The cover may change again when I had it over to a professional designer:)
Fall is usually the month of transition and this blog is no exception. I will streamlining my blogs to focus on my book Leaving Cleveland, out in March or 2023.
I am in the research phase but know that I will be changing the link to this blog to just Leaving Cleveland. For those who are subscribing be on the look out for that change so that you do not miss out on updates for the book.
This is a short blog but I have been asked ” why is your publication date March 14th ( presale on January 14th) ? March 14th marks the birthday of my mother-in-law Ann Siegrist who passed away in 2014 at the age 89. She was a voracious reader, a kind person and made the best pies ever.
The joy of self-publishing is I get to call the shots and have control over the final publication. It also means I am responsible for everything. As a freelance for over 40 years you get use to that pressure. Finally I have been tweaking the cover and the last version is what you see here. That said once I hand off my book to the printer/designer…it may change again…but for now I like it….
Thanks for your time and please share and subscribe ….
“Enry the Eighth ” photo by Johnny Strand the Photo Man. 1981
Exclusive Content:
It appears I don’t throw anything away. When I was writing Leaving Cleveland, I went through my old polaroids of people who I photographed before handing the camera with film to the photographers I was assisting. The above image is the actual polaroid from the Henry the Eight Shoot Eats Ice Cream, taken in 1981….that is 41 years ago!!!!!
In the book, the protagonist, Sam, really begins his photo assisting career with ” Johnny Strand the Photo Man” a high end commercial photographer who smokes a lot of pot.
In Chapter 7 I”m ‘Enry the Eighth I Am, Johnny business is tanking and is trying to figure out how to turn it around. Sam is about to lose his job, which would be the end of the story but, Jenny ( Johnny’s photo rep) tells Johnny if he can come up with a great test image of food, she may be able to snag the Burger King account ….the Burger King morphs into King Henry the 8th eating ice cream, iconic.
Reality Check: For those unfamiliar with the freelance life of a photographer, it is a life of peaks and valleys. Never knowing where and when the next job is coming wondering how you are going to pay the fixed expenses. In the commercial photography world the expenses are high and so are the rewards. The trick is to string enough jobs together to stay afloat…It is not a career for those with ” thin skin.”
Excerpt from Chapter Seven from book Leaving Cleveland out in the world March 2023.
Everything Johnny said about the job proved true. Long hours, demanding clients, and a lot of unwarranted despair. My day started at 8. Johnny would walk in at 8:30 with blood shot eyes, smelling of Jasmine, humming some Reggae tune and looking very happy. By lunchtime his glow was gone and in need of replenishment. Our lunch orders went out at noon to the deli downstairs. This was when Johnny absented himself, to reappear an hour later just as the sandwiches arrived, his glow back. That’s when Jenny, his rep, would arrive and join us and we’d sit as a team around the oak table and eat.
“Hey Johnny, how’s it going?” Jenny would ask. She was slender, mousy brown hair, a beauty mark on her right cheek and always dressed in a tight-fitting button-down shirt tucked into a long black skirt, which highlighted her narrow waist. She’d have on her signature scarf, always very colorful, meticulously tied around her neck. She was from Patterson, New Jersey, and had a thick Jersey accent.
On my first day at the oak table Johnny asked her, “Any news about the Burger
King account?”
She smiled and said, “It’s between you and Tom Brody, but the art buyer said she liked the fact that you shoot other things besides food. I think you need to set up a test shoot of something with food that I can take over to her by the end of the week.”
“Like what?” Johnny responded, his mellowness unmellowing.
“I don’t know. You’re the creative. You come up with something,” Jenny said.
Johnny put his head down on the table like a child taking an afternoon nap in school. For five minutes we all just stared at him. Suddenly he raised his right hand with his forefinger pointing to the ceiling.
“Let’s photograph Henry the Eighth eating ice cream.”
“Genius!” Jenny exclaimed. “That will combine your talent with people and food.
Who can we get to play Henry?”
“Get the Funny Face catalog,” Johnny commanded. “They owe us a favor and I think there are few models there that will want to do this.”
Jenny pulled out the catalog and Johnny flipped through its pages. After about ten minutes he slammed his fingers on a headshot and declared, “Tom Lang, he’s perfect— belly, beard, and all. I will get Ong to style it. Call Barbara and see if she’s available to help.”
The studio was instantly abuzz. Jenny was on the phone convincing Barbara, a food stylist, that doing this photo test would help her career. Johnny was on his way to the elevator. Turning back to us, he announced, “I’ll recruit Ong.”
Jenny got off the phone and looked at me.
“We are on! We got the model. We got the food stylist. And now we cross our fingers and hope Johnny convinces Ong to do him a favor.”
“What’s she like?” I asked.
“Who?”
“Ong.”
“Johnny met her about five years ago and it was love at first bite. She moved into his apartment the next day.”
“So why wouldn’t she do him a favor?” I asked.
“Because she is about money and is not into doing favors unless there is money involved.”
“Enry the Eighth ” photo by Johnny Strand the Photo Man. 1981
Exclusive Content:
It appears I don’t throw anything away. When I was writing Leaving Cleveland, I went through my old polaroids of people who I photographed before handing the camera with film to the photographers I was assisting. The above image is the actual polaroid from the Henry the Eight Shoot Eats Ice Cream, taken in 1981….that is 41 years ago!!!!!
In the book, the protagonist, Sam, really begins his photo assisting career with ” Johnny Strand the Photo Man” a high end commercial photographer who smokes a lot of pot.
In Chapter 7 I”m ‘Enry the Eighth I Am, Johnny business is tanking and is trying to figure out how to turn it around. Sam is about to lose his job, which would be the end of the story but, Jenny ( Johnny’s photo rep) tells Johnny if he can come up with a great test image of food, she may be able to snag the Burger King account ….the Burger King morphs into King Henry the 8th eating ice cream, iconic.
Reality Check: For those unfamiliar with the freelance life of a photographer, it is a life of peaks and valleys. Never knowing where and when the next job is coming wondering how you are going to pay the fixed expenses. In the commercial photography world the expenses are high and so are the rewards. The trick is to string enough jobs together to stay afloat…It is not a career for those with ” thin skin.”
Excerpt from Chapter Seven from book Leaving Cleveland out in the world March 2023.
Everything Johnny said about the job proved true. Long hours, demanding clients, and a lot of unwarranted despair. My day started at 8. Johnny would walk in at 8:30 with blood shot eyes, smelling of Jasmine, humming some Reggae tune and looking very happy. By lunchtime his glow was gone and in need of replenishment. Our lunch orders went out at noon to the deli downstairs. This was when Johnny absented himself, to reappear an hour later just as the sandwiches arrived, his glow back. That’s when Jenny, his rep, would arrive and join us and we’d sit as a team around the oak table and eat.
“Hey Johnny, how’s it going?” Jenny would ask. She was slender, mousy brown hair, a beauty mark on her right cheek and always dressed in a tight-fitting button-down shirt tucked into a long black skirt, which highlighted her narrow waist. She’d have on her signature scarf, always very colorful, meticulously tied around her neck. She was from Patterson, New Jersey, and had a thick Jersey accent.
On my first day at the oak table Johnny asked her, “Any news about the Burger
King account?”
She smiled and said, “It’s between you and Tom Brody, but the art buyer said she liked the fact that you shoot other things besides food. I think you need to set up a test shoot of something with food that I can take over to her by the end of the week.”
“Like what?” Johnny responded, his mellowness unmellowing.
“I don’t know. You’re the creative. You come up with something,” Jenny said.
Johnny put his head down on the table like a child taking an afternoon nap in school. For five minutes we all just stared at him. Suddenly he raised his right hand with his forefinger pointing to the ceiling.
“Let’s photograph Henry the Eighth eating ice cream.”
“Genius!” Jenny exclaimed. “That will combine your talent with people and food.
Who can we get to play Henry?”
“Get the Funny Face catalog,” Johnny commanded. “They owe us a favor and I think there are few models there that will want to do this.”
Jenny pulled out the catalog and Johnny flipped through its pages. After about ten minutes he slammed his fingers on a headshot and declared, “Tom Lang, he’s perfect— belly, beard, and all. I will get Ong to style it. Call Barbara and see if she’s available to help.”
The studio was instantly abuzz. Jenny was on the phone convincing Barbara, a food stylist, that doing this photo test would help her career. Johnny was on his way to the elevator. Turning back to us, he announced, “I’ll recruit Ong.”
Jenny got off the phone and looked at me.
“We are on! We got the model. We got the food stylist. And now we cross our fingers and hope Johnny convinces Ong to do him a favor.”
“What’s she like?” I asked.
“Who?”
“Ong.”
“Johnny met her about five years ago and it was love at first bite. She moved into his apartment the next day.”
“So why wouldn’t she do him a favor?” I asked.
“Because she is about money and is not into doing favors unless there is money involved.”
This is my first post since I finished my successful Kickstarter Campaign on September, 28, 2022. I was teaching at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, when I started the campaign. In fact one of my students was the first pledge. My campaign ended during that same class. My students and I decided to do the countdown together, which meant a lot to me.
No the fun part and learning part begins. I have never self published before so there is a lot to learn. I am working with the company BookBaby who does this all the time and they have been very helpful. I reached out to them to let them know how money I had to work with to publish and they gave me a breakdown of all the things I could do and reassured me I was in good shape for a good launch of the book. The launch of the book btw is in March of 2023.
The Blurb:
When I spoke my rep at Bookbaby, they mentioned doing a ” blurb” for the back of the book. What’s a blurb you ask? It’s the summery of the book that is written out to excite the reader. It is the ” hook” that tells the potential buyer that this would be a book they would like to read. So here goes, my Blurb.
Knowing there must be more to his predictable life in Cleveland, Ohio, recent college graduate and aspiring photographer, Sam Cohen, stumbles into an unforgettable adventure in the heart of the New York City celebrity and art world in the 1980’s.
After a year of apprenticing the “White Rastafarian” in his wacky commercial photo studio, Sam gets his break and becomes the photo assistant to the world-famous Izzy Teivel.
It is an auspicious start for Sam but reality sets in and dysfunction prevails. Izzy who is revered by her fans, clients, and subjects but abusive to everyone else especially Sam who finds himself questioning his choices and sanity.
The pressure manifests as nightmares of his father’s past as a concentration camp survivor. Sam’s guilt of leaving his family behind is triggered through a photo assignment Izzy is given by Vanity Way to photograph famous Jewish writers, Elie Wiesel, and I.B. Singer. Morally conflicted, Sam has to decide whether to return to Cleveland to help his estranged father and over protective mother or to stay and pursue his own selfish dreams.
Let me know what you think. To stay informed of the latest and read excerpts from this book please subscribe:
To help spread the word about this book please share this blog with everyone:) When the book is out I will be randomly selecting my followers for a free book. Take care and thank you for your support.
Hi, I wanted to share some exciting news and developments concerning my book “Leaving Cleveland” .
1: I have been reaching out to notable writers to see if they would read my book and if they liked it would write a blurb for the back of the book. I am excited to say Murray Horwitz said YES!!! Although he may not be on your radar, he has an amazing career in the Arts. Most notable he is the creator of the Tony Award winning musical ” Ain’t Misbehavin’” . In addition he is a special guest on NPR and helped launch the very successful show ” Wait.,Wait, Don’t Tell Me.” He is a very talented person and I am so excited he wants to read my book…I hope he likes it ….
2: I have created a publishing company called ” Boulder Point Publishing ” and Leaving Cleveland will be the first title. The story behind the name is from a trail I would run/hike in the Bitterroots of Montana about 1 mile in I would see this amazing mountain with a knob, called Boulder Point. The logo is a rendered photo of the point.
3: 11 Days Left in my Kickstarter Campaign.
Although I have met my goal on Kickstarter I still have a 11 days to raise more funds, that will help me launch this book. There are some great awards for your pledges, your name in the book; a first edition signed copy , hardbound…a signed paperback and of course your choice of a sign photo from my awarding winning images on my website and more ….so please pledge. For those who have pledged a bit thank you for your generosity..and welcome to the journey….Click on the this link to learn more about the Kickstarter Campaign
Have a great weekend and thank you for your support and interest….If you have pledged remember to subscribe to this blog to stay up to date with developments with the book.
Leaving Cleveland 