Richard Grayson's "BROOKLYN, KENT STATE, MAY 1970" Is #1 Best Seller for Children's 20th-Century American History eBooks at Amazon Kindle Store

Richard Grayson's BROOKLYN, KENT STATE, MAY 1970: Diary of an 18-Year-Old College Freshman is currently the #1 bestseller at the Amazon Kindle Store in the category of Children's Nonfiction Twentieth Century American History eBooks.

BROOKLYN, KENT STATE, MAY 1970 is also currently #3 Kindle ebook bestseller in the category of Childen's eBooks in U.S. History and Historical Fiction and #11 in the category of Biographies and Memoirs of Educators.

Here is the promo material for the ebook, published by Art Pants Company:

In the spring of 1970, college students across the country protested the widening of the Vietnam War after President Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia. On May 4, National Guardsmen, sent to Ohio's Kent State University to quell a student demonstration, opened fire and killed four students and wounded others. In the nationwide firestorm of campus protest that followed, colleges and universities were shut down as angry students brought a halt to the spring semester with strikes and takeovers of buildings.

Brooklyn College in New York City was no exception, and his account of the day-by-day events at the school, acclaimed author and diarist Richard Grayson (The Brooklyn Diaries, With Hitler in New York, Lincoln's Doctor's Dog), then an 18-year-old freshman, gives a young student's perspective to this scary, exhilarating time in American history.

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

This week Superstition Mountain Press published Richard Grayson's Springtime in Lauderhill. It is available in a 196-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 started writing a daily diary in the summer of 1969, when he turned 18, and has compiled daily entries since then. In the six volumes of THE BROOKLYN DIARIES (SUMMER IN BROOKLYN, AUTUMN IN BROOKLYN, WINTER IN BROOKLYN, SPRING IN BROOKLYN, MORE SUMMER IN BROOKLYN, and A YEAR IN ROCKAWAY), Grayson published selected entries from 1969 to 1980.

Now, in THE EIGHTIES DIARIES, Grayson describes his itinerant life in his thirties during the Reagan era. Following the three previous volumes, SOUTH FLORIDA WINTERS, WEST SIDE SUMMERS and INDIAN SUMMER: PARK SLOPE is this book, SPRINGTIME IN LAUDERHILL, recounting two months Grayson spent living in a mostly African-American apartment complex in a fading Fort Lauderdale suburb.

It’s 1986, and Grayson is struggling with his lack of success as a fiction writer after publishing three books, disenchanted with his past jobs teaching college composition and remedial writing, and starting a new career as a teacher trainer in the nascent field of computer education with the first Apple machines ever used in schools.

Meanwhile, he’s taking an assortment of courses at a couple of universities, causing controversy with a legal challenge for age discrimination to a savings and loan company’s discounts for senior citizens, amassing a huge number of credit cards and credit lines, obsessing about the AIDS epidemic and wondering if he is infected, publishing his humorous nonfiction in places like People Magazine, and being interviewed on The CBS Evening News with Dan Rather and other media outlets.

Grayson’s diaries are a window into an individual sensibility and a particular moment in time: the spring of 1986.
An excerpt:

Monday, March 31, 1986
9 PM. Today was one of the more satisfying days of my life, probably because I could see myself doing well in a variety of roles. If I’m not quite a Renaissance man, I’m something more than a dilettante.

Up early, I read the paper, walked to the credit union to deposit $700 I’d gotten in cash advances from ATMs, and paid the rent.

Stopping off at the Publix Teller on Broward Boulevard, I went into the supermarket and discovered the news dealer had arrived with a fresh shipment of magazines, including People, which I took from the his piled-high shopping cart before he put it on the racks.

I couldn’t find my story in the table of contents, but I thumbed through and discovered it: “Unless We Bag a Few New Stars, the U.S. Will Face a Tragic Celebrity Shortage” by Richard Grayson and Fred Bernstein.

Illustrate with a full-page photo of paparazzi shooting a bejeweled, glamorously dressed woman with a paper bag over her head, with the Hollywood sign in the distance, the whole article took up four pages, with another photo page devoted to a model pretending to be Barbara Walters interviewing a tree (“If you were a star, what kind of star would you be?”)

I’m very pleased with the piece. In Davie, first Jonathan and then Mom and then Dad read the article, and they all thought it was good; of course, they’re my family.

While in Davie, I got a call from Joyce Brown of the Human Relations Division, reminding me about tomorrow’s hearing.

Also, the People publicity department called to find out if they could give my number to radio stations wanting interviews. Of course I said yes, though Fred is probably taking the good ones for himself, but I hope he’s not going on Live at Five and getting TV exposure I could use. I’m kidding!

Tons of mail, including the AWP Job List, with some creative writing vacancies I’ll apply for; loads of banking stuff, including my CBI credit file, a Virginia Beach Federal money market account checkbook, the PIN number for my Chase money market account, and applications for credit line increases on my Bank One and Chemical cards; and the leader of Americans for Generational Equality told me to “give ‘em hell” on senior discounts.

After xeroxing the article at Jaffe’s and having lunch at the Broadway Diner, I came home to read newspapers and prepare for class.

“It’s the computer man!” said the Sunshine Elementary school secretary as she opened the door for me at 3:30 PM. I showed the teachers the SRI math software today.

It was kind of disorganized because I’d never seen the material before, but I enjoyed myself and I think they learned a lot just by using it and experimenting with it.

One thing I stress is that the computer is dumb compared to a teacher because it makes the teachers feel better knowing how limited the machines are. After a quick bite, I went to my FIU Community College class, where Kitty Hunter, BCC’s Academic Vice President, was our guest.

Like most of the BCC administrators, she surprised me by her intellectual depth. She’s very future-oriented and interested in issues ranging from the role of the community college in relation to business and government to the need to educate people for a world economy and a world culture. Her remarks and the discussion which followed were stimulating.

Can you tell me why today was so satisfying? I felt competent in all my roles as writer, “computer man,” banking maven, social activist, and educator. I feel integrated and whole. Let’s hope tomorrow isn’t a big disaster.

Tuesday, April 1, 1986
11 PM. Not exactly a disaster, but I need time to digest today. Before I left this morning, I got a call from a producer at WXYT radio in Detroit; I’ll do an interview tomorrow at 5:30 PM, which means I’ll have to get out of class and go over to my parents’.

I didn’t really know what to expect when I walked into the Governmental Center in downtown Fort Lauderdale this morning. A black woman ran the hearing, with me in my corduroys, sport shirt and sneakers on one side of the long table and on the other side, five business-suited attorneys and AmeriFirst Vice Presidents. One man was apparently an outside counsel, but a woman V.P., presumably also an attorney, did most of the talking.

I suppose it was rather intimidating, and I’m sure the absurdity of the scene – like something in a movie – will stay with me for a long time.

Of course the situation triggered all these weird childhood feelings, especially when I saw how much trouble the S&L had gone to in its marketing studies and accounts of other banks’ practices.

I couldn’t help feeling I’d caused these important people a lot of trouble and would be punished for it. But since I was in touch with those feelings, I could act and react more calmly.

First, they went over my complaint and each side agreed or disagreed with each charge. Early on after that, after a huddle between the attorneys, they offered me the AmeriFirst 55 plan.

But a condition of my accepting it would be confidentiality; I could not tell anyone about the settlement or I could be sued for breach of contract.

I asked to leave the room to “consult my attorney by phone”; actually, I called Mom. She said that if I accepted the offer, I would be doing something other than what I set to do: namely, to expose and to try to stop age discrimination.

Of course Mom was right, and her remarks confirmed my own judgment. I let them wait for a good while as I went outside and took a walk around the block a couple of times.

Then I came in and rejected their offer, saying I wouldn’t be happy until their discriminatory practice – the AmeriPlus 55 plan – was ended or made available to everyone, regardless of age.

Naturally they didn’t want to do that. The hearing officer took me aside and said that the S&L had offered me total redress of my complaint, and that if I didn’t accept it, she’d probably have to end the case on the argument that since I wouldn’t accept their offer, no hurt was done originally.

Had this been a class action suit, I could have gone further, but she said the Human Relations Division had a narrow scope. After some testimony and questioning about the plan versus other AmeriFirst accounts, the hearing was adjourned.

I expect to hear that my complaint has been dismissed. But in a way I will have gotten what I wanted: the public awareness created by the publicity I got over the senior discount issue.

Having rejected their offer, I was free to go to the press, so I called the Miami Herald and gave them a rundown of what happened. Since I intend to go to New York soon, I don’t really want to come back before another hearing before the Human Rights Board this time.

I guess there’s still a slight chance the case could go on, but it’s over for me, whatever happens. Right now I’m too close to the situation to tell how I really feel.

It will also be available on Scribd and Lulu for free online reading.

Richard Grayson's "INDIAN SUMMER: PARK SLOPE" Now Available as Trade Paperback or eBook at Amazon Kindle Store

This week Superstition Mountain Press published Richard Grayson's Indian Summer: Park Slope. It is available in a 207-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 started writing a daily diary in the summer of 1969, when he turned 18, and has compiled daily entries since then. In the six volumes of THE BROOKLYN DIARIES (SUMMER IN BROOKLYN, AUTUMN IN BROOKLYN, WINTER IN BROOKLYN, SPRING IN BROOKLYN, MORE SUMMER IN BROOKLYN, and A YEAR IN ROCKAWAY), Grayson published selected entries from 1969 to 1980.

Now, in THE EIGHTIES DIARIES, Grayson describes his itinerant life in his thirties during the Reagan era. Following the two previous volumes, SOUTH FLORIDA WINTERS and WEST SIDE SUMMERS is this book, INDIAN SUMMER: PARK SLOPE, covering two months Grayson spent back in his native Brooklyn after an absence of six years.

In 1985 the historic brownstone neighborhood of Park Slope is still not totally gentrified and Brooklyn is neither fashionable, cutting-edge nor entirely safe.

Grayson recounts the rhythms of his life: his lunches and dinners with fellow writers and others in the arts and media; his frequent trips to Rockaway Beach for visits his beloved grandmother; his often dispiriting remedial writing classes at the City University of New York; his own graduate courses in programming on mainframe computers and graphics on the earliest Apple desktops at Columbia University’s Teachers College; his bizarre juggling of a credit chassis that includes several dozen credit cards and numerous bank accounts; his experiences witnessing brazen subway muggings and spectacular sunrises as seen from the Manhattan Bridge; being in both an earthquake and a hurricane within two weeks; and, as always, his struggles as a writer: here, with three hardcover fiction books published, he wonders if his modest early success has been a mere fluke and considers alternate career paths an uncertain future.

An excerpt:

I slept fabulously, glad to be near Ronna. . .

At 8 AM, the alarm went off, and I started kissing and hugging her; then I cleaned up and got dressed and went off. . .

It was a foggy, dreary morning; after returning to Happy Burger for breakfast, I took the subway up to Columbia and arrived just in time for Computer Graphics.

Howard did more BASIC programming today, and I learned more about POKE-ing things into memory than I had known before. We discussed the principles of graphics and went over other stuff. . .

During our hour break, instead of having lunch, I went downstairs to the computer room to meet Chris – he’s not only such a hunk but very sweet too – and other members of the Programming class. . .

After class, I stayed on, programming till 1:30 PM, and then I went back downstairs to the DEC-20 and worked on the Pascal program for our first project. It needs a lot of refining, but I know I’ll do it before it’s due in two weeks.

Both courses seem under control. I had some lunch and then got on the IRT. At 72nd Street, an amputee on crutches came into the car to collect money. I gave him some coins, and then, as he came to the door to the next car, he burst into laughter.

I soon realized why: crossing his path was another amputee, this one in a wheelchair, also begging. I gave him some loose change, too. At 14th Street, a guy got off the car and waited for a moment, then suddenly stepped back in and grabbed at a woman’s neck; then he quickly ran away as the doors closed.

I’d seen it perfectly from my vantage point, but he was so fast, I couldn’t react. What he’d done, of course, was snatch three gold chains.

The woman, a young West Indian, hardly reacted at first. She said she’d just bought the chains and still had the receipt for them.

“I never usually sit next to the door,” she told me. As we made our way into Brooklyn and the reality of the event hit her, she kept saying “I just can’t believe it.”

Back home, the phone was working again; evidently they fixed it from the outside, for Tim said no repairman had come to the house. I went out for dinner, got my laundry, typed up some letters, did some more programming, and watched "Dallas," which I'd taped.

It will also be available on Scribd and Lulu for free online reading.

East Flatbush University Press publishes Joseph Conrad's THE NICE GUY OF THE "NARCISSUS" in print edition and as ebook available at Amazon Kindle

East Flatbush University Press is proud to announce the simultaneous publication as a print edition and as an ebook at the Amazon Kindle Store a classroom-friendly version of Joseph Conrad's classic novella THE NICE GUY OF THE "NARCISSUS." The Kindle ebook is available for 99 cents.

Edited by Richard Grayson, who previously produced the acclaimed THE HIPSTER HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain and THE FASHIONISTA MERCHANT OF VENICE by William Shakespeare, this new book is yet another revised and updated text of a venerable work of literature, only without offensive racial and religious slurs.

As the description for the $9.99 print version notes,

At one time, this brilliant novella was one of Joseph Conrad's most frequently read books. However, due to its unfortunate title, it has been unfairly shunned in classrooms for decades. Now, thanks to editor Richard Grayson and East Flatbush University Press, we have a new, non-offensive edition of Conrad's thought-provoking "tale of the sea" that is totally student-friendly. Every instance of the N-word has been scrubbed from the text and replaced with "nice guy" - which is just what West Indian sailor James Wait really is. A classic work of literature is now available for a new generation!

Joseph Conrad's THE NICE GUY OF THE "NARCISSUS" is also available as a free download at Lulu.

Dumbo Books, Superstition Mountain Press and Art Pants Company Amazon Kindle Sales Figures

We thought we'd share our Amazon Kindle ebook sales figures for titles by Richard Grayson.

Here are the June sales figures for Superstition Mountain Press/Art Pants Company's ebooks on Amazon Kindle, as of June 27. They are listed by title, units sold, units refunded, net units sold, total payment:

Transactions from 06/01/2010 to 06/29/2010

Sixteen Attempts to Justify My Existence 1 0 1 0.35 USD

Those Seventies Stories 1 0 1 0.35 USD

Vampires of Northwest Arkansas 2 0 2 0.70 USD

Inside Barbara Walters 2 0 2 0.70 USD

Moon Over Moldova 1 0 1 0.35 USD

The Boy Who Could Draw Dr. King 1 0 1 0.35 USD

Heat of the Moment 2 0 2 0.70 USD

Horsing Around in Politics 1 0 1 0.35 USD

The Lost Movie Theaters of Southeastern Brooklyn 2 1 1 0.35 USD

Grand Total: 4.20 USD

Here are the May sales figures:

The Lost Movie Theaters of Southeastern Brooklyn 1 0 1
Vampires of Northwest Arkansas 2 0 2
Eating at Arby's: The South Florida Stories 1 0 1
Inside Barbara Walters 1 0 1
Those Seventies Stories 1 0 1
18 X 1969 2 0 2
Grand Total Cumulative Royalties: 2.80 USD

Here are the April sales figures:

Victory Boulevard 1 1 0
Vampires of Northwest Arkansas 2 0 2
Inside Barbara Walters 1 0 1
Moon Over Moldova 1 0 1
Oh Khrushchev, My Khrushchev 1 0 1
18 X 1969 1 1 0
Grand Total Cumulative Royalties: 1.75 USD

Here are the March sales figures:

Autumn in Brooklyn 1 1 0
Heat of the Moment 1 0 1
The Lost Movie Theaters of Southeastern Brooklyn 2 0 2
The Boy Who Could Draw Dr. King 1 0 1
Vampires of Northwest Arkansas 5 0 5
Eating at Arby's: The South Florida Stories 1 0 1
Inside Barbara Walters 4 0 4
Moon Over Moldova 1 0 1
Those Seventies Stories 2 0 2
Sixteen Attempts to Justify My Existence 1 0 1
Diary of a Congressional Candidate 1 0 1
18 X 1969 2 1 1
Grand Total Cumulative Royalties: 7.00 USD

Here are the February sales figures:

Summer in Brooklyn 2 1 1
The Boy Who Could Draw Dr. King 1 0 1
Vampires of Northwest Arkansas 1 0 1
Eating at Arby's: The South Florida Stories 1 0 1
Inside Barbara Walters 3 0 3
Grand Total Cumulative Royalties: 3.15 USD

Here are the June sales figures for Dumbo Books' one ebook title on Amazon Kindle, as of June 27. They are listed by title, units sold, units refunded, net units sold, total payment:

I Hate All of You on This L Train 1 0 1 0.35 USD
Grand Total: 0.35 USD

Here are the May sales figures:

I Hate All of You on This L Train 1 0 1
Grand Total Cumulative Royalties: 0.35 USD

Here are the April sales figures:

I Hate All of You on This L Train 0 0 0
Grand Total Cumulative Royalties: 0.00 USD

Here are the March sales figures:

I Hate All of You on This L Train 1 0 1
Grand Total Cumulative Royalties: 0.35 USD

Here are the February sales figures:

I Hate All of You on This L Train 2 0 2
Grand Total Cumulative Royalties: 0.70 USD

Here are the January sales figures:

I Hate All of You on This L Train 1 0 1
Grand Total Cumulative Royalties: 0.35 USD