THE RECORD KEEPS MISSION

Fund the Archive | The Record Keeps | Grand Ri5ing

The Record Keeps Collection - Grand Ri5ing Press

Fund
the Archive

Help build something this community has never had

The Record Keeps is not just a book series. It is the beginning of a cultural archive, a body of work dedicated to recovering buried Black history and putting it into the hands of people who were never supposed to find it.

The book is the proof of concept. The archive is the mission. Your contribution, any amount, helps build both.

Contribute to the Archive See the Vision
The Record Keeps

What is The Record Keeps

A horror series.
A growing archive.

Every volume in The Record Keeps Collection is a complete horror novel. And in the back of every book, behind a section called The Receipts, is the documented historical record tied to the real person at the center of the story. Not a footnote. The record, with photographs, with names, with dates that do not soften what happened.

Volume One is The Founders Tree. The manuscript is complete. The story follows a sixteen-year-old girl who wins a fellowship at a remote camp in the old-growth redwoods of California and finds something ancient at its center. Something that feeds on forgetting. Something that has been hiding a name for over a hundred years.

The name is in the back of the book. So is everything they did to him.

"The story was the door. This is the room."

The Founders Tree - The Receipts

Volume Two is in development. The archive keeps growing. Every name that makes it out matters.

Want a copy of Volume One?
Pre-Order The Founders Tree
$22.22 secures your signed copy. Founders ($75+) get their name printed permanently inside the book.
Pre-Order Now

The Vision

This is bigger
than a book.

The Record Keeps was always meant to be more than print on a page. The horror fiction is the entry point. The history is the mission. And the mission does not stop at the bookshelf.

Here is what this archive is being built to become, with the right funding and the right community behind it:

Vol. 1, 2, 3...
The Full Book Series
Every volume recovers another buried name. Another real person. Another documented record the world agreed to forget. The series has no planned end date. The history is not running out.
Animation
The Animated Series
The stories in The Record Keeps were written with a visual world already alive inside them. The dream is to bring that world to screen, an animated series rooted in the same horror and history as the books, built to reach those who it was always meant for.
Location
On the Ground
The history in The Receipts happened in real places that still exist. The Bronx Zoo. The Humboldt Redwoods. The sites of the 1904 World's Fair. The dream is to go there. To film them. To build a visual documentary record that lives alongside the books and the animated series.
Digital
The App
An interactive archive in digital form. A companion to the books that lets the community go deeper into the history, find the locations, learn the names, and build this record together. The archive belongs to the people. The app makes sure they can hold it.
Education
In the Classroom
With the right funding, The Record Keeps becomes a curriculum. A tool for parents, homeschool families, and homeschool cohorts to teach this history in a format that holds a young person's attention and does not ask permission to tell the truth. Complimentary copies to schools are already part of the mission. A full curriculum is the next horizon.
Community
Built With You
None of this is imposed on the community. This archive exists because the community needs it and because we believe the community wants it. Every contribution is a voice that says: yes, this matters. Yes, these names deserve to be said out loud. Yes, we will carry them. The history was always theirs. The possibilities are too.

Where your contribution goes

Every dollar is
a name that makes it out.

This is not a nonprofit. This is an independent press with an independent mission. Every contribution goes directly into the infrastructure that makes the archive possible.

01
ISBN Registration
Required to sell through any retailer or library. We are purchasing a block of ISBNs to cover the full series, not just Volume One.
02
U.S. Copyright Registration
Legal protection for every volume in the series. The work must be protected before it can be shared.
03
Professional Printing
The Founders Tree is complete and ready to print. Funding covers the first run deposit and production costs for a trade paperback that holds up in a classroom, on a shelf, and in the hands of someone who passes it on.
04
Copies for Schools and Students
Complimentary copies sent to schools and homeschool students who would otherwise never encounter this history. Every dollar above the print cost moves a book into a child's hands.
05
Research for Future Volumes
The Receipts in every volume are built on documented historical research. That research takes time, access, and resources. Your contribution funds the archive that makes future volumes as accurate and as powerful as Volume One.
06
Location Filming and Travel
The historical sites in The Record Keeps still exist. Reaching them requires equipment, travel, and lodging. This is how the documentary layer of the archive gets built and how the animated series finds its visual foundation.
07
Production Equipment
Camera, audio, and production tools needed to document the locations, produce the animated series development materials, and build the digital archive infrastructure.
08
The Infrastructure That Keeps Growing
The app. The curriculum. The community platform. The tools that let the archive expand beyond what any one book or one person can hold. The possibilities are as big as the community that builds them. This list is not a ceiling. It is a starting point.

The archive is being built

The community
decides what it becomes.

This is not a dream imposed on anyone. This is a vision offered to the people it was built for, with the hope that they want it too. Every contribution says yes. Every share says yes. Every name spoken out loud says yes.

Fund the Archive
Grand Ri5ing

My peace is my power. My rising is Grand.

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