"Why I Decided to Self-Publish"

On March 17th, 2020, I participated in a webcast on Authors Helping Authors discussing the topic "Why I Decided to Self-Publish Rather than Traditionally Publish," with host Martinique Y. Brown, debut author Amber Gardiner, and myself. The webcast runs for about an hour and ten minutes and starts six minutes into the recording, so move the time bar cursor to begin. I think you will find our conversation informative if you are on the fence deciding which approach works best for you.

Most writers would love to get a contract with one of the Big Five publishers (Penguin, Simon & Schuster, MacMillan, Harper Collins, and Hachette Livre) and live off the passive income of their brain child. Many of those authors who secure a professional writing contract never work off their advances, so their books never produce royalty income. Their books get backlisted after several months if they don't sell well. Then your hard effort gets buried in the book graveyard until your contract runs out. That could be as long as seven years.

"Choose wisely, my friends. All that glitters is not gold."

"Why I Decided to Self-Publish Rather Than Traditionally Publish" 

Detroit Baby Boomer Kids Show Hosts

Poopdeck Paul, Milky the Clown, Captain Jolly, Jingles, Johnny Ginger, and Bozo the Clown.

Late in 1950, Twin Pines Dairy wanted to sponsor a children's show with cartoons, western movies, and a magic clown called Milky. The dairy owner had seen magician Clare Cummings perform in the Detroit area and offered him the job. Cummings created the Milky makeup and his wife made his costume patterned after the clown in the opera Pagliacci. Milky the Clown was born. Between commercial breaks, Milky performed magic tricks and hosted the day's movie. When he performed his tricks, Milky would always say the magic words "Twin Pines."

In the days of only four TV broadcasters in the Detroit area, Milky worked at all three American channels. Milky's Movie Party debuted on December 16, 1950 at  WJBK-channel two. In 1955, Milky moved to WXYZ--channel seven with the same show except with Little Rascals shorts. In 1958, the show moved for the last time to WWJ--channel four with a slightly different title Milky's Party Time. 

Party Time included a live audience and competitions between boys and the girls. Winners would chose a prize from the Twin Pines Toy House. Milky the Clown ended for Cummings in 1964 when he gave up the costume and makeup to make more money in industry.

Clare Cummings died on October 31, 1994, the same day as another noteworthy magician's death in Detroit in 1926--Harry Houdini. Cummings donated most of his magic tricks and one of his costumes to the American Museum of Magic in Marshall, Michigan. They are on permanent display.

***

In 1957, Windsor, Ontario broadcaster CKLW--channel nine purchased 234 Max Fleisher Popeye cartoons and they were looking for someone to host Popeye and Friends for their 6:00 pm time slot. Toby David portrayed Captain Jolly. Captain's Jolly's first mate was Poopdeck Paul portrayed by Paul Schultz, who worked the weekend slot. The show was popular but ended in 1964 when CKLW cancelled the show. Captain Jolly would address his kiddie audience as his "Chipmates" in his best, bad-German accent.

***

Jerry Gale was working as a stand-up comedian in Toledo, Detroit, and Windsor scratching out a living. In 1957, he auditioned for a new WXYZ program showing Three Stooges shorts called Curtain Time. The station manager insisted that Gale work under the name Johnny Ginger. Ginger's character was dressed as a stagehand in bib overalls. He would open the curtain and close the curtain for every show. Curtain Time ran from 1957 until 1960 when the show was rebranded under the name The Johnny Ginger Show, running from 1960 through 1968. Ginger changed his costume to a bellhop uniform and became a fan favorite.

***

Jingles in Boofland was purchased from a Fort Wayne, Indiana station by CKLW in 1958 for their weekly 5:00 pm time slot. Jerry Booth's character was a court jester and not a clown. He wore no makeup. His costume covered with bells jingled whenever he moved. 

Jingles lived in the mythical kingdom of Boofland--a play on Booth's last name. The show did not have a studio audience to compromise the fantasy of the medieval castle, the parapet, the archway, and several set pieces which allowed kids watching at home to work their imaginations. His two sidekicks were puppets, Herkimer Dragon and Cecil B. Rabbit. 

Herkimer, Jingles, and Cecil B.

Jingles played the straight man reacting to the puppets' eccentric behaviors. The rabbit was a bossy know-it-all. The dragon was a soft-spoken buffoon who did stupid things all the time. Occasional puffs of smoke would come out of Herkimer's mouth. Inside the puppet's head was a tube. Off-stage actor and voice of the puppets Larry Sand would light up a cigarette and blow smoke through the tube creating a fire-breathing dragon effect.

Jingles's comedy skits and running gags were wrapped around the Warner Brothers cartoons and Laurel and Hardy shorts that the program served up. Jingles in Boofland ended in the early sixties.

***

CKLW Detroit/Windsor Bozo--Art Cervi

The original Bozo the Clown was created by Alan W. Livingston in the 1940s for a storytelling record album. The character first appeared on TV in 1949. The rights to Bozo were purchased in 1956 by Larry Harmon. Harmon franchised the character across America, so every major television market had their own Bozo the Clown showing Bozo cartoons.

In 1965 when cable TV was taking hold, Harmon began to syndicate Bozo's Circus from Chicago and took the show to a national audience. Individual stations no longer needed their own Bozos, nor could they compete with the new format. In 1978, the show was bouncing off satellites and appearing worldwide.

Bob McNea was Detroit's first Bozo for WWJ from 1959-1967. Jerry Booth took over the role for CKLW but lasted only a month. Booth did not like putting on the heavy stage makeup or the anonymity of being Bozo. Art Cervi took over the role. He donned the red wig and clown suit from 1967 through 1979 when his contract ran out.

The above photo of Bozo needs some context. Bozo was doing a live appearance in Tiger Stadium. His makeup and wig are exaggerated so the crowd could see him from a distance. "Whoa, Nelly!" Normally, he wasn't that scary.

***

No survey of Detroit's kid show hosts would be complete without mention of the King of Detroit Kiddie Comedy--Soupy Sales. His show Lunch with Soupy ran at noon on WXYZ from 1953 until 1960.

I remember Lunchtime as a half-hour romp of slapstick, word play, and improvisation. Soupy's signature trademarks were the "pie in the face" and his dance the "Soupy Shuffle." No cartoons, just Soupy and his puppets White Fang, Black Tooth, and Pookie.

Most people are unaware that Milton Supman (Soupy Sales) held a master's degree in journalism. Soupy warrants his own post:

https://fornology.blogspot.com/2017/06/lunch-with-soupy-sales-in-detroit.html

Lunch With Soupy Sales in Detroit

Soupy Sales was born Milton Supman on January 8, 1926, in Franklinton, North Carolina. His father Irving Supman immigrated to America from Hungary in 1894. He was a Jewish dry goods merchant. Later in life, Soupy would quip that the local Ku Klux Klan bought their sheets from his father's store.

Milton's nickname came from his family. His older brothers were dubbed "Ham Bone" and "Chicken Bone." The youngest son was "Soup Bone." Milton (Soupy) Supman enlisted in the United States Navy and served in the South Pacific. After the war, he earned a Master's degree in journalism. His oldest brother became a doctor, and his other brother became a lawyer. Soupy had little choice but to go into show business.

After graduation, Soupy worked as a morning DJ and performed a comedy act in nightclubs. In 1949, Soupy Sales began his television career on WKRC-TV in Cincinnati with "Soupy's Soda Shop," television's first teen dance program. The show was cancelled after a year. Soupy moved to Cleveland and did a late night comedy/variety program called "Soupy's On!" where he took his first pie in the face which became his trademark. After a couple of seasons, Soupy left Cleveland for health reasons. "The station manager was sick of me," he quipped.

In 1953, Soupy Sales relocated to Detroit and worked for WXYZ-TV Channel 7, the local ABC station. Soupy not only had the Lunch With Soupy program, he also hosted a Friday evening variety show called Soup's On, which featured musicians and jazz performers who were working one of the twenty-four jazz clubs operating in the Paradise Valley entertainment district in old Detroit. Top performers like Louie Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Della Reese, Dinah Washington, Charlie Parker, and Miles Davis, to name a few, made guest appearances on Soupy's popular show. After an appearance, jazz artists would regularly sell out their venues.

Lunch With Soupy had a fixed kitchen set with a window, a table and chair to the left, and a door at center stage in the background that would interrupt Soupy mid-sentence with frantic knocking. Naturally, Soupy would stop, mug for the camera, and answer the door. Usually, Soupy played against only an arm and a voice appearing from the door jam.

Soupy wore a dark Orlon sweater, a white shirt with an oversized checkerboard bow tie, and a beat up top hat. Besides the pie-in-the-face running slapstick gag, Soupy was know for the Soupy Shuffle (his signature dance) and his Words of Wisdom like, "Be true to your teeth and they won't be false to you."

Pookie the Lion and Hippy the Hippo

If it was noon in Detroit and you were planted in front of a television set with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and Soupy was on, you knew you were in for a good time. Regulars on the show were hand puppets Soupy interacted with. He was the straight man for voice artist Clyde Adler who did the off-stage puppeteering and voice characterizations. The show's favorite puppets were:

• White Fang, "The Biggest and Meanest Dog in the USA." He appeared from the left corner of the screen only as a giant white shaggy arm and paw with black triangular claws. White Fang spoke in unrecognizable grunts and growls which Soupy repeated in English for comic effect. White Fang often threw the pies when Soup's jokes bombed.
• Black Tooth, "The Biggest and Sweetest Dog in the USA." She had a black shaggy arm and paw with white triangular claws. She had feminine grunts and groans, and always flirted with Soupy. Her trademark move was pulling Soupy off-camera and giving him big, noisy kisses.
• Pookie the Lion appeared on the ledge of the window behind Soupy. Pookie was a hipster with a wicked wit. He lip synced novelty records or prerecorded bits. My favorite memory of Pookie was a routine called "Life Got You Down, Bunky?" It was a pep talk he gave Soupy every time Soupy complained about feeling blue. Comically, it was inspirational.
• Willie the Worm, a latex accordion worm that popped in and out of an apple. Willie was known as "the sickest worm in all of Dee-troit." Willie had a perennial cold and an exaggerated sneeze. He read birthday greetings to Detroit-area kids. Sadly, Willie's health failed him. He did not survive the show's move to the Big Apple in 1964.

When Soupy took his show to WNEW-TV in New York City, it went into national syndication. This was the height of Soupy's popularity. His guest stars included the likes of Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis, Jerry Lewis, Judy Garland, and Sammy Davis. 

Soupy doing the Mouse dance

On New Years Day in 1965, to fill a few extra moments at the end of the show, Soupy made an off-the-cuff remark to the kids in his television audience. He suggested they go into their parents' rooms, find their parents' wallets, and take out the green pieces of paper with pictures of bearded guys and mail them to him. In return, Soupy said he would send them a postcard from Puerto Rico. The show was aired live and no transcripts or videotapes exist, so the exact language he used is not known.

Soupy's remark was an ad-libbed gag not meant to be taken literally, but an angry parent filed a complaint with the FCC. The way the press reported the story, it sounded like this was the biggest heist since the Brink's robbery. Some adults were livid that a TV personality would manipulate children for commercial gain.

Show business legend has it that the prank netted some $80,000. Soupy revealed publicly that he netted only a few real dollars which he donated to charity--the rest was fake money.

The station suspended Soupy. The outcry from Soupy's fans swamped the station's switchboards and packed their mail room with demands that Soupy be reinstated. Within a week, his suspension was lifted. Soupy worked for two more seasons before he gave up the top hat and bow tie and moved to Hollywood to become a panelist on many game shows including What's My Line, To Tell the Truth, Match Game, The Gong Show, and Hollywood Squares in the 70s and 80s.

Milton (Soupy Sales) Supman died of cancer October 22, 2009, at Calvary Hospice in the Bronx. He was eighty-three years old. Soupy Sales is best remembered by his many fans for his trademark pie-in-the-face gag, but in the comedy world, Soupy is remembered for his inventive, anarchic brand of riotous, television comedy. 

 Soupy and Pookie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB8e_uRzhMU

 

Soupy's On Nighttime Variety Show 

Allen Park's Uniroyal Giant Tire--Fifty-Nine Years Old--Heralds Entrance into The Motor City

The original U.S. Royal Tire exhibit was a Ferris wheel attraction at the New York World's Fair of 1964/1965, held in Flushing Meadows Corona Park in the borough of Queens. The fair was open for two six-month seasons. In 1964, it was open from April 22th until October 18th, and in 1965, the dates were April 21st until October 17th.

The history of the U.S. Royal Giant Tire is pretty straightforward. Originally rigged as a Ferris wheel and powered by a 100 HP engine, it was over eighty feet high. It carried close to 2,000,000 people at the World's Fair, many of them famous world figures. There were twenty-four barrel shaped gondolas, each carrying up to four people for a total of ninety-six passengers paying a quarter apiece. 

At the fair's end, the tire was disassembled and shipped in twenty-one truck loads to Detroit and reassembled as a static display outside the Uniroyal sales offices in Allen Park, Michigan. It is one of the world's largest roadside attractions. The Uniroyal office has since moved, but the Giant Tire still stands.

The tire is not made of rubber, but sightseers don't notice the difference whizzing past the landmark at seventy miles an hour on Interstate 94. The tire weighs just under twelve tons and is anchored in twenty-four feet of concrete and structural steel. It is rated to withstand hurricane force winds.

When the Michelin Tire Company bought out Uniroyal and Goodrich in 1990, they renovated the landmark in 1994 with a fresh coat of paint, a modern looking hubcap, and neon lights for the Uniroyal lettering. Four years later in 1998, the Giant Tire was modified again to resemble a "Nail Guard" tire. An eleven foot long, 250 pound nail (world's largest) was sticking out from the tire to promote their new puncture proof product. The nail was put up for auction on eBay in 2003 and sold for $3,000, with proceeds donated to the Allen Park Historical Museum.

In 2003, the Giant Tire was once again renovated as part of the I-94 corridor revitalization. The neon lettering was replaced with reflective lettering and spotlighting. It has remained a Detroit landmark and an Allen Park roadside attraction for fifty-three-years heralding the entrance into the Motor City from Detroit Metropolitan Airport in Romulus, Michigan.

It has been noted that the one thing the Beatles wanted to see on their American tour was the Giant Tire. Whether they stopped along the freeway to take a good look at it on their way into Detroit from Metro Airport isn't known, but when Paul McCartney and Wings were touring in 1976, the moment was commemorated.

http://www.freep.com/article/20120312/COL14/203120336/Mark-Phelan-You-ve-seen-the-Giant-Tire-now-see-inside-of-it

For more detailed information on the Detroit's Big Wheel, consult The Giant Tire by Steve J. Frey: http://www.gianttire.info/?fbclid=IwAR2HT6p9Cva5dHSNZl-Ff0dRj053V6Eu--R5FuZtyauH3alhNuDMtladjkM

When White Pine was Green Gold in Michigan

"Brag Load" of Logs and Ten Man Crew with a Team of Horses

The Michigan forest landscape was bountiful for early settlers. Rivers and lakes provided plenty of fish and wildlife while the forests and open glades provided game and fowl for hunters. Clearing the land was a slow process with timber cut with axes. The first order of business was throwing up some hasty shelter. Log cabins were built and railings cut for fences to pen livestock. What scrap wood was left became firewood. These small pioneer farms had minimal impact on the environment.

Rapid development of the American East in the first half of the nineteenth century depleted much of the lumber forests east of the Appalachians. By mid-century, New York lumber speculators discovered the vast virgin hardwood forests of Michigan's lower and upper peninsulas--especially the stands of old-growth white and red pine for building materials. Many of these trees were over 200 years old, 200 feet high, and over 5 feet in diameter.

With the invention of the steam-powered circular saw in the 1850s, the lumber business ramped up production. Fortunes were made by enterprising men who had vision and deep pockets. They bought large tracts of private and government land and were quickly dubbed Lumber Barons. They owned the saw mills and set up the system of lumber camps that made more than a few men rich. The "shanty boys" as the owners called the lumberjacks did the heavy lifting. After a harsh winter, they could walk out of the forest with several hundreds of dollars--big money in those days--only to be targets of robbery or worse. The lumber business attracted a tough crowd in and out of the forest like any boom town industry would.

The first great lumber area in the state was Saginaw Bay which fed into Lake Huron. What made this location ideal for the lumber business were the six rivers that converged to form the Saginaw River: the Chippewa, Tittabawassee, Cass, Bad, Shiawassee, and Flint. From 1860 until 1890, most of the trees from the heart of the state were felled and floated down these rivers on their way to the saw mills.

Logging was a cold weather job. The logs were too big and heavy to drag through the woods. The loggers cleared timber roads first. When the roads iced over in winter, huge sleds were loaded with timber and dragged by horses or oxen to the river's edge where they were stacked awaiting the spring thaw; then, the logs were pushed into the swollen rivers and floated down to the lumber mills. Once at the saw mill, the logs were cut into boards, kiln-dried to reduce weight and warping, and loaded onto ships.

Lumber camps were rustic, quickly built, and meant to be temporary. When the land was exhausted of timber, the operation moved on. The camps consisted of a bunk house, a cook shanty with dining room and kitchen, a camp store, a blacksmith's shop, and a barn for the horses. Each camp had about seventy men and two foremen, twenty teams of horses, and seven yoke of oxen. A ten man crew could produce about 100 logs a day with a two-handled, cross-cut saw and double-edged axes.

Lumberjacks worked from sunrise until sunset, six days a week out in the wilderness with little to occupy them. Their pastimes were telling tall tales and playing cards on Sundays, as well as any mischief they could get away with in town if they were near one.

Lumber camps competed with each other to see which outfit could stack the highest load--called a brag load--and pull it twenty feet over the ice with a team of horses. My guess is the winning camp won a wager and a keg of beer along with bragging rights. I hope the horses got a little something extra for their efforts.

Stump Prairie

When the logging industry was finished raping the land, lumber camps were abandoned because owners didn't want to pay taxes on the land they owned, so they simply defaulted and the land went to the state. In all, over nineteen million acres were clear cut with no reforestation strategy, leaving behind barren "stump prairies" contributing to soil erosion, river and lake pollution, more atmospheric carbon dioxide, and degraded wildlife habitat.

One of the few forest animals that benefited from the clear cutting was the whitetail deer. With new open ground for grazing and more abundant and accessible plant food, populations grew. Little good it did them though. By 1876, professional hunters were killing 70,000 deer each year to supply the booming lumber camps and ship the surplus to Chicago and Detroit--two cities that had a taste for venison.

In a report on Michigan Forest History compiled by the Michigan Department of Resources, researchers found that: "Land clearing for agriculture, logging, and settlement altered local stream flow patterns and volumes, eliminated some waters, and introduced pollutants into others. Huge quantities of sediment from log drives and sawdust from sawmills were dumped into rivers. In one instance, the mouth of the Manistee River accumulated sawdust to the extent that it formed a delta of several square miles. At sawmill locations throughout the state, wherever sawdust was dispensed into the river, toxic and oxygen-deprived conditions were created for fish. These detriments, combined with land clearing efforts, exacerbated soil erosion into rivers, significantly reducing the quality of fish habitat in rivers."

The Hartwick Pines State Park near Grayling has the only remaining stand of Michigan old growth forest. The park consists of fifteen square miles featuring forty-nine acres of old growth white pine saved from the teeth of the loggers' saw. The land was gifted to Michigan's Department of Natural Resources in 1927 by Karen Michelson Hartwick as a memorial to the logging industry in the name of her husband Edward E. Hartwick--a lumberman killed in World War I.

During the Great Depression, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) built a logging museum adjacent to the old growth forest in the park to educate visitors about the logging industry. The CCC also hired unemployed men to plant millions of seedlings to reforest Michigan's barren areas, but even after one hundred years, some of the "stump prairies" still exist. On a brighter note, over half of the state is covered by new growth forests.


Michigan Logging History (5 minute video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShqFL9vWXmY

Elusive Purple Gang Wins Book Cover of the Month Award for February 2020

San Diego Library Local Author Showcase--January 31th, 2020.

We have all heard the advice "Don't judge a book by its cover," but an engaging book cover can capture a reader's attention and act as a calling card to pick up the book and read the back cover. Of course, if the contents of the book are shoddy, the author loses a reader for life.

I was surprised to win a Book Cover of the Month Award for February 2020. Although the cover of The Elusive Purple Gang: Detroit's Kosher Nostra doesn't depict known Purple Gang members, it does quickly establish the time and place of the book. What is not so apparent is a subtle design feature that creates a sense of depth which draws the eye in.

Kudos go to Wheatmark Inc. cover designer Micah Edel. After I provided the cover photo and a rough idea of what I was looking for, Micah did the rest. Our most difficult decision was choosing the right shade of purple for the title. The shade was either too bright and festive or too dark and oppressive. Finally, I hit on it--make the title Crayola purple. It worked!

Contest organizer Pam Rice critiqued the cover this way, "The black and white photo is dramatic and makes a statement. The title is also telling the story. The font is simple with just enough of a serif to make it interesting. The background has a great texture but doesn't overpower the font or the image." 

I appreciate this honor and acknowledgement, but I have only one problem. I like the cover so much that I don't want to hide it behind a medallion. Bragging rights will have to do.

gregoryafournier.com

Fornology Blog 2020--Closing in on a Million Hits

After almost ten years of blogging, my Fornology.com site will register a million hits this year. Writing blog posts has become my favorite type of writing because of the instant gratification and immediacy of reader response. What also appeals to me is a post can be endlessly revised to correct any content or grammar errors, which is not the case with published longer works where your words are imprisoned on the page.

When I began to blog at the urging of my first publicist in 2011, I was less than thrilled. I knew nothing of blogging, so I did what any self-respecting Baby Boomer would do, I bought a hard copy of Blogging for Dummies. There is no shortage of books about monetizing your blog, but I needed advice on how to build a blog.

Once I understood the nature of the beast, I began to recognize the value of building an audience by drawing readers to my site. Blogging has become my primary marketing vehicle because of its long reach and its cost--blogging is essentially free. All of my posts are offered for free, but my longer works can be purchased in my blog's sidebar. I prefer the soft rather than the hard sell.

At first, my post topics were random, but soon I focused on topics related to my longer works creating interest in my books' subjects. Not only did my blog become a research tool, it helped me develop my author's voice and writing style, all the while growing my audience.

My fornology blog provides free, nonfiction content. What is remarkable to me is that I've written 445 posts over the last nine years. My present goal is to reach 500 posts before I pull the plug and call it a career. Help me reach one-million hits by reading some of my posts you haven't seen before Check out the archive index on my blogs left sidebar. Thanks!

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