROOKLYN, 1978; MORE SUMMERS IN BROOKLYN: 1976-1979; and A YEAR IN ROCKAWAY, 1980.

The second six volumes of his diaries have been published as THE EIGHTIES DIARIES, which include SOUTH FLORIDA WINTERS, 1981-84; LATE SPRING IN SUNRISE, 1982; WEST SIDE SUMMERS, 1984-87; INDIAN SUMMER: PARK SLOPE, 1985; SPRINGTIME IN LAUDERHILL, 1986; and EIGHTIES’ END: AUTUMN, 1987-89.

SUMMER IN NEW YORK: 1990 is the first volume of THE NINETIES DIARIES, immediately preceding LAST SUMMER IN ROCKAWAY:1991 and FIRST FALL IN GAINESVILLE: 1991.

The book is also available on Scribd and Lulu for free online reading.

"MEMORIAL DAY DIARY: 1970-2010" by Richard Grayson now available at Amazon Kindle Store

Richard Grayson's MEMORIAL DAY DIARY: 1970-2010 is now available at Amazon's Kindle Store for 99¢ from its publisher, Art Pants Company.

Here is the promo material for the 127-page $7.99 paperback edition from Superstition Mountain Press:

How does a person change over forty years? Suppose someone kept a diary every day starting when he was 18 through his late fifties? Richard Grayson, author of numerous books of short fiction, compiled such a record of his life: thoughts, actions, events, mundane details and reactions to the world around him for every Memorial Day -- the last Monday in May -- from 1969 to 2010. Here are the results.